Our Board and Team

Our Trustees

Ian Agnew – Chairperson

Ian is an entrepreneur and business owner with a social sector background. His early career was in social housing – working in local authorities, housing associations and on community development projects. He lived and worked in Namibia for several years for indigenous peoples’ and rights organisations. On his return to the UK in 2006, he began work as the Founding Director of the Lorna Young Foundation. Over the next ten years, Ian led on a number of social enterprise ventures, primarily focussed on supporting marginalised communities and young people. He has worked on numerous cross-cultural programmes and is a Fellow of the Ariane de Rothschild Fellowship in partnership with Columbia University. Ian is one of the three founding partners of Dark Woods Coffee. Dark Woods is a certified B Corp and one of the UK’s leading independent speciality coffee roasteries. He was appointed as Chairperson of the LYF in 2018, after twelve years as its Co-Director.

LYF Board; Ian Agnew (Chair) thanking Martin Meteyard, outgoing Chair, for 14 years service.

Bruce Mckinnon

Bruce’s first experience of working in fair trade came via Lorna Young herself, along with Pauline Tiffen for the launch of Cafédirect. After providing marketing support for 4 years he became the Marketing Director for Equal Exchange (US) with the brief to rejuvenate its brand and build up the marketing department. After three years in the US Bruce came back to the UK to gain an MBA from Cranfield School of Management. He then took on a series of client and agency roles before setting up his own consultancy Mission Brand (www.missionbrand.co.uk) in 2009. Since then Bruce has provided brand strategy for clients in Europe and North America including Just Us Coffee Co-op, SERRV, Hampstead Tea, the World Fair Trade Organisation, Dean’s Beans, The Cooperative Clothing and Estelle Levin Ltd

Anne Faulkner

Anne is the founder of Rockit Funding, a consultancy which advises not-for-profits on income generation. She has spent her career tackling social injustice in various ways. She was a founder member and Trustee of the Helena Kennedy Foundation, and is now a Trustee of the Kiyan Prince Foundation, a knife-crime prevention charity. Anne is a former Director of Business Development at Good Things Foundation, and helped develop it from being a public body to becoming a social enterprise and staff-owned mutual.  She brings to the Lorna Young Foundation expertise in business development and charity governance.

Louise Wilson

Louise is a freelance consultant specialising in research, communications, and project management in the international NGO sector. She has dedicated over 20 years to ethical trade, Fairtrade and development education since graduating from Cambridge University with an MPhil in Development Studies. Louise has worked internationally with organisations including Divine Chocolate, Comic Relief, Fairtrade Foundation, Twin Trading and ETI, (Ethical Trading Initiative). She is an Associate of the Co-operative College, where projects undertaken include lead-authoring numerous teaching resources on co-operation and ethical business as well as research on training and development needs for co-operative bodies in the UK and in East Africa.

Louise is passionate about trading relationships and business models that put people and planet first. She finds constant inspiration in the many human stories and initiatives that demonstrate positive change for smallholder communities and workers’ rights worldwide. She is also a fitness and well-being fanatic and, since 2018, has run her own Personal Training, Nutrition & Wellness Coaching and healthy living products business from her home in west Cornwall.

Tracy Sheldon

Tracy is a former Managing Director of Brug Consultancy and General Manger for AGI Solutions ; Formerly she was Marketing Director Europe for AGI Media Europe, part of MWV (MeadWestvaco Corporation), one of the World’s leading packaging companies serving the media and entertainment, cosmetics and personal care, home and garden and the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries.

As the General Manager for AGI Media Creative (AGI Solutions) based in London, she managed a £41 million turnover business, a team of 17 Directors and 180 plus staff.; she set up a private limited company Brug to work on SME, Executive coaching and business development privately. Tracy has worked across many markets, building and driving strategic change to ensure the business is in the forefront of the marketplace.  Tracy has managed company turnarounds, developmental change, strategic mergers and built teams in design, localisation, print, sales and marketing. She has thirty years plus experience in business, working in areas from brand and product innovation, marketing, mentoring and coaching through to strategic change management. She has sat  on a wide variety of charity boards which included Womencentre, Unity Works, KACCL, Kirklees theatre Trust and West Yorkshire Young Enterprise and currently works with Start-up and micro businesses with Kirklees Council as the Gateway Manager.

Our Executive Team

Christina Longden – Director (Fundraising/Information)

Christina has provided project management, organisational and information/media services to the Foundation since 2008. She has a background in community-based project development and management, including performance and quality measurement, voluntary sector research, business development, service planning and contractual delivery. An experienced third and private sector professional, Christina had a successful track record in the social housing and voluntary sectors before moving into the private sector, providing consultancy and training services to the charity sector and to Whitehall.

She lived and worked with marginalised communities and organisations in Southern Africa for several years, compiling and editing two oral history books with the Kalahari San Bushmen, as well as fund-raising for rights and development programmes and leading on advocacy and PR.

Christina is involved in a number of voluntary roles including outreach to prisoners, keeping public libraries open and promoting  interfaith dialogue through humanity and history. She is Writer in Residence for Kirklees in West Yorkshire.

Hannah CLARK – Open Source Farmer Radio Development Manager  (with Hannah Davis)

Hannah is an experienced international development programme manager, fundraiser and bid writer. With over 14 years’ experience in the sector, she has spent the last few years supporting community radio projects in Sub-Saharan Africa. Hannah has an MSc in Global Health and is always very excited about the potential for using radio to inspire and galvanize people to improve their lives and communities.

Hannah’s career started at BESO and VSO, where she met Hannah Davis – finding the perfect team mate! It was when she was working for CAFOD in the Brazilian Amazon that Hannah first realised how powerful participatory media could be in enabling indigenous groups to protect their land.

Hannah then lived in rural Mozambique, where she managed a WFP food distribution programme and experienced first-hand the precarious situation of smallholders.  Most recently Hannah worked at the faith-based radio development agency, Feba, managing projects in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Feba’s Ebola response in Sierra Leone. Hannah has a proven record in securing grants from large trusts and institutional donors.

Hannah DAVIS – Open Source Farmer Radio Development Manager (with Hannah Clark)

Hannah has a long background in international development management, focusing in recent years on sustainable and ethical supply chain development and the empowerment of smallholder farmers. She worked for a number of years for VSO, first supporting a broad portfolio of country programmes and subsequently managing a global value chain development project improving access to markets for a variety of small-scale producers from dairy farmers in Malawi to rattan weavers in Cambodia. It was at VSO’s forerunner, BESO, that Hannah met Hannah Clark and formed a life-long friendship that has resulted in them working together again at LYF.

Most recently Hannah was Senior Programme Manager at Twin, where she worked with smallholder farmers growing cocoa, coffee and nuts across Africa and Latin America, providing capacity building support on organisational governance, business management, gender justice, climate change adaptation and facilitating commercial links to social enterprises and multi-national businesses. She also has a trong track record of securing grants and developing/managing private sector funding relationships.

Hannah co-leads the Open Source Farmer Radio initiative with Hannah Clark.


Other Support

Cristina Talens – Farmers’ Voice Radio Trainer

Formerly the Ethical Trading Manager for Taylors of Harrogate, Cris has years of experience working on social and environmental issues with tea, coffee and cocoa producers around the world.

With a background in labour, human rights and rainforest protection, she ran a vast social and environmental monitoring programme with smallholder farmers and estates, identifying areas for improved sustainable agricultural practices, developing action plans with the farmers, and mobilising local partner organisations for collaboration. She has first hand experience of designing and implementing capacity building projects, around issues such as quality, trading, credit, supply chain management and facilitating access to ethical markets through certification such as Fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance. Cris has supported the LYF Farmers’ Voice Radio initiative from its inception and continues to conduct FVR training. She is also Founder and Director of Source Climate Change Coffee.