After being a big part of our Board of Trustees for the last five years, Emma Williams is stepping down from her role as Treasurer so she’ll have more time to concentrate on her new role as Chief Executive of The Avalon Group. As Treasurer, Emma has shared her vast experience and expertise with us, helping to make us resilient during turbulent times.
With her immense support, we have grown to become an organisation with multiple contracts to deliver advocacy and inclusion work. We now have annual turnover of around £2 million and around 80 full-time and part-time staff, working on services covering Leeds and other parts of West Yorkshire.
Prior to joining the Board, Emma, who is a Chartered Accountant, worked for us as our Finance Director, joining in late 2016. Being the first person to be in this post, she helped to us put our advocacy and inclusion work on a sustainable footing. She came to us from an Audit & Risk Management role with KPMG, an accountancy firm for which she had worked for 13 years.
Preparing for growth
Emma’s previous experience was instrumental in helping us prepare for and successfully gain new contracts. This included one for Statutory and Community Advocacy in Leeds for five years and funding for Leeds Autism AIM from the National Lottery Community Fund for three years.
Crunching the numbers for each funding bid and ensuring we had the right resources to effectively support staff, volunteers and, most importantly, clients and members wouldn’t have been possible without Emma’s help, as a staff member and later her scrutiny as Trustee. Now that she is leaving this role, we are looking for someone to keep her great work going.
Emma is committed to supporting the new Treasurer to seamlessly step into her old position. Candidates can be confident of a well-supported transition into the new role.
Join the Board
If you would like to become our next Treasurer, we would love to hear from you!
The role involves attending regular Board meetings held every three months, as well as chairing the sub-groups for resources. Experience of working in charity finance and an accountancy qualification are desirable for the role.
To register your interest in becoming our Treasurer, please email Philip Bramson, our Chief Executive at [email protected] or call our office on 0113 244 0606 and ask for Philip to have an informal chat about the role. The deadline for enquiries is Friday 28th April at 5pm.
We would particularly welcome applications from women and people from African-Caribbean communities, who are currently under-represented on our board.
