Our Team

Laurelle Brown                                                            Founder and Chief Executive Officer

 

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Hayley Matthews
People and Engagement Manager & Executive Neurodivergence Assistant

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Tina Benson                                                                      Head of Finance

Shireen Riley                                                                    Head of Projects and Operations

 Our Associates

Each of our associate consultants and trainers are appointed based on experience, expertise and commitment in our area of work, as well as their ability to foster learning and feedback loops on their respective backgrounds and skills. 

Below are some, but not all, of the associates that work with us providing a wide range of expertise and experiences to achieve the best possible outcomes. 

Angela Brook

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Sherrelle Parke

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Asra Memon

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Joshua Karl

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Martin Pratt

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Rupinder Parhar

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Liz Jewer

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Aisha Graham-Sharif

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Vanesa Escobar Ospina

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Heather Abbey

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Nick White

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Mayuri Mistry

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Laurelle is an award-winning strategist, speaker and our Founder and CEO. Named one of WRAY Forward’s Top 25 Black Business Founders (2025) and a finalist for the Everywoman Entrepreneur for Good Award (2024), she is recognised nationally for her leadership in anti-racism, fairness and systems learning across child welfare, safeguarding and public services.

A neurodivergent Black woman and JNC-qualified Youth and Community Worker, Laurelle combines lived experience, research and practice expertise to help organisations better understand complex fairness challenges and make decisions differently. She is the creator of Fairness Learning Theory, LBTC’s approach to helping organisations move from awareness to action by reframing problems, shifting approaches and embedding practical solutions that improve outcomes for children and families.

Her work has shaped national policy, research and practice through partnerships with organisations including the Youth Endowment Fund, Nuffield Family Justice Observatory and the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel/Research in Practice. Laurelle is also a Churchill Fellow, and Co-Founder and Director of KIJIJI, the national community supporting Black safeguarding professionals to thrive.

Hayley began her career as a primary school teacher before moving into the voluntary sector, working with an autism charity. She spent several years supporting autistic children, young people and adults, progressing into management roles and becoming Head of Adult Services. In this role, she led a range of services for autistic adults, including counselling and wellbeing support, housing and benefits advice, social groups, and acted as designated safeguarding lead.

She later joined Inclusion North, leading partnership and co-production work with local authorities, the Integrated Care Board and people with lived experience. Her work focused on inclusion and tackling systemic inequalities for people with a learning disability, autistic people, and family carers. Hayley is a passionate advocate for equity, fairness, and lived-experience co-production.

Tina is a highly experienced finance professional and Fellow of CIMA, with over 20 years’ experience across the private, public and charitable sectors.

Her experience encompasses financial management, strategic planning, budgeting and forecasting, cashflow, governance, risk, business development and operational performance. She has a strong track record of developing effective financial systems and processes, supporting organisational growth and providing clear, practical financial insight to senior leaders and boards.

Alongside her professional career, she has also had the opportunity to contribute through voluntary governance roles, including serving as Vice Chair of a Board of Governors (Education) and as a Deputy Treasurer of a national charity (Health). These experiences have reinforced her belief in the importance of strong governance, transparency and working collaboratively towards a shared purpose.

Shireen is an influential delivery project manager with over 20 years in the charity sector and a proven track record of delivering complex projects and building strong relationships across teams and organisations. Extensive experience in operations; setting up and maintaining systems, and improving policies and processes. Committed to learning and development having successfully achieved an APM Project Management Qualification in 2025.

Angela has a passion for unlocking potential in organisations and people, building high performing teams and helping manage change.  She is known for her facilitation work with senior leadership teams on aligning their strategic goals and how best to achieve these.  Her strong diagnostic skills ensure the real issues are uncovered, help make complex issues simple and enable teams to bring creativity and solutions to the table.  Industries she has worked in include the highly regulated pharmaceutical industry, engineering, IT, medical devices, charity and public sector.

Clients enjoy working with Angela as her warm, informal style creates trust quickly and her pragmatism ensures real world application.  Her executive coaching expertise has enabled leaders across Europe with their career and country transitions, development and personal growth and development.

Angela has worked internationally with senior teams, coaching and facilitating towards high performance and supporting them in establishing effective governance and ways of working.  In her work on leadership and culture transformation, Angela brings expertise in agile working across ‘systems’ – partnering with key stakeholders outside the traditional organisational boundary,

Sherrelle has eight years professional research training and experience within the UK Civil Service followed by another eight years managerial research experience in local government, private and charity sectors. In her early career, as lead researcher for children and young people in custody in the UK, she delivered offender surveys and provided research support to prison inspection teams, and coordinated research projects on behalf of the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales. She went on to lead the development of a flagship evaluation framework for a London Council, including an ongoing programme of policy analysis across key Council transformation areas, including health and social care. Third sector experience includes a role at the Centre of Excellence for Child Sexual Abuse (Barnardo’s Children’s Charity), where she was responsible for managing several research projects and publications. International work includes pro bono research and evaluation work in Tanzania, East Africa, delivering an impact assessment for a women’s livelihoods charity, as well as her most recent role managing large scale international research projects, including research training in Zambia and Nigeria.

Asra is an independent research consultant who specialises in qualitative analysis. She has completed a Master’s in Social Anthropology from the London School of Economics (LSE). She has had 4 years of experience in conducting quantitative and qualitative research and analysis in multiple projects related to public health, social inclusion, migration, and social innovation. Prior to working at Melian Dialogue, she worked on research and strategic foresight consultancy assignments for different organisations including UNICEF, International Office for Migration (IOM), World Health Organization (WHO), and Centres for Disease Control (CDC).

Currently, she is pursuing her second Master’s in International Development Management at the University of East Anglia. blend of expertise and insights.

Joshua is an experienced and passionate CIPD qualified HR/EDI professional with 15+ years both in house and consultant experience. Worked across multiple sectors including management and career development programs, covering BAU.

Joshua has extensive trade union experience across a number of roles negotiating policy changes, restructures, TUPE transfers and ER meetings including disciplinary, performance management, grievance and whistleblowing.

Martin was Executive Director Supporting People (inc DCS) & Deputy Chief Executive for the London Borough of Camden until he retired in July 2023.

Camden was judged to be outstanding for both children’s social care and youth justice while he was in post. He has 13 years’ experience as a DCS and over 40 years’ experience in Children’s Services and Education. He has worked in both local government and at the DfE and also chaired the Greater London Region of ADCS for 5 years. He is a former Chair of the Board of the Staff College.

Martin is a qualified social worker but also has extensive experience in education and youth justice, as well as adult social care and health. He is a regular contributor to the UPON aspirant programme and experienced mentor. He has a particular interest in whole system orientation toward prevention and earlier intervention and in anti-oppressive practice.

Rupinder has worked for a decade in frontline casework, policy, advocacy, and research on issues including immigration, NRPF, access to justice, equalities and gender-based violence within the voluntary sector and local government. Rupinder currently works within local government to ensure that inequalities are materially understood and addressed across councils nationally, as well as supporting councils to effectively address inequalities across their work with communities. Prior to this, Rupinder led work within local government to address the needs of migrant Londoners through strategic work, influencing, stakeholder coordination and directly funding flagship programmes.

Rupinder has previously published research on issues including access to justice, NRPF and mental health needs of separated children. She has also acted as an advisor on research and advocacy projects around poverty, NRPF, child migrants and the rights of Europeans post-Brexit.

Rupinder is trustee of a grassroots charity supporting destitute families with NRPF. In her spare time, she supports community organising around immigration enforcement and writes on related issues, including being published in the 2018 edition of Amrit’s Wilson’s “Finding a Voice”.

An experience HR director with leadership and board experience who is a qualified workplace investigator, accredited workplace mediation, and conflict coach.

Aisha Graham-Sharif has worked to end Violence Against Women and Girls for two decades and is passionate about amplifying the voices of minoritised women and girls; and promoting anti-racist and intersectional approaches. She has extensive experience in human-centred outcomes commissioning. She led the first multi million pound statutory funded grants programme for grassroots organisations, specialising in tackling VAWG, with a focus on support for Black women, to acknowledge the specific barriers and challenges they face due to institutional and systemic racism. This approach has been adopted by central Government and recognised nationally as best practice.

Aisha is an award-winning campaigner and trainer who has supported organisations to transform their responses to domestic abuse and EDI from the frontline up including achieving the UKs first self-accreditation in this area for one of the country’s largest housing providers.

She has extensive senior level experience in developing policy and strategy at regional and national levels across housing, government and criminal justice sectors. Providing scrutiny, oversight and practical support on implementing inclusive plans to improve culture to achieve better outcomes.

Aisha holds MSc. in social research methodology, is a doctoral candidate exploring domestic abuse related deaths through a social justice lens and is a qualified Domestic Homicide Review Chair.

Vanesa is a specialist in public policy, youth development, research, and child safeguarding, with extensive experience across the public sector, consultancy, and academia. She has worked directly with children and young people, implementing social policies and programmes, and leading projects that promote civic participation, inclusion, and life skills development.

As a consultant and project leader, she has conducted research and evaluations, developed theories of change, and facilitated workshops on equity, diversity, and inclusion, ensuring practice is evidence-based and aligned with current policy. In managing social programmes, she has coordinated initiatives impacting thousands of young people, including projects in education, leadership, employment, violence prevention, and civic engagement.

Her academic and research experience complements her practical work, enabling her to translate data and analysis into effective policy strategies and social programmes. She combines strategic planning, project management, inter-institutional collaboration, and safeguarding with a strong commitment to empowering communities and delivering sustainable impact.

Heather is a policy specialist with over a decade of experience spanning government, the third sector, and social enterprise. Her consulting work has focused on providing support to socially-led organisations in the UK, improving outcomes for marginalised communities and embedding wellbeing-centred, holistic approaches to systemic change. Her work spans organisational development, programme design, impact measurement, and leadership support, with a particular focus on translating research into practical tools for frontline delivery.

Her career includes seven years in the UK government, where she led work on sustainable and inclusive investment in Africa, managed crisis responses during Brexit and COVID-19, and served as Chief of Staff for the Justice Policy Team. She has also trained international civil servants in effective policy implementation.

her work.

Nick is a semi-retired headteacher with over 20 years experience of school and college leadership, in the SEND, AP and FE sectors. He is a SEND and Inclusion Expert and has worked with a variety of organisations during the last 6 years, including: Best Practice Network, Ambition Institute, Bedford Borough Council, Leigh Academies Trust, Clerks Associates, Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing and T4 Trust.

 

Nick is Independent Chair of Croydon Education Partnership (CEP) and, in addition to chairing all board meetings, plays an active role in the 4 CEP working groups: Inclusion, Well-Being, Literacy, and Recruitment & Retention. He also acts as SEND Expert for Independent Review Panels on school exclusions and represents parents at First Tier (SEND) Tribunals.

 

Nick’s skills, knowledge and experience are substantial and wide-ranging. Areas of expertise include: governance, leadership, coaching, teams, HR, learning and teaching, SEND legislation, and advocacy. Nick’s passions are SEND, Inclusion, Equity and Diversity. His training and facilitation have been described as “the best training I have ever had”.

 

Nick is married and has 3 children of Black Mixed African heritage. He is a fluent French speaker and enjoys connecting with people.

Mayuri is an experienced Social Worker, Workforce Development Manager, Trainer, Educator and Professional Coach with a passion for harnessing strengths and promoting a culture of learning within organisations.

She models compassionate and inclusive leadership and has a proven history of fostering strong, collaborative relations across organisations to create safe spaces where practitioners and leaders can be respectfully challenged and held accountable for the delivery of effective practice, aligned with a commitment to anti-racist and anti-oppressive practice.

Mayuri is also co-founder of supportive community for South Asian Social Workers and Allied Professional – to lead with purpose and in unity to amplify the voices and experiences of marginalised communities.