The Board of Trustees comprises fourteen individuals who are responsible for the strategic development and oversight of the charity. Trustees are recruited through a variety of means including advertisement in the national press and through direct contacts. All recruitment is based upon building and maintaining a board with a balanced range of strengths and expertise.

The Board of Trustees follows a regular cycle of quarterly meetings and has an annual away-day with the Executive Leadership Team. There are currently five committees chaired by Trustees with relevant expertise and which report to the full Board.

The Scrutiny and Audit Committee meets regularly and is responsible for general oversight and scrutiny of systems of planning, financial management and reporting, internal control and risk management. The Remuneration Committee is responsible for decisions concerning the terms and conditions of employment for the Executive Leadership Team. The School Governing Body examines all matters relating to the performance of the school. The Impact Committee monitors the overall reach and impact of Ambitious about Autism. The Nomination Committee deals with Trustee renewal, support and review.

Nick Baldwin – Chair of the Board of Trustees

Nick Baldwin is Chair of Ambitious about Autism having become Chair of TreeHouse Trust in December 2008. He is a Chartered Engineer, a Chartered Director and has a portfolio of Non-Executive Director and Advisory roles in the utility, government and housing sectors. He is the Chair of the Office for Nuclear Regulation and Chair of the Sanctuary Housing Group.  Prior to this he worked in electricity, gas and water utilities, culminating as Chief Executive of Powergen plc until its sale to EON in 2002.

John Constantine – Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees and Chair of Scrutiny and Audit Committee

John is a retired Partner of Ernst & Young UK and was the Global Director of Professional Indemnity Insurance for Ernst & Young Global prior to his retirement in June 2009. John is also on Roehampton University’s Council and is a member of its Audit Committee, Health and Safety Committee, and Capital Development Group.

Tristia Clarke – Chair of Remuneration Committee

Tristia is a member of the TalkTalk Group plc executive board, responsible for delivering the consumer commercial plan in phone, mobile and broadband. The role oversees consumer revenues, sales, retention, marketing and product development. Before joining TalkTalk Tristia was Group Marketing Director for The Carphone Warehouse and CMO for Best Buy Europe.

Tristia is also a Trustee at Comic Relief. She is married with two children.

Paul Fallon – Chair of Impact Committee

Paul joined the Board of Trustees in December 2010. He was previously Director of Social Services and Head of Children and Families at the London Borough of Barnet from 2000 until 2007. Since then he has been an independent consultant and is the Independent Chair of Croydon Safeguarding Children Board, a Director of the National Association of Independent LSCB Chairs, a magistrate and a Trustee of Crime Reduction Initiatives.

Paul is passionate about child protection and restoring public confidence in social work.

Lorraine Petersen OBE – Chair of TreeHouse School Governing Body

As Chief Executive Officer of nasen, Lorraine has worked on numerous projects with the Department for Education, the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Authority and the Training and Development Agency. Lorraine is also a member of a number of advisory groups including UKTI Sector Advisory Group for Education and Skills (SAGES).  During her 25 year teaching career, Lorraine has worked with pupils with an array of special and additional needs within mainstream settings and in June 2009 Lorraine was awarded the OBE for services to education. 

Philippa Stobbs - Vice Chair of TreeHouse School Governing Body

Philippa Stobbs has a professional background in teaching and school inspection work. She has led a number of national developments in the education of disabled children and children with special educational needs (SEN). She has led policy work for the Special Educational Consortium since 1992, the development of national support to parent partnership services, the development of guidance on the Disability Discrimination Act and the Equality Act in schools and early years settings. She is Assistant Director at the Council for Disabled Children and Policy Vice-chair of the Special Educational Consortium. She is part of the Council for Disabled Children team working as the Department for Education’s strategic partner on SEN and disability.

Clare Coombe-Tennant

Clare was born in Brunei and spent her early years in Asia and the Congo. She went to school in London, got a degree in English Literature, and then went into hardback publishing for two years. She moved to Hong Kong and became a journalist writing about the Far East, largely from an economic viewpoint. After two years, she became a junior investment manager at Baring Asset Management managing a large regional unit trust and institutional pension fund money. She has continued to work as a non-executive director, but motherhood has become her first priority. Her first son was born in 1996, and she carried on working until the twin pregnancy, when she and her family moved back to the UK. By 2000 they had a family of four boys. Two attend mainstream school and special schools, including TreeHouse School. 

Martyn Craddock

Martyn Craddock is the father of twin boys, one of whom has attended TreeHouse School since 2009. As a parent, he has an understanding of the demands and joys of being a dad of a child with autism, and the impact it has on his family's life. After an early background in catering, Martyn then moved into the charity sector, firstly working for one of the City of London livery companies, and then a charity Finance Director. Since 2007 he has been Chief Executive of St Luke's Trust, a large and historic charity in Islington, London. He has led the charity through a rapid transformation into a modern and busy community charity in an area of high social deprivation. Martyn is also a trustee of his children's former nursery, a Ward Beadle in the City of London, a keen cyclist and cook.

Fenella Gentleman

Fenella is Group Communications Director at Grosvenor, a privately-owned international property group, responsible for brand management, internal and external communications.  She is a Londoner, educated at Camden School for Girls and then at Oxford, where she read Philosophy, Politics and Economics.  She managed intellectual property rights in book publishing for six years before moving into professional services marketing in 1984.  Since then she has worked in-house with architects and other building designers (YRM), lawyers (Lovells) and surveyors (Grosvenor), and in consultancy for a range of corporate clients (Fishburn Hedges).  

Fenella is married to an architect and has a daughter studying illustration.  She enjoys the arts and is a keen, but not yet accomplished, gardener.  Her nephew is a pupil at TreeHouse School.

Jonathan Meth

Jonathan is Executive Director of Theatre Is... making innovative new theatre by, with and for young people across the East of England. Previously he was Director of writernet, a UK based organisation which gave dramatic writers the tools they need to build better careers and change the culture in which they work. He trained as a theatre director at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and has worked as dramaturg, script editor, director and lecturer. He has been Chair of CreativePeople and Vice Chair of the Playwright’s Studio, Scotland. He is also: Visiting Tutor in Residence on the MA in Arts Administration and Cultural Policy at Goldsmiths College, University of London; External Assessor for the MA in Scriptwriting at the University of East Anglia and a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts. Jonathan’s son was a pupil at Treehouse School for seven years.  

Emran Mian OBE

Emran is a civil servant and has published work in newspapers and magazines. He was recently awarded an OBE for his work on higher education. He is a contributing editor of Prospect Magazine. His first book, Send In The Idiots (written under the name Kamran Nazeer), was about the lives of adults with autism. His first novel will be published in 2012.

Fiona Slomovic

Fiona Slomovic is the parent of an autistic daughter who attends TreeHouse School. For the last ten years she has been an advocate representing parents, carers and children with special educational needs and disabilities for a range of charities. She is currently Director of an Independent Advocacy and Mediation Consultancy that works with schools, local authorities, and parents. Fiona began her career in banking and was head of yen trading at Nomura International in London. She also sits as a Lay Member on a NHS Research Ethics Committee. She was educated at James Allen's Girls School and Exeter College, Oxford where she took an MA degree in classics. She is married with three children.