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Board of Trustees and Key Staff

 

Elizabeth Phillips MBE – Chair

Elizabeth worked in the housing arena for nearly 40 years, initially for a major Housing Association, latterly as Chief Executive of Age UK Warwickshire. During her time with Age UK Warwickshire Elizabeth developed a range of housing support services, including Care & Repair, Handyperson services, and pioneered partnerships with local health bodies, including General Practices and hospitals.

Elizabeth retired from Age UK Warwickshire in 2016, and is now Chair of Age UK Birmingham and Age UK Sandwell.

 

Bruce Moore – Vice Chair

Bruce joined Housing 21 as Chief Executive in 2013. Before that, Bruce was Chief Executive for Hanover Housing Group and had previously been Chief Executive of Wolverhampton Homes and Deputy Chief Executive of Anchor Trust. Bruce’s early career was as an in-house lawyer and he is a qualified solicitor, but he has spent more than 20 years leading change and seeking to improve the provision of housing and care for older people.

Bruce has served as a board member for a number of housing associations and charities. He completed a PhD considering the differences in attitudes and expectation of the governance role of boards of housing associations in 2017 and is now studying for a further PhD on the priorities and preferences of residents of Retirement and Extra Care Housing.  

 

John Ellis – Treasurer

John Ellis is a Chartered Accountant formerly in general practice, having acted on behalf of many different types of mainly small to medium sized businesses and charities.

In addition to his work John has been a Treasurer of a number of organisations, including the Edgbaston Priory Club and he volunteers as a charity advisor for Tax Help. John is also a Trustee of The Lunar Society and helps raise funds for Charity through my membership of a Lions Club in Birmingham.

 

Marcus Jordan

Following gaining his degree, Marcus trained at Grimley & Son in Birmingham & qualified as a Chartered Surveyor in 1985. His experience working both in London & Birmingham has been property investment buying, selling & developing on behalf of clients. However, the bulk of his business activity since 1995 has been building up commercial investment & development companies.

He now runs a number of Property Investment companies which own, directly, multi let industrial estates & shop investments spread over the Midlands, South East and South West. Marcus’ experience has been in all aspects of developing & investing in property both commercial & residential.

 

Dr. Rashda Tabassum

Dr. Tabassum is an Old Age Consultant Psychiatrist, currently working at Dudley and Walsall Mental Health Partnership Trust. She was inspired to become a doctor after witnessing how much of an advocate doctors can be for their patients. Dr. Tabassum has spent her entire career within the NHS and has been passionate about making a change in people’s lives from the very start.

Dr. Tabassum has significant experiences working with people of all ages suffering from complex mental health issues. For last 15 years she has mainly worked with people above the age of 65 and has gained a deeper understanding of the problems faced by elderly population.

Our elderly population is increasing, according to ONS currently 18% of UK population is above 65 year of age. At the same time the prevalence of dementia, depression and anxiety is increasing and we are not ready to meet the complex needs of this population.

BAME communities face significant barriers and marginalisation when it comes to accessing mental health services and receiving support. Dr. Tabassum has significant expertise in working with and advocating for BAME communities. This includes a employing a broad range of strategies, the development of culturally sensitive services, undertaking advocacy work for BAME communities in service design and designing campaigns and educational tools to raise awareness of mental health issues amongst these communities.

Dr. Tabassum has undertaken extensive work directly in the community including as a school governor, organising mental health awareness events and setting up a community group for isolated elderly Asian females in Sutton Coldfield. Dr. Tabassum also launched a Christmas gift campaign that has since seen coverage by the BBC, aimed at tackling isolation and building social integration in the community for people who have no family around the Christmas.

 

David Sykes

David Sykes has a wealth of experience in both the public and private sectors and as a strategic marketing consultant for PWc. After 25 years in the private sector in senior commercial roles and as Managing Director for a £30M manufacturing business David established a consultancy business.

During his 15 years as an independent consultant he has undertaken commercial and commissioning assignments for 25 health and local authority clients including the Dept. of Health, regulators and commissioning organisations. Over the last few years these assignments have focused on health and social care integration.

David is a CEDR accredited mediator skilled in stakeholder management and contract negotiation. An accredited practitioner in managing successful programmes (MSP). A MBA graduate of Warwick University who now acts as a mentor to Executive MBA students.  5 years experience as a trustee & chair of trustees for Coram Life Education West Midlands.

 

Ben Richards

Ben Richards is an experienced Director with fifteen years of experience managing complex health services within the National Health Service. He is skilled in Performance Improvement, Business Planning, Operations Management, Public Speaking, and Healthcare Information Technology (HIT).

Ben is a strong business development professional with a Master of Science (MSc) focused in Healthcare Leadership jointly from the University of Birmingham and the University of Manchester coupled with registration as a Chartered Manager (CMgr) and range of professional registrations across management, leadership and engineering disciplines.

 

Tapshum Pattni MBE

Tapshum has worked in Social Care with both adults and children for 40 years. She worked for Birmingham city council as the Social Work Service Director before she recently retired.  She has also worked extensively with the voluntary sector and Health Service, and has been a Trustee Director of a housing association and a small charity.

She has been involved on the National forum Via the work she has done for the Association of Directors of Social Care. Professionally she is a qualified Social Worker, and a Manager having completed her masters in social work and MBA in public sector management at Birmingham University.

Tapshum is passionate about developing services for older people and developing community-based models of service that would meet the needs of the local communities.