Group Board

Group Board

Terrie Alafat CBE
Group Chair

Appointed 1 April 2020.

Terrie served as Chief Executive of the Chartered Institute of Housing from 2015 to 2019, and has a wealth of housing experience spanning over 23 years.

Her previous appointments include Director of Housing at the Department of Communities and Local Government where she was responsible for national housing polices including affordable housing, homelessness and supported housing.

Her wealth of knowledge of the housing sector and her work in shaping policy will be instrumental in continuing to take the Group forward as one of the country’s leading providers of housing and homelessness services.

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Caroline Corby
Co-Vice Chair

Caroline became Chair of One Housing on 3 August 2020. Caroline Corby worked in the City for 13 years specialising in private equity. She has served on a number of private and public sector boards across a range of industries and services. Caroline joined the board of One Housing in 2018 and became Chair in August 2020.

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Carol Matthews CBE, MCIH, FCMI, DMS, MA SOCSCI, Certificate in Leadership
Co-Optee

Appointed February 2012.

Carol Matthews took up her post as Group Chief Executive of Riverside in February 2012, following five years as Chief Executive of Guinness Northern Counties, part of the Guinness Partnership.

Originally from Glasgow, Carol’s career began in housing with Sheffield City Council as a management officer collecting rent door to door and managing a patch. She also worked for Burnley and Bristol Councils prior to joining Northern Counties in 1993, ultimately becoming Chief Executive in 2007.

Carol sat on the Board of the National Housing Federation for seven years and is still involved at a regional level. She also served on the Audit Commission’s National Housing and Regeneration panel. She also Chaired H4N from 2018 to 2020

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Ingrid Fife

Appointed October 2017.

Ingrid is grounded in the commercial world having been an Executive Director in the medical devices industry.

Ingrid brings valued experience when serving as a Board and Committee Member for Riverside with an abundance of Non-Executive experience including serving as the Chair for Halton Housing and Vice Chair of the Regenda Group, and from Boards in the NHS including NHS Halton CCG (Governing Body Lay Member), NHS Warrington CCG (Lay Chair of Primary Care) and NHS Alliance Leadership Group (Chair).

In addition to this Ingrid is a member of the Policy Advisory Committee for the Chartered Institute of Housing. She joined The Riverside Group Limited (TRGL) Board in October 2017 and is the Chair of our Care and Support Committee.

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Sandy Murray

Appointed Co-optee January 2020 and became a Non-Executive member in October 2020.

Sandy is a Finance Director at Bender (UK) Ltd and has been a Board Member at CIMA Conduct Committee since 2015.

Sandy has worked across a variety of finance roles in the commercial and charitable sectors, including some roles within housing. She is an experienced Non-Executive Director with a strong social purpose. Sandy joined the Group Audit Committee in 2018, she was appointed as Interim Chair in July 2020 and held the Chair position from October 2020 to November 2021.

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Erfana Mahmood
Board member

Appointed Co-optee July 2020 and became Group Board member on 2nd June 2021

Erfana Mahmood is a qualified senior solicitor who has worked as a property law finance specialist. She qualified as a Property Solicitor with a large, national Registered Social Landlord in 1999 before moving to join a commercial solicitors’ firm as Head of Volume Commercial Lending. She has advised on a wide range of issues relating from property development transactions to commercial lending criteria.

Erfana has served on a number of different Boards as a non-executive director for various organisations operating in the finance, social housing and health sectors. In these roles she has held various positions of responsibility including Senior Independent Director and Chair of the Nomination & Remuneration committee.

Erfana is also a member of the Group Audit Committee.

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Sam Scott
Group Board member

In addition to being a Group Board Member, Sam also Chairs the Group’s Customer Experience Committee.

Sam is currently Group Chief Executive at Halton Housing, a member of the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) and has over 3O years’ experience of working in social housing. Prior to becoming Group Chief Executive at Halton Housing Sam held various positions at Muir Group Housing, latterly as Executive Director of Operations responsible for all aspects of housing management, customer service, asset investment and development of new homes.

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Olwen Lintott
Customer Board Member

Appointed 1 January 2022.

Olwen has also been a co-optee of the Customer Experience Committee since September 2021.

Olwen’s early working life included working in the retail sector, at both Tesco and then Marks & Spencer. Olwen went to university and qualified as an Early Years teacher when she was in her forties. From there Olwen has spent a number of years in teaching and became Head of Early Years. Olwen was always interested in Special educational needs and was SENCO for the school she worked at. Later, Olwen joined the county advisory team as an Early Years Coordinator/ Area SENCO. This role enabled Olwen to travel around (mostly) West Cumbria, visiting Nurseries and schools, offering advice in best practice and supporting settings and families with additional needs provision.

Olwen is a leaseholder in a general needs building and has been for over 16 years. During that time Olwen has always taken an interest in her home and surrounding area.

Olwen was a former Tenant Board member of Impact Housing Association Ltd and Impact Committee until full integration in October 2021 and was involved in a variety of Impact residents’ groups and has joined the Riverside Voice online group.

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Nigel Holland

Appointed 1 July 2022

With over 28 years of experience in the new homes industry, all spent with Taylor Wimpey and its legacy companies, Nigel is currently the Divisional Chair for the Central, South West & Spain Division of Taylor Wimpey, a role he has held since 2015.

Starting in Sales & Marketing and with roles as a Managing Director and Divisional Managing Director, he has a strong land procurement, commercial management and customer service focus. Nigel is a member of the Taylor Wimpey Group Management Team, is the current Chair of the Taylor Wimpey Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee, sits on the company I.T. Steering Committee, and is a Director of Taylor Wimpey UK Limited and Taylor Wimpey Developments Limited. He has previously been the Chair of the Home Builders Federation South West Region.

Nigel is also Chair of Group Development Committee.

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Mona Shah

Appointed 27 November 2023

Mona Shah began her career in the media sector after qualifying as an Accountant. She has over 18 years’ experience working in Housing and loves working for organisations that make a difference.

Mona joined Grand Union Housing Group four years ago where she is responsible for all the business service teams, including Finance, Governance, IT and Corporate Services.

She has also worked in the insurance sector and has run her own travel business. She has been a Non-Executive Director and Chair of Audit and Risk Committee at another Housing Association.

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Kei-Retta Farrell

Appointed December 2023

Kei-Retta is an award-winning Diversity, Equity and Inclusion practitioner with professional experience at grassroots, national and international levels in innovative strategy development, programme design, monitoring, evaluation and learning. Currently Kei-Retta is the Head of Office and UK Representative for the Government of Montserrat.

Additionally, Kei-Retta currently serves as the Chair of the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Committee and the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) where she advises on the EDI programme across UKCP, oversees implementation and monitors progress of the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan.

Driven by her passion for social justice, Kei-Retta has made it her mission in life to contribute to the development of a more equitable world and leads several initiatives in her local community that address poverty, homelessness and the refugee crisis in her local community.

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Fenella Edge

Fenella is an experienced Treasurer with over 30 years experience in treasury and risk.

After 21 years in post, she has recently stepped down from her role as Group Treasurer of The Housing Finance Corporation Limited (THFC) – a not-for-profit lender to Housing Associations in the UK – where she was also an Executive Director and member of the THFC Group Board and its subsidiaries. Her main area of expertise is in debt capital markets funding where she has raised over £4.5billion through the issuance of bonds under THFC’s various programmes, in addition to arranging over £2billion of funding from the European Investment Bank. She was instrumental in THFC’s delivery of over £3billion of long term funding under the Government Affordable Housing Guarantee Scheme (2013).

Fenella has also been a non-executive board member of Dolphin Living Limited – a Registered Provider operating in Central London for the past 9 years and a member of the Acquisition, Finance and Development Committee.

Prior to joining THFC in 2002 she spent 11 years at Abbey National Treasury Services (ANTS) in a variety of roles covering capital markets, derivatives and market risk, joining the Board of ANTS in 1996.

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Richard Williams
BOARD OBSERVER

Appointed December 2023

Richard is currently a Board Observer and due to join the Board on the 1st May 2024.

Richard is an experienced CEO, having operated across the Public and Private Sectors specialising in the areas of Healthcare, Retirement & Housing. He recently set up Brigid Investment Limited on behalf of John Laing and was CEO of the business. It is the largest owner and investor of specialist new build retirement rental assets across the UK. Previously he was CEO of Rangeford, a Retirement Development and Domiciliary Care Business and a Managing Director at McCarthy Stone. He has also worked as a Director at St Andrew's Healthcare, and Octopus Healthcare.

He holds several Non Executive Director roles, with a Local Authority owned Residential Development Company, BexleyCo and a Primary Care Asset Owner, Community Health Partnerships, an NHS backed Investment and Operating Company and was previously Group Vice Chair of Abri.

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Keith Harkness
Board Observer

Appointed 13 July 2023

Keith spent his working life in the building trade, mostly as a self employed jobbing builder but also about 15 years in management as a contracts manager looking after approximately a million pounds of contracts at any one time.

Keith’s hobbies include playing electric organ, gardening, caravanning and volunteering for Riverside which he has done for over 14 years.

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