Chair Person: Susan Lovell
Head of Multimedia Commissioning, BBC Northern Ireland

Susan Lovell is Head of Multimedia Commissioning for BBC Northern Ireland.  In this role she is the television commissioner responsible for selecting and delivering content to the Northern Ireland audience across a wide range of genre, including factual, history, comedy, entertainment, events and topical programming. She leads a team which commissions programmes and some multiplatform content from BBCNI /teams/ in-house producers and the independent sector.  Together they produce more than 210 hours of local television non-news output per year.

Susan sits on the Senior Management Board for BBC Northern Ireland and is a member of the BBC Director General's television portfolio group looking at Delivering Quality First across the whole BBC.  She also spent several months as Chair of the Doing Fewer Things Better work group on Mark Thompson's Strategy Review.  Susan heads The Radio Academy's Northern Ireland Branch and is a Board member of Belfast's newest media and entrepreneurship partnership programme, E3.

Prior to her current role, Susan was Head of Radio at BBC Northern Ireland, leading the BBC's most successful nations station, BBC Radio Ulster, and its opt-out service, BBC Radio Foyle.  During her tenure, BBC Radio Ulster achieved record audiences and was awarded 14 major industry awards, including four Sony Gold awards and was named PPI Station of the Year.  She led the pan-UK partnership for the acclaimed All-Ireland Radio 4 series A History of the World in 100 Objects.

Susan led BBC Radio Ulster through an extensive period of change – zoning the schedule, introducing the multi-award winning Stephen Nolan to Radio Ulster, and expanding the range of reach of specialist music, documentary and comedy programmes on the station.

Susan was educated at Glenlola Collegiate School in Northern Ireland and read History at Christ's College, Cambridge.  She began her career as a journalist and writer, moving to BBC Radio in 1991 as a local radio trainee reporter.  She worked on news desks at a number of English radio stations where she was reporter, producer, newsreader and presenter.

In 1995 she moved to BBC Radio 4 to work on the flagship news programmes The World At One PM and The World This Weekend as producer and then assistant editor.  She specialised in political party conferences, politics and European affairs, working at the BBC's Westminster offices at Millbank, and as Europe producer for a range of European conferences.  She was also part of the team that launched Radio 4's Sunday morning current affairs programme, Broadcasting House.

After a short stint on Newsnight, Susan became senior producer in charge of newsgathering for the BBC's bi-media newsroom in Belfast.  She was then promoted to Editor, Specialist & Factual, BBC Northern Ireland.

James Brown

James Brown is a former senior executive in Plc and family owned companies, mainly in the service sector. He is a Board member of East Belfast Partnership, chair of East Belfast Social Economy Company, vice chair of Skainos, trustee of Northern Ireland Association of Mental Health and chair of its subsidiary, Carecall Solutions Ltd. He is also a non executive director of Northern Ireland Transport Holding Company Ltd. and a director of Irish Association of Funeral Directors.

In 2011 James was awarded an MBE for services to the community in East Belfast and was appointed a Fellow of the University of Ulster.

Roger Courtney
Courtney Consulting

Roger Courtney trained as a youth and community worker and set up what became Crescent Arts Centre in Belfast. He then became the Chief Officer of the Simon Community NI and remained there for sixteen years, during which time it grew from two run-down rented houses and three members of staff, and a turnover of £40,000, to projects for people who were homeless all over Northern Ireland, with over two hundred staff, and a turnover of over £2million.

From his experience trying to raise money for the Crescent and Simon, and a concern about the lack of publications about fundraising, he wrote The Northern Ireland Fundraising Handbook. He was a founder member and chair of both ACOVO (now CO³) and the Northern Ireland Council for the Homeless. For the last ten years he has been working in the Third Sector as a freelance organizational development consultant, specializing in strategy planning, governance, evaluation, fundraising strategy and quality. For the last three years he has acted as part-time senior advisor to Atlantic Philanthropies in Northern Ireland. He is the author of the leading UK text on strategic management in the voluntary sector, as well as two other books on fundraising, and other publications on homelessness and voluntary sector management.

Paul Roberts
Ashton Centre

Paul is Chief Executive of Ashton Community Trust, a community based charity working on regeneration through community development and social enterprise. Ashton was set up in 1988 through a share drive by local people. The original centre is owned by 450 shareholders from the local community and the organisation now owns four other Centres. Ashton currently employs 104 people in some of the most deprived wards in Northern Ireland. Paul has a Masters in Voluntary sector management and is a member of NICVA’s executive and the SEN. He is on the Awards panel of the British Urban Regeneration Association. Paul has been CEO of Ashton for 15 years.

Anne Donaghy
Chief Executive, Ballymena Borough Council

Anne has been Chief Executive of Ballymena Borough Council since January 2009.

She has a rich background of experience across Local Government, and for many years has successfully fulfilled a range of posts from front line services delivery, to strategic planning.

She sits on a number of regional and UK steering bodies dealing with issues such as Community Planning, Emergency Planning, the Built Environment, Organisational Development and Employee Well-being to name but a few.

Anne is a member of the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives (SOLACE), the Institute of Directors (IOD), a member of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health and Institute of Public Health.

Anne’s vision for public service is embedded within a Community Planning approach and believes that public services should be delivered in a joined up integrated and collaborative way.  Anne continues to work in a number of Community Planning Partnerships to deliver this vision e.g. Northern Ireland Children and Young Peoples Strategic Partnership, Northern Ireland Vulnerable Adults Partnership and she Chairs the Mid & East Antrim and Causeway Cluster Community Planning Public Health Pilot.