Meet Our Directors

Frankie Bridgwood

Chair

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

Daniel Peacock

Meet Daniel

Matthew Slater

Meet Matthew

Esmee Wilcox

Meet Esmee

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.

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!

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.

Daniel Peacock

Daniel is married to a Church of England Priest and is the father of two teenage daughters. He feels it is vitally important to ensure help is available for young people’s mental health and wellbeing, particularly after the impacts of COVID over the last few years.

Daniel is a Finance Director with over 20 years’ experience across multiple industries, currently managing a team of 100 across the UK and North America. He has significant experience supporting company growth and navigating business change whilst maintaining strong controls and delivery of results.

In his spare time, Daniel enjoys DIY and learning new skills whilst trying not to break anything.

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Matthew Slater

Matthew is a father of four grown-up children and professionally has been an educator over 27 years.

A former headteacher and executive headteacher, Matthew is now CEO of a Multi Academy Trust specialising in supporting children with social, emotional and mental health needs.

Originally from Lancashire but with 30 years of living in the south – Matthew is committed to supporting local young people.

Matthew’s other passion is swimming. In 2021 he successfully crossed the English Channel in a relay swim, completed a solo crossing of Coniston Water in 2022, and is due to swim the Thames Marathon in 2023.

Esmee Wilcox

Esmee runs Socially Adept, a strategic change consultancy, for people in the midst of fast-paced change. Esmee works from a base in south Norfolk and is passionate about good jobs that keep us all healthy, connected and well. She often works with people that are learning about their power, alongside institutions that know the future needs to be co-created. Esmee spent her first career in central government, including working on the 2005 Disability Strategy. During her second career in local government, she led change work across health, social care and education. Esmee hopes to find the space to draw again now she’s remembered how much she enjoys it.