Trustees
OAW is a registered charity with a Board of eight Trustee Directors. All are highly respected individuals with strong track records in the shared ownership sector:
Ann Tyler
Ann Tyler is Chair of Ownership at Work. A Cambridge graduate and qualified solicitor, she has over 30 years’ experience of legal and policy advice, and consulting work, in the field of employee ownership. She advised on employee ownership schemes in a wide variety or public and private companies, setting up the first ESOP in the UK, in Roadchef Limited.
She implemented employee trusts on privatisation of the bus, air, electricity and coal industries, and worked with a number of trades unions as well as the trade union owned bank, Unity Trust. She was a founder member of Capital Strategies Limited and a Trustee of the Baxi Partnership Trust for 10 years to 2010.
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Ann was Executive Director of Job Ownership Limited [now the Employee Ownership Association] from 2002-4; and company secretary until 2013, during its transition from a small lobbying group to successful membership organisation. She took a private members’ bill through Parliament in 2002 to improve the tax regime for employee ownership.
Recently, she has contributed to the Nuttall Review, sat on the BIS Stakeholder Advisory Group, led a working group on the proposed establishment of a new Institute for Mutual and Employee Owned Business, organised the first Robert Oakeshott Memorial Lecture delivered by Sir Nick Clegg when he was deputy Prime Minister, reviewed the Labour Party’s policy on Employee Ownership as part of the Hunt Review on Mutuals and organised a UK employee ownership study tour for a group of lawyers and politicians from the Basque Country. She advised Grant Thornton on their ‘Shared Enterprise’ scheme, was employee ownership consultant with Lewis Silkin LLP, and is currently an associate of Mutuo and a trustee of Voice at Be Caring.
James de le Vingne
James is Chief Executive of the Employee Ownership Association, the UK’s leading voice on employee ownership, representing a sector that contributes between £30-40bn a year to UK GDP as well as a membership organisation for UK businesses of private or public sector origin, that are wholly or partially owned by their employees.
Previously James was Head of Development at Co-operatives UK and has a background in international development and local economic development. James is a Board member of Scotland for EO, an Executive Fellow of the Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing at Rutgers University and an RSA Fellow.
Jo Pritchard
In 2006 Jo was instrumental in establishing the first employee owned social enterprise to come out of the NHS in England; she led CSH Surrey for 11 years tripling its size. In 2011 Jo was invited by the then Secretary of State for the Cabinet Office to join the Mutuals’ Taskforce to create opportunities for employee ownership within the public sector.
Appointed as a Commissioner on the Prime Minister’s Nursing and Midwifery Commission in 2010, the following year she was awarded an MBE for services to social enterprise.
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In 2017 Jo was honoured with the Employee Ownership Association’s Philip Baxendale Fellowship award and was made an Honorary Fellow of Social Enterprise UK.
Jo is a Board Director at SEUK and has a particular interest in supporting employee owned health and social care social enterprises. She is an Honorary Professor at the University of Surrey.
Deb Oxley
Deb Oxley OBE led the campaign for more employee ownership for almost a decade and is the former CEO of the Employee Ownership Association (EOA). Deb now works independently, supporting the UK’s EO business community to deliver better business, collaborating with Boards and Senior Leadership Teams as a consultant or non-executive director.
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Deb has over 30 year’s business experience across private and public sectors and latterly after founding and running her own small business for 10 years, joined the EOA in 2012, becoming Chief Executive in 2015. Having led a national inquiry into the economic and social effects of employee ownership, Deb leads the campaign to realise the recommendations of the inquiry findings, the Ownership Dividend as part of seeking to mainstream employee ownership in the UK economy.
Deb is also a Board member of industry leadership group, Scotland for Employee Ownership (SfEO), a Champion of the Cabinet Office’s Inclusive Economy Partnership (IEP), and a member of the Managing Partners Forum (MPF) Advisory Board.
In 2018 Deb was awarded an OBE for her services to employee ownership and social enterprise.
Nicola Mehegan
Nicola presently leads an expert Employee Ownership team at Cwmpas. The team are tasked with doubling the number of employee owned businesses in Wales in order to meet the Welsh Government’s Programme for Government target.
Nicola is experienced and educated to Masters Level in Management and Leadership. With over 20 years’ experience of working with private, public and the third sector organisations, she is a qualified Executive Coach and has coached leaders across all sectors.
A qualified and experienced learning and development professional, Nicola has trained both locally and internationally. She is passionate about sustainable development and, in turn, increasing the number and profile of employee owned businesses.
Peter Dann
Peter’s background is advertising and brand strategy. He began his career in leading London creative agencies before moving into market research and strategic planning. He co-founded the award-winning brand and communications research agency The Nursery in 2001 and as CEO oversaw its successful transition to Employee Ownership in 2020 and certification as a B Corporation in 2022.
Along the way he has advised multinationals, start-ups, charities and government departments and developed famous campaigns for household brand names on every continent. Among other activities he now focuses on helping other companies pursue sustainable business models including employee ownership.
Sam Lennox
Samantha is a senior director in the tax team at management consultancy firm, Alvarez & Marsal, and has more than 20 years’ experience advising on the design, implementation and operation of broad-based employee ownership plans and management ownership programmes working with both private and listed companies both in the UK and globally. She is a strong advocate of the employee ownership model and has supported a number of companies to transition into employee ownership, particularly using the employee ownership trust model.
Samantha is a solicitor and chartered tax advisor. Prior to Alvarez & Marsal, she worked at both leading law firms and Big Four accounting firms.
Simon Poole
Simon Poole is the Chairman and co-founder of Jerba Campervans, a 100% employee owned business based on the outskirts of Edinburgh. Founded with his partner Cath in 2006, they moved the company into being 100% employee owned in January 2018. Their progressive approach and success in creating a fast growing and highly productive business with people at its heart has been recognised through awards such as the First Minister’s Award for Manufacturing Leadership in Nov 2022 and the Institute of Directors Scotland Director of the Year 2021 for the companies with a turnover of under £10m.
Simon is a true advocate for EO and plays an active role in the government funded initiative Scotland for Employee Ownership – which is aiming to have 500 Scottish based employee owned businesses by 2030. He is also a board member for Tyne & Esk of the Scottish Rural Community Fund and has recently become involved with the Wellbeing Economy Alliance Scotland.