Trustees

Chanel Bannister

 
Chanel is a business transformation and organisational culture specialist. She has worked in the professional services sector for over 15 years in a number of strategic and operational roles and is currently Head of Culture and Engagement for KPMG Business Services. Chanel’s areas of interest include organisational design, strategic planning, post-merger and acquisition integration, and risk management. She holds an MBA from Cranfield University.

Sophie Copeman

Chair

Sophie is the Founder & CEO of SCHC Advisors, a bespoke consulting firm, specialising in talent, organisational change, governance, and broader strategy. She was previously a Partner and Global Head of the Social Impact and Environment practice at Perrett Laver, a leading international executive search firm supporting purpose-driven clients in over 70 countries. She holds a BA in History from the School of Oriental and African Studies and an MPhil in International Relations from St Antony’s College, Oxford. She spent her early career working in the House of Lords and at the Foreign Press Association. Sophie is based in Brighton and is a former trustee of Bramber Bakehouse.

Melissa Martin

 
Melissa is currently the Assistant Director of the African Studies Center at Boston University. She has extensive grants management experience in international health, having worked and consulted for a number of NGOs operating in Africa and elsewhere. She studied at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and completed a Certificate in African Studies while majoring in International Politics. After attaining her Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service, she completed a Fulbright fellowship in Cote d'Ivoire focused on the assessment of programs to help families affected by HIV/AIDS. Melissa then attained an MBA at Harvard Business School. While professionally focused on global matters, Melissa is also deeply committed to giving back to her local community—she recently completed six years as an elected member of her town’s School Committee and currently serves on two community boards.

Professor Susannah Mayhew

 
Susannah is a Professor of Health Policy, Systems and Reproductive Health in the department of Global Health and Development at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Former Director of the LSHTM’s Centre for Maternal, Adolescent, Reproductive and Child Health (MARCH), she sits on the MARCH management group as well as that for LSHTM’s Centre for Climate Change and Planetary Health. She teaches widely on reproductive health, gender, rights, climate and health, health policies and systems. She leads multi-country research consortia across Africa and Europe on a wide range of topics, particularly relating to climate and reproductive health, community responses to crises and cross-sector linkages. At present she works primarily in West and East Africa on cross-sectoral responses to climate and health challenges, including reproductive health and zoonotic outbreaks, with a focus on community engagement. She is adjunct professor at Njala and Eastern Technical Universities in Sierra Leone. She also travels regularly to Ghana, the country of her birth, where she retains links with the University of Ghana (through a jointly run MSc on Sexual and Reproductive Health Policy and Programmes) and is a Trustee of the small charity Ghana School Aid.

Dr Chelsea Morroni

 
Chelsea is a sexual and reproductive health doctor and epidemiologist, with 25 years’ experience living and working in Africa.

She is currently an NIHR Global Research Professor and Chancellor’s Fellow in Global Sexual and Reproductive Health at the Centre for Reproductive Health, University of Edinburgh and a Senior Research Associate at the Botswana Harvard Health Partnership in Gaborone, Botswana. She is also an honorary professor in the Women’s Health at the University of Cape Town’s School of Public Health. She founded and directs the Botswana Sexual and Reproductive Health Initiative (BSRHI), a clinical and implementation research programme working in the Southern African region, and holds advisory positions with ministries of health and international organisations. Chelsea is clinically active as a doctor in providing SRH care and training in Botswana and the UK.

Over the course of her career, Chelsea has worked in all aspects of SRH (policy, programming, clinical, research and advocacy) in Southern and Eastern Africa, the UK and the US. She is an internationally recognised expert in academic and clinical SRH, particularly in contraceptive care in African settings.

Dr Tabinda Sarosh

 
With two decades of experience as a leader and practitioner in the development and humanitarian sectors, Tabinda is currently Interim CEO at Pathfinder International, a leading global NGO that focuses on sexual and reproductive health and rights.

She is a clinically trained public health practitioner with multi-faceted experience of technical leadership and management of SRH programs and research at national, regional and global levels in development and humanitarian sectors.

Tabinda, The Heroine of Health Winner 2022, is an exemplar in the localisation of global health programmes as well as a strong advocate and practitioner for integrating climate and health programming. She combines experience as a public health practitioner and women's rights advocate, with an in-depth understanding of how to deliver health services across diverse contexts in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

Tabinda has a BS in medicine and surgery from Dow Medical College and a post-graduate diploma in nutrition. She is an alumna of the summer school on Women, Peace, and Security at the University of Leiden, Netherlands.