Meet the Challenge Trainers and Consultants

At Challenge we recognise that in order to be able to deal effectively with issues of inequality, it is preferable that consultants have direct experience of the issues under discussion; consequently, all of our consultants are either women, black, lesbian, gay, disabled or a combination of these.

Below are the profiles of some of our trainers:

• Femi Otitoju - Training Director
• Donna Carty - Consultant and Training Manager
• Richard Blanco - Consultant and Trainer
• Tinu Cornish - Consultant and Trainer
• Kirsten Hearn - Consultant and Trainer
• Aubrey Maasdorp - Consultant and Trainer
• Anjum Mouj - Consultant and Trainer
• Cyril Husbands - Consultant and Trainer
• Suky Bains - Consultant and Trainer
• Rif Sharif - Consultant and Trainer
• Arvinda Gohil - Consultant

Femi Otitoju - Training Director

Femi began training in 1980 when she was involved in management development for a large employment agency.

After further developing her skills at The Observer, Femi was finally able to combine her professional experience with her personal commitment to equality for all when she joined the GLC Women's Committee Support Unit as a Community Development Officer.

After some time in local government as a training officer, Femi founded Challenge and began to offer courses directly to the public, private and voluntary sectors. Femi has been personally involved in the civil rights struggles for race, gender, sexual orientation and disability equality.

In conjunction with Melrose Film Productions Femi produced a Masterclass training video entitled 'Equal Opportunities And The Manager'. In this practical technique guide to the management of diversity, Femi's down to earth approach helps everyone accept that people are different, and must be respected as such.

Her training resource “Fairs Fair” was launched by Melrose Training. This video based training pack is widely used in commerce and industry as well as in the not for profit sector.

Femi has addressed numerous conferences and events as a key-note speaker on a wide variety of equality and diversity issues, she has also been fundamental in reviewing, revising and helping to implement changes to equality policies in many large organisations.

Femi's new e-learning package, Same Difference, was launched in the Summer of 2005. You can find out more about Same Difference on our e-learning page.

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Donna Carty - Consultant and Training Manager

Donna’s background, prior to working with Challenge, was in housing. She worked in both general needs and supported housing for over 12 years in both front line and a variety of management positions.

Donna’s strategic housing management roles focussed on: service quality, service user involvement, the development and implementation of performance management systems and policy development, as well as delivery of in-house training programmes.

Donna joined Challenge Consultancy as an Associate Trainer and became the Associate Training Manager in 2003. At Challenge Donna has developed and delivered equality and diversity programmes for a wide variety of our clients, including the housing and health sector, local authorities, private businesses and not for profit organisations.

Donna is a popular and very effective trainer and our clients frequently request that Donna returns to deliver their equality and diversity training. She has successfully delivered this training for frontline staff, middle and senior management and Boards. As well as equality (including anti harassment/Dignity at Work, Cultural Awareness and Equality Impact Assessment), Donna delivers training in the areas of Customer Care, Assertiveness and Service User Involvement. Donna has also successfully delivered conference speeches, facilitated conferences and workshops and carried out a number of policy audits and harassment investigations.


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Richard Blanco - Consultant and Trainer

Richard Blanco has 10 years experience as a consultant, trainer and facilitator. He began his career as a Community Worker for London Borough of Lewisham specialising in work with children and young people. He was later a consultant to London Borough of Greenwich on a regeneration project to turn the disused Borough Hall into an arts centre and venue where he was appointed Director in 1993. He was involved in the delivery of many culturally diverse arts and community services including older people, women only, disability focus and lesbian and gay participatory and performance activities. In 1996 he left to work freelance again.

Richard was Training Co-ordinator at London Lesbian & Gay switchboard 1990-92 and since joining Challenge runs all the core training programmes from Equal Opportunities to Recruitment & Selection and Team Development. He has a strong commitment to equalities issues and has developed a particular interest in organisational development and human resources issues such as communication, team work and people management skills. He regularly attends training programmes to top up his own skills.

Recent consultancy work has included an investigative report for the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities (AGMA) on the Support and Development of Cultural Diversity in Manchester, Interim & Project Management contracts, Business Development Planning with black arts and community organisations and a Management Development Programme for a large charity retailer. He has worked as an Adviser to the Arts Council of England on Lottery Applications and has been a board member of a number of voluntary sector organisations.

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Tinu Cornish - Consultant and Trainer

An Occupational Psychologist with over twenty years experience in the fields of leadership, team development, and diversity, Tinu’s mission is to help individuals reach their potential in happy, positive and productive workplaces. She has a passion for developing managers to achieve this. Tinu runs really useful courses on leadership, unlocking your talent and potential and team management.

Tinu is an accomplished Consultant, Coach and Facilitator who delivers effective evidence based solutions to complex organisational needs using a variety of different methods. She has a particular expertise in facilitating situations where diversity is a factor. In addition to working with teams and organisations, Tinu is a mentor and a coach. She uses the principles of positive psychology to help individuals identify their strengths, improve their awareness and increase their knowledge in order to achieve their work, career and personal development goals.

Typical assignments include; coaching managers and their teams to develop effective, emotionally intelligent ways of working; coaching and training to improve performance management in an organisation following an employment tribunal case; research into poor recruitment outcomes and development of solutions to resolve the situation; leadership coaching for minority managers.

Tinu has a BSc (Hons) Degree in Psychology from Lancaster University and a Postgraduate Diploma in Occupational Psychology from Birkbeck College, University of London, and Level A and Level B psychometric testing.
She currently is completing the process of becoming Chartered.

Tinu is a member of;

The British Psychological Society’s Special Group in Coaching Psychology,
The Association of Coaching, and
The Association of Business Psychologists.


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Kirsten Hearn - Consultant and Trainer

Kirsten is a trainer and consultant on equal opportunities, people management and empowerment. She has trained organisations on a range of business issues since 1982. She provides training, undertakes reviews and coaches individuals.

She says: "As a blind lesbian I have chosen to work in the field of challenging discrimination because of my own experience of exclusion and my belief that if we promote equality and diversity for discriminated against groups we improve services for everyone."

Recent work includes:

- Westminster Council Best Value Review of disability social
services.
- Equality Training for Swindon Borough Council
- DDA and SENDA implementation training for the Swindon
Youth service.
- Facilitation for Women In Health disabled women Menopause
Day for women with learning difficulties.
- Equality Recruitment training for the BBC.
- Implementing disability equality in the work place for
Newham Council project (including four staff training
sessions on implementing the DDA).
- Railtrack focus groups on major stations customer access.
- Review and rewrite of all policies for Mary Ward Adult
Education Centre.
- Disability symbol research and consultation for Middlesex
University.
- Team Building training for Hackney voluntary organisations
and Greater London Action on Disability.
- Coaching a wide range of individuals including politicians,
senior executives and directors of voluntary organisations as
well as front line workers.

Kirsten spent 16 years in local government; five at chief officer level, leading teams of staff on a wide range of equality implementation across the board.

She was the Head of the Disability Unit, Deputy Head of the Social Justice Unit (dealing with race, gender, disability, sexuality, age and economic status), at LB Waltham Forest, as the principle Policy Officer for Haringey Lesbian and Gay Unit and as a community outreach worker for the GLC disability resource team.

Kirsten has been active in the voluntary sector for more than twenty years. Roles include: Board Member for a second tier LGBT voluntary organisation, Chair and other leadership roles for a trade union disability group, a local community and education centre and a women's tape library.

She is a Neuro-Linguistic Programming Certified Coach and NLP master practitioner. Her initial career began as an artist (MA from Royal College of Art).

Currently, Kirsten holds three non-executive positions as a member of the Board of Transport for London, an Independent member of the Metropolitan Police Authority and a member of the Advisory Group to the Department of Work and Pensions on the setting up of Equality 2025 (the UK Advisory Network on Disability equality). Prior to joining the MPA, Kirsten served for two years on the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Advisory Group to the Metropolitan Police Service.

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Aubrey Maasdorp - Consultant and Trainer

Aubrey Maasdorp is a highly skilled and experienced facilitator and trainer and has been employed in the equality and personal development field for more than 15 years. He has been working in management, staff development and sexual health since 1989 as a trainer and facilitator. In addition, he has worked on numerous research projects and contributed to many training manuals.

Aubrey worked in Sexual Health and HIV for many years as a Training and Information Manager with the London Borough of Camden. He then moved to Management Development and worked as the Senior Training Officer in the Chief Executive’s Department. Prior to working as an independent consultant, Aubrey worked as acting Head of Corporate Learning and Development for the London Borough of Camden. Aubrey now works with Challenge where he has delivered numerous courses on Equality and Diversity and management development.

Clients Aubrey has worked with since 2002 include the Home Office (Management and leadership skills), LB Camden (Valuing Diversity for Managers, Gender, race, sexuality and HIV and Recruitment and Selection Training); Terrence Higgins Trust (Managing Change); a number of Health Trusts (Race Awareness, The Race Equality Scheme, Managing Diversity, Welcoming Diversity); Healthlink Worldwide (HIV and organisational change) ; The Exchange Programme, (working with international participants facilitating discussion and action planning for community development of HIV programmes)

He is also involved in numerous research projects. He worked for Healthlink Worldwide editing and rewriting a training manual for facilitators on the Memory Project, to be used by HIV organisations worldwide (January – March 2005), compiled and edited Positive Development, a training manual to help communities to set up support groups. He has done research projects with a number of local authorities and health authorities on access to services and service development.

Aubrey has also delivered presentations at international conferences and facilitated training courses and workshops in Thailand, Ireland, South Africa and Uganda.

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Anjum Mouj - Consultant and Trainer

Anjum has worked with people and community groups for many years now in different capacities, and feels that communication and equal opportunities form an integral part of her work. She is committed to ensuring that issues of access and equity are built into every aspect of partnership work, service planning and delivery.

Anjum also feels that she has:
- Accumulated a sensitive and thorough insight into the needs of communities and ways of articulating these
- Ensured continuous dialogue with the community on a consultative as well as representative level. Being constantly engaged in developing ways of ensuring that local voices are heard through effective representation at strategic levels and that the process of needs analysis, commissioning and contracting reflect the real and expressed needs of all sections of the community; her experiences of user and carer groups have included the establishment of focus and support groups, conferences and strategic input by community members into service delivery.

Her experiences have enabled her to understand and effectively manage financial and human resources, and work with creativity and flexibility within the changing legislative, organisational and at times political climate.

Her familiarity with statutory structures results from many years of active involvement with multi-agency strategy and service groups. These opportunities have enabled her to learn and contribute to the processes of needs assessment, gap analysis and the planning of appropriate future services.

A great deal of her training experience has been with community groups focusing particularly on skills-building to ensure that all communities, regardless of their client group, established history or income are able to take part in main stream service development, negotiation of Service Level Agreements and have equal access to available funds.

Anjum feels that she has been an effective ambassador for the service users and organisations that she has represented, whether this has been through her representation at meetings, giving talks or through written material. Her PR skills have enabled her to pursue issues considered sensitive, contentious or those simply marginalised.

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Cyril Husbands - Consultant and Trainer

Cyril’s professional background is in training & development, human resource management and diversity & equality strategy for the public and social action (or voluntary) sectors. Cyril has held influential positions with the Greater London Council (GLC), two London boroughs, the Citizens Advice service, Victim Support and Sia, the national agency for black voluntary organisation development. Cyril was Senior Diversity Manager at the BBC for almost six years before joining a medium sized consultancy firm as a Principal Consultant, where his clients included multi-national businesses, the Ministry of Defence and the British Council.

As a corporate representative, Cyril has extensive experience of commissioning services, drafting specifications, developing contract compliance policies, and conducting negotiations and consultations with bidders, suppliers and other stakeholders.

Cyril has served as an Associate Tutor with South Bank University, where he designed and tutored a BTEC Certificate in a Management course on Workplace Communication. He has also led management courses on other subjects including client access to records (as mandated by the Freedom of Information Act 2000), recruitment & selection and managing diversity. Cyril’s positive action experience includes leadership of the NHS ‘Breaking Through Programme’, a high-profile development project aimed at helping the NHS meet its commitment to increase the diversity of its leadership cohort. The role included designing and scheduling the programme content, managing tutors and providing tuition himself. Cyril has worked with a range of other clients on leadership and management development JP Morgan, the University of Birmingham and the newly formed Department for Children, Schools and Families.

Other significant work experience includes:

• Designing strategic and corporate policies and procedures, including the first lesbian and gay equality policy to be adopted by a major employer
• Managing major positive action leadership programmes including a scheme that increased the number of women and Black men in London’s Fire Service and the BBC’s British Diversity Award-winning Sport Mentoring Scheme
• Numerous presentations at conferences, seminars and other important events, on subjects including management development, equality in employment and services, training, governance for voluntary organisations and race in Britain.
• Joint leadership of a national management training programme for Victim Support branches and Witness Services, and contributing toward the development, delivery and evaluation of the programme.

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Suky Bains - Consultant and Trainer

Suky has been a consultant, trainer and facilitator for over thirteen years within the public and private sectors of our communities.

Her facilitation skills are based on the central principles of empowerment, responsibility and choice. She creates an honest, flexible, challenging and safe environment to encourage constructive dialogue and creative effective relationships with ones self and others.

She currently works for a number of charitable organisations and independently as a freelance trainer and consultant.

Historically, she was instrumental in the set-up of Tower Hamlets Mediation Service (THMS) and developed and has delivered the training for community mediators for over ten years. THMS was one of London first Mediation UK accredited services and received special commendation for the training, support and supervision of its volunteer mediators.

As a Senior trainer for ‘LEAP Confronting Conflict’, her work involves planning and delivering their core ‘challenging behaviour’ programmes within a range of youth work and community settings. This includes prisons, youth clubs, schools and local government - training young people and adult professionals involved in youth provision.

As a trainer with ‘Challenge Consultancy’ her work involves training in issues of Race, Equality and Diversity primarily within the public sector. She also combines her conflict resolution and mediation knowledge to intervene in areas of conflict where racism and discrimination is identified as the primary factor.

Examples of recent work:

• Training For Trainers -10 day course in Mediation and Conflict Resolution for Government Ministers in Sri Lanka
• Responding to Conflict -10 day course for Deputy Prime Ministers Office and Neighbourhood Renewal
• Challenging Racism Constructively Workshops - London Borough of Southwark
• Workplace mediations
• Basic and Advanced Mediation Training Courses
• Numerous facilitations including the “Community Cohesion: Race and Equality Strategy” Conference
• Support and coaching of individuals

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Rif Sharif - Consultant and Trainer

Rif Sharif has been a community mediator for seven years and was the Co-ordinator of Tower Hamlets Mediation Service for three years. She is experienced in neighbour, victim/offender and workplace mediation and in large group facilitation. She has developed and delivered training in mediation and conflict resolution skills, communication skills, equality and diversity issues. She has been assessed as a Competent Mediator by Mediation UK in line with Community Legal Service’s requirements for Supervising Mediators and has an MSc in Mediation and Conflict Resolution from the University of London.

Previous clients include:

British Council, Sri Lanka
Challenge Consultancy
Fusion
Leap Confronting Conflict
Linn Ltd
London Borough of Camden
London Borough of Hackney
London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham
London Borough of Southwark
London Borough of Tower Hamlets
Marner School, Tower Hamlets
Mulberry School, Tower Hamlets
Neighbourhood Renewal Unit, ODPM
People at Work
Price, Waterhouse, Cooper
Southside Partnership
Stebon School, Tower Hamlets


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Arvinda Gohil - Consultant

Arvinda is a management consultant with 25 years' experience in the housing field. Her housing career has included working for a Women's Refuge; setting up and running positive action programmes; Chief Executive of two housing associations; setting up a training and capacity building agency in South Africa to assist emerging housing associations; running a Regeneration partnership and as Assistant Director for London at the Housing Corporation.

She has a high profile in the housing sector and a well-deserved reputation as an empowering leader. She brings enormous amount of enthusiasm and energy to her work and her particular specialisms include governance, equalities, service excellence, team building and coaching/mentoring.

She is a member of the Hanover Housing Group Board, where she holds the equalities portfolio, a trustee of VSO overseas, and an independent governor at London South Bank University. She was recently appointed as a Schedule 1 Board member to Ujima Housing Association.

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