MeetOur Team

Cecilia is our Participation and Engagement Manager, overseeing our In-Prison Advisory Boards and leading on our commitment to platforming the voices of the young people we work with. She joins us with knowledge of the criminal justice system (most recently as a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Kingston University) and has extensive experience of working with young people, including facilitating leadership, mentoring, confidence building and self-esteem sessions and programmes. Cecilia is passionate about working with young people and committed to nurturing, encouraging, and developing the expression of their voices, having experienced the unequivocal impact this has.

Vicki joined Spark Inside as CEO in 2020 after a decade of working in leadership roles in the criminal justice sector, following an earlier career in public policy. She has led justice collaborations to secure legislative change; and helped found the ground-breaking Transition to Adulthood Alliance. She holds a Masters in Social Policy from the LSE, is a Winston Churchill Fellow, and a regular media commentator. Read more about Vicki’s appointment to CEO on our blog!

Follow Vicki on Twitter: @vickihcardwell 

After gaining several years of administrative experience, Charlie joined Spark Inside to use her skills to make a social impact. Charlie is on hand to support all staff and is open to any challenge that may be thrown her way. Her favourite part of her role is the exposure to our innovative work. 

Tim is a policy, public affairs and communications professional with more than a decade of experience working for private and voluntary sector organisations. Following a stint in consultancy, Tim delivered successful campaigns on behalf of organisations including Victim Support, the British Red Cross, and the British Medical Association. His freelance journalism has been published by the BBC and the Spectator, among other outlets, and he has given oral evidence to parliamentary committees. Tim is currently training part-time as a psychotherapist. His role at Spark Inside is to connect policymakers with the expertise of his service delivery colleagues, enabling evidence-based policy that is firmly grounded in the perspectives of young people in prison.

Indy oversees the communications strategy for Spark Inside, bringing with her almost 15 years’ experience in marketing communications. With an MSc in Marketing and as a qualified project manager, Indy has built a varied career that includes central government comms; heading-up the marketing communications activity for entrepreneur and Dragons’ Den star Peter Jones’ charity; and marketing the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and the London 2012 Festival and Cultural Olympiad. Indy​’s focus is raising the profile of Spark Inside​’s vital work.

Dr. Karen Graham joined Spark Inside as Head of Programmes in January 2021. Her previous work has been at the nexus of education practice, academic research and scholar activism. At the beginning of her teaching experience, she spent three years working with adult male prisoners in two British prisons. Observations during this professional practice formed the background to her Doctorate in Education ​‘Does School Prepare Men for Prison? The life histories of eleven former prisoners’ awarded from University of Birmingham. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and has developed, taught and externally examined degree programmes in Education, Sociology, Working with Children, Young People & Families and Criminology across several universities. Karen founded and led the development of ​‘Going Straight 2 University’, a project that brought university students and prisoner students together to earn credits towards a degree in HMP Birmingham; the long-term aim being to create a direct route to university for prisoners on their release. She has made a significant contribution to the UK debate on the school-to-prison pipeline and is regularly invited to contribute to policy, academic and public discussion on education and the criminal justice system through conferences, seminars, workshops and roundtables.

Benita joined Spark Inside in December 2020 as an Operations Officer, being the first point of contact and responsible for the smooth running of the organisation’s operations, leading on office admin, database, IT and supporting with finance, HR and governance. Prior to this, Benita worked for several charitable organisations in a variety of roles including: operations, fundraising, events and communications, working with some of the most vulnerable and marginalised in the areas of children and families, young people and human rights, justice and prison reform. Benita feels passionately about using her skills within organisations that provide education and opportunities to address inequality and break down the cycles of poverty and disadvantage. 

After delivering frontline youth work programmes for over 8 years, Christopher joins our programme team as a Service Delivery Manager. Working across prisons in London, Chris liaises between our coaches, prison staff and the people we work with to ensure that our programmes are delivered to the highest standard. Chris holds a degree in Youth Work, and has always been passionate about empowering young people to achieve their full potential.

Simone is a qualified youth worker and life coach with a degree in Youth and Community Work. She has been working with young people for over 14 years in a variety of environments: schools; exclusion centres; running a youth club; and for the past five years has worked within the criminal justice system. Simone manages our Service Delivery, focusing on the relationships within the prisons we deliver our programmes in. Her favourite part of her job is seeing how invested the young people become with their coaching journey from workshops, to one-to-ones, to release.

Mike has worked in prisons for 40 years in both public and private sectors, from prison officer to prison governor, from Director of Operations to Director of Strategy and Corporate Change. Mike is also a qualified coach and helps run his company’s coaching programme. He is married with three children, and loves cycling and kayaking.

Tom worked for 15 years designing and delivering experiential personal development training, culture change programmes and practice innovation workshops for corporate, statutory and community clients. Then, in 2006 a tragic stabbing on his doorstep motivated him to focus on his local community. He delivered community cohesion and youth engagement projects for his local authority before landing the first of a number of management roles in youth charities. Over the next 12 years he gained a solid grounding in programme design, impact assessment, project management and leading quality processes in education, prison and community settings. Tom is committed to addressing the systemic and cultural issues that cause inequality. He believes in social justice and everybody’s potential to lead a fulfilling and valuable life. He is thrilled to serve as trustee leading on Monitoring and Evaluation. 

Stephanie started out as a management consultant at the Boston Consulting Group, subsequently moving into policy roles at the Howard League for Penal Reform and the Equality and Human Rights Commission. She is currently training as a barrister and will commence pupillage in 2021. Stephanie has a Philosophy degree from Cambridge, a management qualification from the Judge Business School and a master’s in Gender Studies from UCL. 

Rob is a financial technology executive and board member with significant corporate governance experience. He was formerly a finance partner at Weil, Gotshal & Manges, a leading international law firm. Rob has a law degree from Oxford and a business degree from London Business School.

Erica is an executive coach whose practice focusses on clients from the law and financial services as well as the public and charitable sectors. She is a non-executive director on the Board of the Government Legal Department and a trustee of charities Working Chance, St Giles Trust and Iyengar Yoga Maida Vale. Her previous executive career was as a lawyer. She was European General Counsel at asset manager BlackRock and before that Barclays Investment Bank. Prior to that she was a structured finance partner at law firms Weil Gotshal and Ashurst.

Kenny is the co-founder & Managing Director of ClearView Research Ltd, a leading edge research company that specialises in research focussing on millennials and social impact evaluation. Kenny is also a campaigner and has been described by Huffington Post UK as a ​“young rising star making waves in UK politics.” His work in both the worlds of research and politics has taken him around the world to countries such as the United States, Brazil, Austria, Tunisia, Israel, and Hong Kong. 

Josephine is a Chartered Institute of Public Finance & Accountancy (CIPFA) qualified accountant with significant experience in the public sector. With a background working in central, local government and in the charity sector this provides her with a rounded perspective: understanding services across the public sector, how policy is made and funded, and how strategy is formulated. She has a deep understanding of operational finance, confident to work with stakeholders of all levels, and comfortable driving change with people, systems and processes. Josephine holds a Master of Chemical Engineering (MEng) degree from the University of Edinburgh. In her spare time, Josephine enjoys theatre/​film, boxing and her family.

Hamish is an an advisor to a range of companies. He was formerly a senior executive in investment banking. Hamish graduated from Cardiff with BSc (Hons) and recently completed a MSc at London Business School. In his spare time Hamish enjoys his bike, gigs and his family.

Sophie is Director of North America at WhiteHat, an organization focused on democratizing access to the best careers, through apprenticeships. At WhiteHat she has also led and run their delivery operations team, supporting it to scale 10x over the last 4 years. Prior to this, Sophie worked in impact investment bringing an analytical and rigorous approach to developing sustainable and systemic outcomes based solutions to entrenched social problems including in criminal justice, social care and education. Sophie holds a degree in Political Science from Bristol. In her spare time, you can find her debating about politics and social justice, reading the latest best seller or playing with her two dogs.