Who's who

WaterAid's Chief Executive

Barbara Frost joined WaterAid in September 2005 after stepping down as Chief Executive of Action on Disability and Development (ADD) where she had been working in this capacity for nine years. Barbara has previously worked in Africa, for over seven years with ActionAid, Save the Children and Community Aid Abroad, managing programmes in Mozambique and Malawi. Barbara is also on the Board of WaterAid Australia.

Read more about Barbara Frost's appointment as Chief Executive of WaterAid

Chair, Board of Trustees

Jeremy Pelczer was elected Chair in October 2007 and has served on the Board of WaterAid America since early 2008. He has a financial background and is a qualified accountant. He moved into the water industry in 1996 and was President American Water in Sept 2003 and became CEO and President American Water in February 2004 until December 2005. He became the Chief Executive of Thames Water in November 2005 until its sale was completed in December 2006.

Jeremy attended Harvard Business school in 2002 and was a Board member of the Business Environmental Programme until June 2007.

He is a keen cricket player, being a member of both the Marylebone Cricket Club and the Somerset Cricket Club.

WaterAid's Trustees

Hugh Belshaw, OBE qualified as a chartered accountant with a small London partnership in 1962 and spent some years as a management accountant before joining Oxfam in 1970 as finance director. Oxfam grew rapidly over the following decades and the job developed accordingly.

He retired in 1996 and was awarded an OBE. He served as trustee and treasurer of Practical Action (formerly the Intermediate Technology Development Group -ITDG) until 2006 and served as a trustee on two other smaller charities.

His hobbies include volunteering (with his wife) on practical projects both abroad and for the National Trust and RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) in the UK. Hugh's spare time is taken up with gardening, canoeing and family.

Sandy Cairncross, MCIWEM, MICE joined WaterAid's Board of Trustees in 1999 and has since been made a professor. A public health engineer by profession and an epidemiologist by vocation, he is interested in environmental interventions for disease control and their technical and policy aspects.

Roughly half his career has been spent in research and teaching and half in developing countries implementing water, sanitation and public health programmes. With a PhD in soil mechanics, he spent ten years as a water and sanitation engineer in Lesotho and Mozambique, before joining the staff of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in 1984.

From 1992 to 1995 he took leave of absence with UNICEF in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, where with a WHO colleague he set up an interagency technical team to support national guinea worm eradication programmes in West Africa. He now leads the Environmental Health Group at the London School of Hygiene.

Gordon Channon joined WaterAid's Board of Trustees in 2000. Gordon has over 25 years experience in the information technology field. In his most recent role as director of strategy and services development at Computacenter, he was responsible for the development of strategic services, customer-facing best practices, vendor alliance management and information systems.

Before joining Computacenter, Gordon was the group information services director at BT with responsibility for applications engineering, total operational processing and desktop provision. Prior to that Gordon was the business services director at IDV/Grand Metropolitan Plc with responsibility for world-wide systems, process engineering and change management.

Gregory Hodkinson was elected as Chair of WaterAid America in September 2007 and joined WaterAid’s Board of Trustees in February 2008. He is Chairman of the Americas Region of Arup, a leading global engineering and consulting firm responsible for some of the world's most innovative building, transport and civil engineering projects.

By profession a Transport Planner, Gregory has 35 years' experience planning, designing and managing transport and infrastructure projects, with particular experience in the aviation industry, and has worked on projects throughout the world.

His appointment extends Arup's ongoing firmwide commitment to WaterAid. With the establishment of the Arup Cause in 2006, Arup embarked on a global initiative that pledged the energy, expertise and resources of the firm's 9,000 staff to WaterAid's mission. Through this partnership, Arup has supported pilot projects in Zambia, Bangladesh and Madagascar and sought overall to provide lasting value to WaterAid through the creativity and knowledge of its members.

Agnes Kalibbala joined the WaterAid Board of Trustees in December 2006. She currently holds the position of ambassador/deputy high commissioner of Uganda and the deputy permanent representative to UNEP and UN-HABITAT based in Nairobi, Kenya.

Prior to this she was the country programme representative of ADD (Action on Disability and Development) for Uganda and also supported ADD work at regional level in Tanzania, Ghana and Burkina Faso. She has worked on many housing projects in Uganda and has obtained post-graduate degrees and diplomas from universities in Uganda, UK and the Netherlands in this field. Agnes has been on the board of several national and international institutions.

Tony Kelly has chaired WaterAid Australia's Board since its inception, and was elected to join WaterAid as a Trustee at the Annual General Meeting on 5 October 2006.

Tony, a civil engineer, has spent nearly 30 years in the Australian water industry with extensive experience in planning, design and construction as well as key roles in strategic planning, major utility reforms including water authority mergers, corporatisation, pricing, business process redesign and contracting out.

Since joining Yarra Valley Water Ltd at its inception in 1995, Tony has held four general manager positions including chief engineer, corporate strategy, marketing, business strategy and customer operations.

Tony was appointed managing director of Yarra Valley Water in January 2003. Tony also chairs the Victorian Water industry Association's Sustainability Task Group that produced the Triple Bottom Line Reporting Guidelines for the Victorian water industry in 2002. Tony is also Deputy Chair of "Savewater", a not for profit alliance promoting water conservation.

Dinah Moore joined WaterAid's Board of Trustees in 2003 and is on the Audit Committee, having previously served on the Programme and Policy Committee. She is a consultant solicitor with Slaughter and May, a member of the council of Bristol University and a member of the Council of Clifton College.

For over twenty-five years she has managed an arable farm in Herefordshire with a strong emphasis on environmental conservation in harmony with agricultural best practice. She is also a director of a prestigious mixed farming enterprise in Hampshire. In her spare time Dinah enjoys walking, sailing and music, and she is studying Fine Arts.

Helen Pankhurst joined the WaterAid Board of Trustees in December 2006. She is currently the senior technical advisor for the water team in CARE which she joined after three years as the Country Representative for WaterAid in Ethiopia - the country she has was born in, spent half her life in, and feels a strong affinity for.

She has also worked as head of international programmes in WOMANKIND Worldwide, a women's rights and development organisation and as the regional manager for the Horn of Africa at the Agency for Cooperation and Research in Development (ACORD).

Helen's academic background has been varied, starting in a French school then an international one before attending University both in Britain and America where she was a visiting scholar at Vassar. She has trained in auditing and financial management and has a social science PhD (Economics, Anthropology, Sociology and Politics).  Helen is also a trustee of FARM Africa.

Nigel Reader, CBE, ACMA joined WaterAid's Board of Trustees in 2000 and is Chair of the Audit Committee. He is currently director of finance of the Environment Agency, having previously held the posts of finance director and regional general manager (Wessex) for the National Rivers Authority.

His association with water dates from 1975 when he joined the Wessex Water Authority as regional management accountant.  He is a member of Treasury's Financial Reporting Advisory Board which sets the financial reporting standards for UK Government departments and public sector bodies.

Dr Pramilla Senanayake MBBS, PhD, FRCOG, FRSM, FRSH was appointed to the WaterAid Board of Trustees in March 2003. She is medical doctor and has specialised in public health, paediatrics, tropical medicine, reproductive health and has wide international experience in all of these fields. She received her medical education in Sri Lanka and later at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Institute of Child Health, University of London. She has honorary fellowships from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the Sri Lankan College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

She is assistant director general of the International Planned Parenthood Federation and has travelled extensively to advise and assist IPPF's member Family Planning Associations (FPA's) around the world and to take part in seminars, workshops, conferences and training programmes intended to develop and improve the work of member affiliates.

Her activities have not been limited to the family planning field, but have extended to involvement in the broader issues including lactation, infant feeding, day care, infertility and the preparation of young people for responsible parenthood, as well as in campaigns for women's rights and the preservation of the natural environment. Dr Senanayake has written and published widely about the subjects on which she is an acknowledged international expert. She has established a firm place on radio, television and press, particularly as a commentator on many of these issues.

Pamela Taylor, OBE joined WaterAid Board of Trustees in 2003 and was elected to Vice Chair in December 2007. Pamela has been chief executive of Water UK since April 1998. She was previously chief executive of the Water Companies Association, 1995/1998. A management consultant working for WHO and the NHS between 1994-1995 and director of corporate affairs world-wide she also sat on the board of the BBC between 1992-1994. She was also head of public affairs and member of board of the British Medical Association between 1977-1992.

She is a former president of the Institute of Public Relations and chair of its Profession Practices Committee as well as president of Eureau (European Union of National Associations of Water Suppliers and Waste Water Services). She is a board member of the PHLS (Public Health Laboratory Service) and member of the UK Government's Football Task Force.

Kevin Whiteman  is chief executive of Kelda Group Plc. Kevin was appointed Chairman of WaterAid Yorkshire in April 2000 and joined WaterAid's Board of Trustees in September 2003. As an engineering graduate (chartered engineer and member of the Institute of Mining Engineers) he held a number of senior management positions with British Coal before joining the National Rivers Authority as regional general manager in the early 1990s, followed by a period as chief executive and accounting officer leading up to the formation of the Environment Agency in 1996.

After a short period as regional director of the Environment Agency he joined Yorkshire Water as business director - waste water in 1997 and was appointed managing director of Yorkshire Water in April 2000. In September 2002, Mr Whiteman took on the additional role of chief executive of Kelda Group plc.

WaterAid's Vice Presidents

Baroness Chalker of Wallasey has been Vice President of WaterAid since 1997. She has been an independent advisor on Africa and development to a number of business concerns in Britain and Africa and to the World Bank since 1997. She is the first woman advisory director of Unilever plc and NV; a non-executive director of the Freeplay Energy Holdings; a non-executive director of Ashanti Co Goldfields Group 5 (Construction) Ltd, Development Consultants International (DCI).

She chairs a small advisory company on development partnerships called Africa Matters Limited. She is president of the Southern Africa Business Association of British Executive Services Overseas, of Transparency International UK and chairman of the board of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

She is an honorary vice president of British Red Cross and a trustee of the African Medical and Research Foundation, and president of Practical Action. She has been a member of the Anglo-German Koenigswinter Conference since 1977.

She was a visiting scholar to the United States in 1978 and led a political delegation to China in 1980. She is a member of the Royal Institute of International Affairs and a governor and council member of The Ditchley Foundation. She was Minister for Africa from 1986-1997 and also appointed Minister for Overseas Development from July 1989 until 1997. During these eight years her responsibilities included overseas development world wide, African and Commonwealth affairs.

Maurice Lowther BSc, FICE, FCIWEM, CBIM was a founding member of WaterAid in 1981. Following four years' service in the Royal Engineers, he attended Queen's University, Belfast studying civil engineering. After six years in consultancy work, designing and constructing dams and dockyards, he joined the Newcastle and Gateshead Water Company and eventually became managing director for 15 years.

He was president of the Institution of Water Engineers and Scientists between 1980 and 1981 and chairman of the Water Companies Association 1984 and 1987. Locally, he was chairman of the British Institute of Management North East Region and a non-executive director of a civil engineering company. He has been a governor of Lancaster Royal Grammar School since 1982.

Lord Sandford The Reverend, Commander, DSC was a founding member of WaterAid in 1981. After serving in the Royal Navy, between 1939 and 1956, he studied at Westcott House Theological College, was a curate at Harpenden, Hertfordhire, for five years and then chaplain to Bishop Michael Gresford Jones of St Albans. He became a junior minister in the Conservative Government in 1970 in the newly created Department of the Environment, speaking on seven issues including local government, water, forestry, transport, housing and conservation in the Lords.

He was chairman of the Sandford Group review of the National Parks. Out of office he founded Heritage Education. He was chairman of Community Task Force from 1977 to 1982; a director of the Ecclesiastical Insurance Group from 1977 to 1989; chairman of the Association of District Councils from 1980 to 1986; chairman, Redundant Churches Deptartment of Church Commissioners, and a church commissioner; and chairman, South East Regional Planning Council from 1981 to 1989.