Our leadership team

Until he joined SIA in 2019, Nik had worked his whole life in the humanitarian field across Africa, the Caribbean, South America and South Asia. International development is Nik’s passion. He helped to build an award-winning global model enabling young people to lead humanitarian efforts in their own nations. That even led to 2,000 young Sierra Leoneans gaining expert frontline roles to tackle the Ebola Crisis in 2014-16. Nik lives a breezy 35-minute bike ride from our HQ in Milton Keynes. When not attending to his two children, you’ll often see him watch the topsy-turvy fortunes of his beloved Stoke City FC. On the last count Nik has lived in, worked in or visited 74 countries.

Svetla started in 2018 and leads a team to look after our workforce and manage every aspect of our resources. She’s an ACCA-qualified accountant and a charity finance specialist. Her motivations are about leading change so that people can ultimately work better in organisations. When not making our office run like clockwork and overseeing IT, legal and governance, Svetla spends quality time with her husband, three children and resident cat. A keen traveller, she loves being in nature and outdoors – and has a thirst to learn about other cultures while exploring the world.

Anna oversees our fundraising activities and drives excellent relationships with our partners. 

She has over 20 years’ fundraising experience in the voluntary sector, having worked for a range of health, youth, education and disability charities. Originally from a commercial background, Anna’s volunteering in Africa changed her priorities and she subsequently joined the charity sector. A qualified dog agility instructor, in her spare time Anna competes in dog agility competitions. Her great-grandfather won the Irish Grand National in 1905 on a horse called Red Lad.

For 40 years Mark has practiced as an engineer and designer. He became spinal cord injured at T10 after a motorbike accident and since then he has been a director for BDP, the UK’s largest architectural practice, designing and winning awards internationally. During this time, he has mentored for BackUp Trust, served on various boards including the SIA 2018-2022, and for two years as non-executive director for an NHS trust in the East of England until joining SIA as director of programmes in 2023.

With adult children having flown the nest, he now has the time to indulge his love of the arts and can be found frequenting the galleries, cinemas, and music venues in and around his home city of Cambridge.

Kerryn is the head of the Frank Williams Academy and has worked in health information, education and service delivery for over 20 years, with people-centred causes always close to her heart.

Beginning her career within the ambulance service, Kerryn is familiar with the broad array of services and settings where healthcare occurs. She then went onto join St John Ambulance as head of education and quality. Kerryn delivered their covid vaccine programme, whereby she managed the recruitment and mobilisation of 30,000 volunteers in 7 months to NHS quality standards. During 2022 she worked at Prostate Cancer UK to manage and implement their improvement programmes for over 150 clinicians. In that time, she secured funding to make the programme self-sustaining, which ultimately led to the improved care for more than 40,000 men across the UK.

She joined the SIA in 2023. In her role she is eager to continue improving the knowledge surrounding spinal cord injury, for all healthcare professionals across the different settings and disciplines of treatment and care.

In her spare time, Kerryn enjoys, martial arts, running, anything arty and photography.

Robyn oversees communications at SIA, including everything from print publications to digital media to press and member engagement, and is passionate about the power of storytelling.

Starting her career as a newspaper journalist, Robyn has interviewed a former Prime Minister and shadowed her local MP on HMS Ocean, off the coast of Portugal. She joins SIA following almost 20 years in higher education and healthcare where her focus has been on digital communications, including leading a team to win seven national awards in seven years for social media content campaigns, including best in-house team.

Outside of work, she’s the proud owner of Irish twins and an ageing cocker spaniel, and an avid reader of crime novels. She enjoys exploring new places and spending time outdoors.

Denise oversees fundraising at the SIA which includes trusts, corporate, individual giving, special events and community fundraising .

Denise has extensive commercial and charity sector experience worked internationally and in the UK. Before joining SIA Denise spent the previous 18 years working as the Head of Community Fundraising for the MND Association. She was a member of the fundraising management team and worked on iconic events including the Ice Bucket Challenge. During this time she built a team from 3 to 40 staff members, and together increased their fundraising income from £2 million to £16 million through mass participation and sporting events, as well as voluntary, digital fundraising and working with 89 branches.

Denise is passionate about the arts especially theatre and sings in her local choir. She loves traveling and enjoys learning to cook dishes from her travels. She is also an avid reader with eclectic taste ranging from thrillers to fantasy .

Dr. Dharshana Sridhar is a geneticist, medical doctor, and experienced public servant with expertise in socio-legal studies, public health and politics. She is Head of Public Affairs at the Spinal Injuries Association, leading national policy, and stakeholder engagement, and serves as a consultant advisor to the UK Government, a development advisor to UN Women, and Ambassador to the United Nations for the University of Oxford’s Centre for Hindu Studies. She is currently a member of the Timms Review Steering Group, helping to shape the first review of Personal Independence Payment of its kind, and the first attempt by the UK Government to co-produce a review at this scale.

She has over 22 years’ experience in senior government roles, including in the Prime Minister’s Office, advising successive Prime Ministers, leading the Policy and Programmes Unit, and serving on the Council for Science and Technology. Her wider experience includes the NHS, Doctors Without Borders, and acting as a UK spokesperson to the United Nations and World Health Organization. She is a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health, a visiting researcher at Cardiff University, and a visiting lecturer at Harvard University. Dharshana is Vice Chair of Trustees for Peterborough Women’s Aid, trustee of the Women’s Interfaith Network and Sri Gnanananda Giri Peetam, founder of Samraksha, and an advisor to the King’s Trust and Wellcome Trust.

Outside work, she enjoys reading biographies and political writing, writing poetry, attending the theatre, and horse riding and skiing.

Dave became spinal cord injured in 2008; his SCI was caused by a combination of Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS) and Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis (ADEM). These rare neurological disorders attacked his peripheral and central nervous systems respectively, causing damage to his spinal cord at T10.

Having benefitted hugely from the support of SIA whilst undergoing his rehab at Stoke Mandeville, Dave initially worked as a volunteer for us before being elected as a Trustee. He served 3 years on the board from 2011-2014, including 12 months as Vice-Chair, before standing down and becoming our vocational support manager. Three years later in 2017, Dave became campaigns manager and led on all our campaigning activities before being promoted to head of people and operations.

Dave has completed several fundraising challenges for us, including the London, Paris and Berlin Marathons and the London to Paris and Budapest to Vienna bike rides. He’s often to be found at Wembley or Twickenham indulging his love of sport, and has also (in his younger days) sailed around the world, having competed in the BT Global Challenge round-the-world yacht race.

Dan became spinal cord injured at T6 after an accident in Egypt. He returned to work two years later, as an access and partnerships officer in local government.

He now leads our advocacy and campaigns team, which is responsible for all of our campaigning work. Most recently he led the team to put SIA at the forefront of the Stop The Pressure campaign to highlight the risks of pressure sores for SCI patients.