Lisa Dando 
Brighton Women’s Centre
Lisa has worked in the women’s voluntary sector for about 20 years and been the Director of Brighton Women’s Centre (BWC) for 3.5 years. BWC is the lead agency for the Women’s Services Strategic Network (WSSN) – a network of the 4 women centred organisations in the city that developed the Inspire Project, a women’s community project for women offenders and women at risk of offending.
Lisa sits on the regional Women Offender’s Executive Board and the local Reducing Reoffending Board and also represents her organisation on the local Domestic Violence Forum and Sexual Violence Reference Group. She is the city’s Community and Voluntary Sector Forum Gender Representative and was instrumental in the establishment of the cross sector Women’s Strategy Group.
Lisa has a BSc in Psychology and a Post Graduate Diploma in Psychodynamic Counselling.
Loraine Gelsthorpe 
Professor in Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Cambridge
Loraine Gelsthorpe is Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge. She is also Director of the Centre for Community, Gender and Social Justice at the Institute. She has carried out a number of research studies: on police decision-making with regard to juvenile offenders; the operation of multi-agency juvenile panels; the role of the Crown Prosecution Service in juvenile justice; gender issues in juvenile justice; the treatment of fine defaulters in magistrates’ courts, and race and gender issues in pre-sentence reports included. She has also conducted work on Home Office-funded projects on inter-agency aspects of crime prevention strategies, on the sentencing of women and on community service orders (now known as unpaid work) as a requirement of a Community Order. Her chief research interests currently revolve women and criminal justice, the criminalisation of women, and migration.
Loraine has published a number of books and reports and over 160 articles and chapters in books, including work on ‘What works with women?’, The Criminalisation of Migrant Women, and, for the Howard League, Deaths under Probation Supervision. Click here for more information.
Loraine is President of the British Society of Criminology, and a member of the Ministry of Justice’s Advisory Board for s. 95 statistics on women, amongst other things. She is also a (UKCP registered) Psychoanalytical Psychotherapist.
Juliette Green
Livelihood, Hampshire
In 2004 Juliette started Livelihood to bring her perspective into the delivery of service support for women. This was largely due to the fact that, following significantly detrimental personal and professional circumstances, she had been unable to find the gender focused approach that she felt she needed and that would allow her to progress. 10 years on, she has provided leadership for an organisation that has supported thousands of women and developed award wining provision that has enabled women to grow in confidence, become less isolated and fully integrated in their communities. Through this journey she has played a part in the development of local, regional and national best practice provision that enables the more effective delivery of gender sensitive solutions. Testament to her own journey, she is now concentrating on developing unique solutions that bridge the gap between communities and that call on the whole community to support the issues of worklessness’ at every level and have a specific interest in the development of workplace solutions for women.
Michelle Nicholson 
KeyChanges, Sheffield
Michelle Nicholson is the founder and Director of KeyChanges-Unlocking Women’s Potential. KeyChanges was set up to support women resettling into the community from prison, creating opportunities and to tackle the stigma many women face in the criminal justice system. Initially the charity was for mentoring and educational presentations to support women in the criminal Justice system. Since then KeyChanges has gone on to set up a training college and a women’s centre.
KeyChanges are the winners of the ‘Social Enterprise Yorkshire and Humber Social Impact Award 2013’.
Michelle has worked within the voluntary sector for several years and has extensive experience working with people of varied abilities. She currently works in four main areas: the criminal justice system, gender specific mentoring, public speaking and regeneration with a focus on Business Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Michelle has a BSc in Social Science with Psychology.
Jackie Russell
Director, Women’s Breakout
Jackie is the Director of Women’s Breakout, the national infrastructure organisation working with voluntary sector organisations across England and Wales delivering gender specific community based alternatives to custody for women; and engaging with strategic partners in the Criminal Justice System, including the Ministry of Justice, the National Offender Management Service and the private sector.
She has worked in the voluntary sector for the last four years. She also has over twenty five years of experience in local government, mainly in Birmingham City Council where she held senior management positions for 11 years, including two JNC (Chief Officer) appointments. As the Director of the Safer Birmingham Partnership, she engaged at strategic levels in all of the partner organisations: the local authority, Police, Fire and Rescue Service, Health, Probation and the voluntary sector. As the Head of Equality for Birmingham City Council she provided strategic leadership across race, gender, disability, faith, age and sexual orientation. She has professional qualifications and practical experience in teaching and youth and community development, and has an MBA in the Public Service from Birmingham University.
Laura Seebohm
Changing Lives, Newcastle
Laura is based in the North East where she has lived since university - working in the homeless sector, before six years as a Probation Officer. In 2006 Laura joined Changing Lives to set up a support service for women involved in sex work and exposed to sexual exploitation. This led to the establishment of Women’s Services for Changing Lives, including Ministry of Justice funded work following the Corston Report.
Laura moved to the South East in 2009 when she started a family, during which time she chaired the board of a homeless charity and received a Visiting Fellowship from University of East Anglia for research into the Suffolk Prostitution Strategy. However the lure of the North East was such that she returned with her family in 2013 to become Director of Changing Lives, responsible for Women and Criminal Justice Services across Northern England and the Midlands.
Grace Stevens
Legal & General Group
Jessica Southgate
4Children
Jessica is Head of Policy at 4Children, a national children and family charity, where she leads their public policy programme. Prior to this she lead on participation with young people involved in the criminal justice system through the U R Boss project at the Howard League for Penal Reform, and managed a young adult participation project for 18-24 year olds for the Transition to Adulthood (T2A) Alliance.
Jessica’s background is in gender-specific services and campaigns, having developed service-user informed policy and campaigns at Platform 51 (now the Young Women’s Trust), and supporting the development of cutting edge theatre responding to issues of women’s imprisonment at Clean Break Theatre Company. She has an MSc in Gender from the LSE and carried out research for the Griffin Society on community services working with gang-affected young women.
Natausha van Vliet
PACT, Reading
Natausha van Vliet is Head of Communities Development for Parents And Children Together (PACT), providing the strategic oversight and development for all of their communities work. PACT’s flagship communities project is the women’s community service, Alana House. Alana House supports vulnerable women with complex needs, many of whom are part of the criminal justice system in Reading and West Berkshire. She is passionate about the work that the women’s community sector does and inspired by the women it supports.
Natausha has a commercial business background, but has worked in the voluntary sector at a senior level for several years. Her professional qualifications include being a Montessori Early Years practitioner, qualified Personal Development Coach and Certified Prince 2 Practitioner.
Advisors
Ellen Harris
Freelance education, training and development consultant
Ellen has worked in the voluntary sector for over ten years with a background in fundraising, advocacy, training and project management. She has also worked in prison education, delivering family learning workshops in London prisons and coordinating peer mentoring for Shannon Trust, the prison literacy charity. Ellen recently had an article published in Jail Mail on the importance of facilitated family time for women in prison.
Ellen spent two years sitting on the Training Advisory Group for Action for Prisoners’ Families and undertakes freelance education, training and development consultancy in the not-for-profit, higher education and community education sectors. She has a Masters in Social Justice and Education from UCL.
Leila Mezoughi
Paralegal, Corker Binning
Leila joined Corker Binning as a criminal defence paralegal in 2014, having previously worked in a reputable London firm in the sexual offence department.
Leila achieved a first class honours in Law at the University of Brighton and won the Gerard Maye Legal prize before she was awarded the Future Lawyer Excellence Award, a scholarship to study the BPTC at City Law School. Leila has previously worked as an arbitrator’s assistant specialising in complex commercial disputes. Additionally she is a member of the National Centre for Domestic Violence and is currently training as a ‘McKenzie friend’ which involves representing litigants in person, in domestic violence disputes. Further to this Leila is a member of the Blackfriars Settlement Project and volunteers in their free legal advice centre for members of the surrounding community. Leila has a keen interest in women’s rights and was responsible for the UK contribution to Equality Now’s Rape Law research project. This multi-jurisdiction research was presented to the UN in November with a view to enforcing best practice guidelines for sexual violence laws in all UN countries.