Our trustees

Bliss’ Board of Trustees has overall responsibility for ensuring we deliver our charitable mission and spend our money wisely. At Bliss we work hard to ensure that trustees take effective decisions and bring value to delivering Bliss’ vision that every baby born premature or sick in the UK has the best possible chance of survival and quality of life.

Bliss has 11 trustees from diverse backgrounds in the charity, public and private sector, appointed following an open recruitment process. We also have two additional trustees for Bliss Scotland. All Bliss’ trustees are voluntary and some have personal or professional experience relating to premature and sick babies. Others bring a range of expertise including finance, governance, HR, policy, commissioning, digital, research and marketing. Trustees at Bliss serve a term of four years, and can serve a maximum of two terms.

In 2023/24 our trustee attendance rate at full board meetings was 83 per cent. The board collectively reviews its performance regularly, and devotes time every year to discuss and agree how it can improve its added value. A performance review of each trustee is also conducted annually by the Chair and Vice-Chair.

Adding value and bringing wider perspectives to our work

However, being a trustee at Bliss is about more than attending board meetings. Trustees add value in many different ways, helping to bring different perspectives and challenge as well as their professional expertise.

We believe that trustees who engage directly with the staff, volunteers, beneficiaries and supporters of Bliss outside of board meetings will have a deeper understanding of our work, and will therefore be able to take more informed decisions and act as a more effective critical friend. We also believe that it is important to bring alternative voices into discussions from time to time.

Our expectation at Bliss is that our trustees will contribute to our work by:

• Participating in board and committee meetings and Bliss events
• Providing professional expertise and access to their networks
• Supporting fundraising
• Taking on a specific role or providing advice on a particular project
• Meeting informally with staff across the organisation
• Meeting those affected by our work, for example through attending fundraising or campaigning events and visiting neonatal units

The Board also regularly invites external speakers – practitioners, parents or subject experts – to meetings and asks for honest feedback, and compares Bliss’ performance against other similar charities.

John Calder - Chair of the Board

John is a Partner at Baringa Partners, where he was founding partner for their Supply Chain, Procurement & Sustainability practices. He has over 20 years’ experience in operations consultancy focusing on operational excellence, KPIs and performance improvement, digital transformation, data and analytics and people and culture transformation.

Most of his recent work has been within the NHS, including a key leadership role in delivering the Covid Vaccine Deployment Program. He brings relevant third sector experience from wider involvement at Fareshare, Gates Foundation and Save the Children and an extensive network of private sector C-Suite executives.

John and his family have been actively engaged with Bliss since the loss of their precious daughter Chloe, born prematurely in late 2016.

Alex Burrows

Alex has been a supporter of Bliss since the early arrival of his daughter in December 2012 at 26 weeks – which has since included 2 Wolf Runs and the Birmingham triathlon so far, with more fundraising activities promised.

Professionally, Alex is a Director at the Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education at the University of Birmingham and holds a number of roles focused on railway policy, strategy and innovation.

Faith-Rose Chattaika

Faith-Rose was first introduced to Bliss after the premature birth of her daughter in 2021.

She has over 20 years’ experience working in the community with underrepresented groups including by and for black grass roots organisations and small charities. She has facilitated debates, focus groups and used other creative means to present key issues and provide feedback to stakeholders and policymakers. Her passion lies in strategy and impact.

Emily Drayson

Emily is a trustee of Bliss Scotland, and brings more than a decade's fundraising experience to the board. She works as a consultant, providing research and analysis to a wide range of charitable organisations in order to make their fundraising more targeted, efficient and effective. Based in the Scottish Highlands, Emily works with charities, cultural sector organisations and educational institutions from across the UK.

Between 2014 and July 2020 Emily served as a Trustee of the Institute of Fundraising; the institute, which serves as the professional membership body for UK fundraisers, was granted a Royal Charter in February 2020.

Morven Finlayson

Morven is a Trustee of Bliss Scotland, and is a Scottish Solicitor with more than 20 years’ experience of high end commercial Real Estate and Corporate Commercial advising. She is currently Company Secretary and in-house legal advisor to a well known Scottish Nursing Agency while also providing services for large scale infrastructure projects in conjunction with one of the world’s largest legal firms.

Morven is married with two children and lives in Glasgow where she enjoys being outside as much as possible, good food and wine. She was introduced to Bliss Scotland through a friend who received excellent support with the birth of her premature twins.

Neil James

Neil is the Managing Director of Blueglass Consulting Limited where he advises companies on cross-functional transformation programmes. He has 20 years’ experience as a commercial leader in the pharmaceutical industry with a background in sales, marketing and general management.

Neil has a daughter who was born prematurely but is now in good health.

Fauzia Paize

Fauzia is a consultant neonatologist at the Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust. She has a special interest in bereavement and palliative care in neonates and is also a strong advocate for family integrated care and family support.

She has spent time working with MP’s as part of an All Parliamentary Group on baby loss, to highlight the lack of resources available to neonatal teams throughout the UK. She has worked closely with SANDS to roll out the National Bereavement Care Pathway which was produced in conjunction with Bliss and is the local lead for this.

Fauzia speaks nationally at conferences about neonatal medicine and has published several articles in this area.

Michelle Peter

Michelle is a social scientist with over a decade's worth of research experience. She completed her PhD in Psychology at the University of Liverpool and ever since, has worked closely with parents, babies and young children.

Co-author of the landmark Five X More Black Maternity Experiences Report and researcher at Global Black Maternal Health, she is committed to working on projects that address and aim to improve maternal health inequalities. Also a researcher at Great Ormond Street Hospital, she works across a number of projects exploring parents' and healthcare professionals' views on the acceptability and accessibility of the genomic tests that have been recently introduced into routine antenatal and paediatric NHS care.

As a researcher, but foremost as a mother to two young boys, her dream is that equitable and culturally respectful maternity care will be the standard, not the exception. She is thrilled to become a Bliss Trustee and is excited to support its mission of investing in babies' outcomes and its vision for equity in neonatal care.

Michelle loves running and recently achieved her personal goal of completing a half marathon, raising money for the MS Society - an organisation with which she has a personal connection as someone with an MS diagnosis. She is a proud Londoner, but Liverpool (where she lived for 11 years and where both of her children were born), will always have a special place in her heart.

Calvin Sellers

Calvin is an accountant through training, who now helps entrepreneurial small businesses (and charities!) survive and thrive in an ever-changing environment; through collaboration in developing strategy, operations, and financial frameworks.

A Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants having qualified around 30 years ago, he more recently completed an MBA at Imperial College in London to address a thirst to continue learning. It didn’t quite extinguish the thirst and Calvin is now completing a part-time Masters in Coaching and Behavioural Change at Henley Business School, and developing an Executive Coaching practice to sit along his CFO consultancy.

Taking on the role of Board Trustee and Treasurer at Bliss is a small way of saying thank you to the charity that helped protect the life of his daughter when she was born 11 weeks premature 23 years ago.

Calvin enjoys spending quality time with friends and family, and enjoys the social aspects of running, cycling and tennis.

Mala Shah-Coulon

Mala is a mum to twins who were born in 2011 premature and sick after a placental abruption, but are now well and healthy.

Professionally she is an Associate Partner at Ernst and Young (EY) and runs the Corporate Governance team which seeks to provides boards with timely and practical advice on key governance and narrative reporting matters. She also sits on Confederation of British Industry's (CBI) Companies Committee.

Coral Smith

Coral’s twins were born premature at 23 weeks in 2017 at 530g and are now happy, full of fun active girls. Bliss played a key role in providing support guidance and advice during the neonatal journey and beyond when the twins came home.

Growing up, Coral experienced living in a single parent family after her mum was widowed in her twenties and left to raise four young children on her own. Coral is passionate about education, social mobility and equity after seeing first hand the struggle that her mum had.

Already an avid supporter of Bliss, Coral is keen to use her personal and professional experience to continue to support Bliss as a Trustee. Coral has over 20 years’ experience in strategic HR roles and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD).

Charlotte Witteridge

Charlotte's daughter was born 12 weeks premature in 2013. Now a thriving little girl, Bliss played an important part in her family's neonatal journey. Already a supporter of Bliss, being a Trustee allows Charlotte to extend this support and give something back to a charity that is special to her family and that she is passionate about.

Professionally, Charlotte is the Senior Volunteering Operations Support Manager at Macmillan Cancer Support. Charlotte brings over 10 years' experience working in both local and national charities within a disability and hospice setting, with volunteering her area of specialism. She is a sector wide leader of volunteering, and an advocate for the involvement of volunteers in enabling charities to meet the needs of the people they support.