Meet Our Directors

Frankie Bridgwood

Chair

Meet Frankie

Miranda Phillips

Vice-Chair

Meet Miranda

Our Directors

Our Board of Directors ensure the effective governance of NESSie, specifically including regulatory and legal compliance.

Directors are responsible for the strategic management of the company.

Patricia Clements

Company secretary

Meet Patricia

Frankie Bridgwood (Chair)

Frankie is married with three adult children and believes passionately about young people’s mental health and well-being. Previously her experience is in the charity sector having worked for Charity Projects (Comic Relief), Cancer Relief Macmillan Fund and seeAbility (working with people with learning disabilities, autism and sight loss) in the past. She is a practising Acupuncturist of 12 years working in Cambridge and Duxford. She is a Supervisor and Mentor and is also trained in Humanistic Counselling skills.

Miranda Phillips
(Vice-Chair)

Miranda is a social researcher with 20 years’ experience of large scale surveys and quantitative research. She leads the flagship British Social Attitudes survey at the National Centre for Social Research. Each year, members of the British public are asked about their political and social attitudes, their priorities and preferences in key areas of public policy, and their values on a range of personal issues.

Miranda cares passionately about making sure that the data and findings reach a wide audience and have real impact. Through the British Social Attitudes reports – high profile outputs which have extensive reach both in the media and with policy makers in government, third sector organisations and research users – they give the British public a voice in policy making and in public debates on important topics.

Away from work Miranda enjoys playing the violin in quartets and orchestras, and singing in her local choir.

Luke Simonds

When Luke was growing up, he wanted to be an actor or an astronaut. When Luke grew up, he became a teacher and a dramatherapist. Luke is an Assistant Head Teacher at Greenside School in Hertfordshire.

He has been working in education for 10 years and has taught children and young people in mainstream and special education settings.

Prior to this, Luke spent 14 years dabbling in acting (trained at Manchester Metropolitan University and The Poor School), the civil service (postings at DFID and HM Treasury) and management consultancy (Booz Allen Hamilton, working in Knowledge Management, Learning & Development).

Luke is engaged to be married and is the proud co-owner of a Bichon Frise call Benji and an African Land Snail called Sid. Luke still dreams of being an astronaut.

Jamie Irving

Jamie is a father of 2. He’s really passionate about supporting children and feels there’s a lack of investment in ensuring mental health support and controls are in place, which makes the work of NESSie so appropriate. He’s currently a Group Managing Partner for OMD EMEA (one of the worlds largest media agencies), looking after a department of 80 people and trying to navigate the effects of Covid on the marketing industry in a way which hopefully secures peoples futures. His background is in digital marketing and he’s more than happy to talk marketing plans, potential growth areas or digital development, but a big area of focus for him at the moment is advising on business structure, and that’s an area he’s also happy to talk about further

Louise Katerega

Louise is also a parent of 2 - 1 proudly neurodiverse - and firmly believes education and early intervention in young people’s mental health, transforms lives and should be supported equally to physical health.

Professionally, she has enjoyed 25 years as a popular and versatile contributor to the UK dance scene as performer, teacher, choreographer and adviser. She specialises in dance by, for and with disabled people and brokering relationships between organisations and ethnically diverse and disabled people. She is currently Associate Producer for Change at People Dancing, the UKs flagship organisation for community and participatory dance, and a trustee of ArtrReach, Phoenix Dance Theatre and Assitej UK. Fun Facts: erm…. Appeared as teenager in what can only be described as ' the legwarmers of shame' with Sir Harry Seacombe on 1980s Sunday tv programme 'Highway' and is thankful everyday social media was not yet invented.

Michaela Vaux

Michaela Vaux established Bumpkins Day Care Nursery based near Royston in 2000, when she couldn’t find the childcare she wanted for her two children Frank and Maddy. Bumpkins cares for 120 children over 2 sites and is based on a working farm.

Michaela is married to Rob (who is retired and does all the ironing!) and they have a cockapoo called Hector.

Michaela loves yoga, cooking and eating cake!

Stephen Mallen

Steve Mallen is a co-Founder of the Zero Suicide Alliance and a member of the National Suicide Prevention Group within the Department of Health & Social Care (DHSC) with oversight of the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide & Safety in Mental Health (NCISH). Following a long corporate career in the international chartered surveying and fund management industries, Steve is now a committed mental health campaigner and reformer. Steve lost his 18 year old son, Edward to suicide in 2015. Steve works closely with NHS England, the Department of Education (DfE) and the Health Select Committee (HSC) and he is also a Governor at Cambridgeshire & Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust (CPFT). He works closely with several mental health and suicide prevention charities. A member of The National Children’s Bureau (NCB), Steve is also the Chairman of The MindEd Trust, a charity focused on mental health in children and young people.

Patricia Clements (Company Secretary)

Tish is married and has 4 grown up children and many animals. Having watched her children and their friends navigate their way through their school years and higher education, she is passionately interested in the wellbeing of children and young people. She spent many years volunteering with the riding for the disabled association and practised as a solicitor for several years before having her family.

Meet Our Directors

Frankie Bridgwood

Miranda Phillips

Our Directors

Luke Simonds

Jamie Irving

Louise Katerega

Michaela Vaux

Stephen Mallen

Patricia Clements

Frankie Bridgwood (Chair)

Miranda Phillips(Vice-Chair)

Luke Simonds

Jamie Irving

Louise Katerega

Michaela Vaux

Stephen Mallen

Patricia Clements (Company Secretary)

Miranda Phillips
(Vice-Chair)