About Us

Governance and Trustees

The Charity has a Board of Trustees who are responsible for the strategic direction and policy of The Warrior Programme. The Board is comprised of seven trustees from a variety of professional backgrounds relevant to the work of the charity.

The Board of Trustees meets regularly to assess the progress of the charity, determine and review The Warrior Programme’s strategies and policies.

Jackie Newstead - Chair

Based in the Hogan Lovells London office, Jackie Newstead is the firm’s Global Head of Real Estate. For more than 30 years, she has been helping investors, developers, and occupiers with acquisitions and disposals of investments, some held directly, and some held through investment vehicles. She has worked with most asset classes, from office, retail, and logistics to hotels, residential, student housing, car auction sites, and bingo halls. She has also aided clients with the development of land sites across the asset classes—from land acquisition, to finance, letting, and ultimate sale.
Jackie has also built up particular knowledge in the hotel and leisure sector, guiding owners and operators through acquisitions and disposals, financings, and management arrangements.
Jackie is a member of the British Property Federation, the Investment Property Forum, the British Council of Shopping Centres, and the Urban Land Institute. She also chairs the City of London Law Society Land Law Committee. She is recommended by The Legal 500, Chambers UK, and Who’s Who Legal for real estate. UK Super Lawyers puts her in their top 100 lawyers in the UK (and in the top 50 women.)

Charlotte Cole - Founder Trustee

Charlotte has a professional services background with over 15 years working for Deloitte in audit, corporate finance and consultancy.
Charlotte’s passion for working with those most in need in our society started on a two year secondment to Business in the Community, Prince Charles’ business to business charity, from Deloitte in 1994. In 2004 she started working with BiTC to explore how we can enable long term homeless individuals to deal with the causes of their situation, rather than simply addressing the symptoms. The driving goal was to enable lasting positive outcomes rather than short term fixes.
It was this work that led Charlotte to co-found The Warrior Programme in 2007, and it is this founding principle to enable individuals to take back control of their lives and realise their potential, that drives the service and support that we provide. Charlotte has been instrumental in the design, development and success of the Charity since its inception. She focusses on strategy, fundraising, finance, corporate governance and the development of the research led, evidence based delivery model of the programme.

Professor Nicola Fear - Trustee

Nicola joined the Academic Department of Military Mental Health (ADMMH) at King’s College London in 2004 having trained as an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the University of Oxford. Nicola has also worked as an epidemiologist for the Leukaemia Research Fund (University of Leeds) and UK Ministry of Defence. Since 2011, Nicola has been Director of the King’s Centre of Military Health Research (KCMHR) alongside Professor Sir Simon Wessely. In 2014, King’s College London awarded Nicola a Chair in Epidemiology. Nicola is one of the Principal Investigators on the KCMHR military cohort study and leads several studies looking at the impact of military service on families.

Buster Howes CB OBE - Trustee

Buster Howes was educated at Christ’s Hospital, and York and London Universities. He served for thirty-four years in the Royal Marines. This was largely in the operational domain and he had the privilege of commanding at every rank from Lieutenant to General, including as Commandant General Royal Marines. In consequence, he has for years taken an active interest in the welfare of Service personnel who have been damaged (whether mentally, physically or both) by their experiences of conflict and war.He subsequently worked as the Chief Executive of Here Be Dragons, sustainably developing and safeguarding the isolated, oceanic, tropical Island of Principe in the middle of the Gulf of Guinea (a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve) for the benefit of the populace and its flora and fauna. He is motivated by a desire to enhance human dignity, social cohesion, security and hope, and to reduce suffering, waste and want. He believes that amongst the most important qualities in life are curiosity and wonder.

John Mallalieu - Trustee

John is Chief Executive of Bank Workers Charity (BWC), the only occupational benevolent fund for all current and former bank employees working in the UK and their families.

Prior to joining the Bank Workers Charity in 2017, John was Managing Director of Commercial Ventures, Health & Employment activities within Turning Point, a health and social care organisation providing services for people with complex needs including those affected by substance misuse, mental health issues, unemployment, housing issues, offending behaviour and those with a learning disability.

From a career in Retail Banking John has held a range of senior leadership roles across Health and Social care delivery for public sector, private sector and third sector organisations.

John holds a Non-Executive role with NHS Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group, is the Independent Chair of their Primary Medical Services Committee and is delighted to become a Trustee of Warrior Programme.

Dave Rutter - Trustee

Dave retired from the Civil Service in 2017. He led the Armed Forces, Families and Veterans Health Team at the Department of Health from 2007 through to early 2018. During that time Dave and his team, working with the NHS, MoD, service charities and others put in place policies and a programme of services aimed at improving health outcomes for those in the Armed Forces community. In particular, he led the work in introducing a range of mental health services for veterans.

Chris Smith - Trustee

Chris is a qualified solicitor and successful entrepreneur. He has founded and developed a number of diverse businesses operating in the UK and internationally. He is experienced in how to grow organisations with new and innovative products/services and has been a trustee of Warrior since its inception, guiding the development strategy of the organisation.

Our Team

John Cummings - Director Operations

John served in the Light Infantry as a Regular for 20 years and on leaving joined the RIFLES Reserves and is still a serving Rifleman clocking up 34 years service!

As a ‘civvy’ he worked in the Gap Year industry then as a crisis management consultant in the nuclear, oil and gas sector.

In 2011 he joined The Warrior Programme as the Director of Operations. He is married and has two grown up daughters and lives in Devon. He is an avid Exeter Chief’s Rugby supporter and sails a Devon Drascombe Coaster.

Dave Corthorn - Lead Co-ordinator

Dave served in the Royal Marines for 19 years. After job-hopping for a while, he then completed 12 years as an advisor to the UAE Army, returning to the UK in 2014.

He joined The Warrior Programme in January 2016 as the Lead Coordinator covering the Midlands and the East of England. He is married with four grown up sons (1 of which is currently serving) and currently lives in Cambridgeshire.

Zoe Teale - Regional Co-ordinator

Zoe served in the Army as an Education Officer before marrying her still serving husband and embarking on a life as a military spouse and mum.
Zoe has worked in adult education, broadcasting with the BBC and BFBS, for The Prince’s Trust and the Army Families Federation before joining The Warrior Programme as the Co-ordinator for Serving Families in the North in November 2017.

Zoe’s great loves in life are food, music, family and friends though not necessarily in that order!

Rebecca Gallimore - Regional Co-ordinator

Rebecca’s career in headhunting was not quite what her degree in anthropology led her to believe it would be, and after a decade of recruitment in the City she hung up her hat, married a Welsh Guard and retrained to make hats of her own.

Her most recent move has been to the South West to begin the next adventure as a civvy family and a return to working life and all the juggling that this entails, but with the huge reward that working with Warrior brings.

Rebecca Cole - Office Manager

While working for a marketing company in London Rebecca started volunteering with Warrior in 2008 and joined the team in 2009.

Over the years she has worn many hats during the development of Warrior from organising fundraising galas to ensuring everyone has what they need during a course and much in between. She is based in our London office and visits the refresher and courses regularly.

Rhiannon Flye - Monitoring Coordinator

In 2014 Rhiannon joined the The Royal British Legion’s advice and information team at Connect Assist. In 2016 she brought the skills and military charity knowledge she gained working there to the Warrior team. Rhi is now an integral member of the team.

Based in South Wales she attends all the residential courses and Refresher Days. Her job is to get to know all the Warriors so that she can help, motivate and signpost them to the support that they need post course. Rhi is always at the end of the phone and provides invaluable advice.

Research

From the outset the Trustees have been focused on rigorous evaluation of The Warrior Programme and that the results be subjected to external academic scrutiny. In 2013 the charity conducted a Randomised Control Trial (RCT), funded by Forces in Mind Trust, and undertaken by Southampton University. The results have been analysed by the Kings Centre for Military Health Research. The positive findings further evidence the unique value and importance of the Programme. Our evidence base and the quality of our evidence is widely recognised and the RCT report can be viewed here