Our Board & Governance

Christine has over 35 years’ experience in social housing in various roles including as a senior executive, a board member and as a regulator.

She is currently chair for Rosebery Housing Association, based in Epsom, and will continue in this role whilst also working as chair for Magna.

Christine is particularly interested in the provision of housing to meet a wide range of needs and which support social regeneration. She has championed customer involvement and standards of service delivery. Her expertise also encompasses development and low cost home ownership.

Suzanne qualified as an Occupational Therapist from Oxford. She began her career in the acute hospital sector, moving to practice in community services where she gained her first general management role.

Suzanne was the first Allied Health Professional (AHP) to hold a substantive Director of Nursing post in both providing and commissioning organisations. She became the Chief Executive of a Primary Care Trust, where a particular highlight was having leadership responsibility for delivering health resilience and health ‘blue light’ services during the Olympic sailing events held in Dorset in 2012. She subsequently gained authorisation for a large Clinical Commissioning Group, before moving to her current post with NHS England.

She was appointed as Chief Allied Health Professions Officer for England in September 2014.

Her vision to utilise crowdsourcing in the development of the strategy AHPs into Action (NHS England, 2017) has been recognised as ground breaking in policy development.

Since her mid-twenties Suzanne has held non-executive portfolios outside of the NHS, including audit committee chair roles, predominantly in the housing and charitable sector. She was awarded an OBE in the 2019 Queen's Birthday Honours.

Alistair has over 20 years’ multi-disciplined experience in strategic management, business and relationship development and executive leadership. Graduating with a degree in business administration, he spent the first 10 years of his career in the telecoms industry working for both US & Swedish operators. Since then Alistair has worked in the UK and international property sector with extensive experience in property management.

Alistair is passionate about affordable housing and was a non-executive director and chair of Wokingham Housing Limited (WHL), an affordable and market housing provider in Wokingham, Berkshire. During his tenure, WHL developed and delivered one quarter of all affordable houses within the Borough.

Alistair served as an elected Councillor with Wokingham Borough Council between 2007 and 2019.

Selina has led Magna Housing for six years, where she has championed innovative solutions for affordable housing across the South West. As the Chief Executive, she has spearheaded initiatives that prioritise community well-being, sustainability, inclusivity and growth.

Passion and purpose:

Advocacy for affordable housing: Selina’s unwavering commitment to affordable housing has made her a respected voice in the industry. She actively collaborates with stakeholders to address housing challenges.

Regional leadership: As the Chair of the National Housing Federation’s South West Leadership Forum, Selina plays a pivotal role in shaping housing policies and strategies in the region.

Collaboration for impact: Selina is also a dedicated member of Homes for the South West, a collaboration of the 12 largest developing housing associations in the region, helping to shape national housing policy and driving positive change.

A qualified accountant with over 40 years’ experience, Nigel has worked as both borrower and lender in the social housing sector, and before that in two commercial property development companies. His social housing experience was gained in three Housing Associations (Care, Traditional and LSVT) working in finance and treasury before moving to The Housing Finance Corporation (THFC). At THFC he travelled throughout the UK lending £2bn of bond finance and European Investment Bank funding to housing associations. More recently, Nigel has undertaken a number of Non-Executive Director roles with a Treasury focus and various consultancy assignments, with a bias towards training Board members in housing association finance matters.

As a service professional, Jonathan has led transformational change in the international telecoms, utilities and housing sectors. Before joining VIVID, Jonathan was COO at Sovereign Housing, Chief Executive at City West Homes and is currently a non-executive director for the Institute of Customer Service. In his role at VIVID, Jonathan leads all customer-facing services including customer service, repairs and assets, neighbourhoods, community investment and service transformation. Passionate about how organisations can ensure customers are at the heart of decision making, as requirements continue to evolve and change - Jonathan is a regular speaker on supporting the raising of service standards across the UK.

John is a business leader with 24 years board level experience in the built environment and community sectors with a range of private, public and voluntary organisations. In the early stages of his career John held marketing, business development and customer service roles with multi-disciplinary contractor Balfour Beatty, multinational building materials conglomerate Lafarge, and a steel frame manufacturer now owned by Kingspan.

For most of the last twenty years, John worked as Group Director for not-for-profit public procurement organisation LHC, supporting social landlords and public sector building owners to deliver their asset management programmes. In 2022 John exchanged his single full-time job to spend more time and energy across the wider building and community sectors, with a keen interest in improving productivity and diversity in the built environment.

In addition to his role at Magna, John is a Non-Executive Director of Greenoak Housing Association and a Trustee of Surrey Community Action.

Lara brings over 25 years of experience in business strategy, go-to-market, and organizational transformation, having been in international leadership roles in large tech companies Salesforce and Microsoft. Among others, she led a 50M USD business unit, international channel development, and employee enablement across Europe.

She is currently a freelance advisor and fractional executive and is also a Non-Executive Director at Thomas Telford Ltd, the trading arm of the Institution for Civil Engineers, and at AQA Education, the exam board. Lara is passionate about social inclusion and environmental sustainability and has many years of volunteer experience as a mentor, supporting social entrepreneurship, and coordinating community volunteering. She also manages a small ancient woodland for conservation in the Chilterns AONB.

She holds an MBA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and qualifications in business model innovation, sustainable finance, and from the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership.

James is a Housing Professional based in Somerset, in the Southwest of England, who specialises in projects and business design. James currently works for Legal & General Affordable Homes as Process Design Lead and has worked for a number of housing providers in London and the Southwest of England. A firm believer in the power the housing sector has to support and grow communities across the country, James champions good housing quality and innovation in housing delivery.

James is also chair of the Chartered Institute of Housings (CIH) young professionals board – CIH Futures. CIH Futures campaigns for the views of young professionals and supports the CIH in delivering for colleagues across the sector who wish to pursue a career in Housing, as well as challenging the sector on key topics and new ideas.

Sandra brings a combination of experience from government, technology and digital businesses. She is a former regulator at the Financial Services Authority and the Investment Management Regulatory Organisation (IMRO). She set up the National Fraud Authority, leading work on criminal justice and victim protection.

As a Risk and Compliance Director for Lloyds Bank, Sandra developed and put in place new ways to manage risk. More recently, she has been Acting Head of Compliance at Lloyd’s of London. She has also worked as a board advisor and consultant for businesses in a range of sectors, including financial services, technology, hospitality and retail.

Sandra is passionate about people-focused businesses, fairness, good customer experience and making this work in practice.