Chair of Trustees
Rashik is the Leader of IBM’s European technical community and an IBM Distinguished Engineer.
He is currently advising clients on their cloud innovation roadmap from a technology and business perspective drawing on thirty-three years of practical experience in IBM. Rashik was appointed to the Leeds City Region Local Enterprise Partnership Board and chairs the business communications group. He is helping develop the innovation strategies to accelerate growth of this £55bn marketplace.
Rashik was previously President of IBM’s Academy of Technology. He has worked for financial, retail and manufacturing clients on IT transformation projects of all sizes. Overall, he specialises in ensuring the technical success of complex IT projects that transform business models.
Rashik was awarded an MBE as part of the HRH Queen Elizabeth’s 90th birthday honours for his contribution to business and innovation.
Trustee
Lindsey is principal of a general further education college in North Yorkshire. A native of Leeds, Lindsey has worked across a wide spectrum of education provision, with people of all ages and needs in a variety settings. Fundamentally, Lindsey is driven by the transformative nature of learning, and the massive benefits that it yields for the individual, businesses and the community.
Lindsey’s passions outside of work include chasing an egg-shaped ball around a rugby pitch, and singing tenor in the Manchester gay choir. One of these interests has seen Lindsey support some famous names, including Lulu and Alexandra Burke, but that’s a conversation for another time…
Trustee
David is a leadership development, business improvement and organisational change consultant who has advised organisations of all types in strategy, organisational development and individual growth. His early career was in international consumer-goods marketing and general management, leading businesses through periods of rapid growth and significant change, delivering ambitious targets and simultaneously developing the people around him. He has gained recent extensive experience in designing, developing and delivering learning programmes for participants of varying ages, organisational positions and sectors. He is a certified executive coach. He is involved in supporting two other charities, passionately follows football and other sport and enjoys literature and music.
Trustee
Anthea is a lawyer by profession and is a partner at the international law firm Eversheds Sutherland. Anthea has had a long career advising a huge variety of private and public sector organisations and trustee boards in relation to pension trusts. Outside of her professional career, Anthea’s interests are generally outdoor activities and she will often be found working in her garden (or polytunnel), walking with her dogs or competing with her horse, Blue.
Trustee
Jonathan Straight is a Yorkshire-based entrepreneur, writer, photographer and television presenter. In addition to sitting on IVE’s board of trustees He is currently a director of water saving NGO Waterwise and contemporary art gallery and learning space The Tetley. Jonathan is engaged as Brand Ambassador to Approved Food, a Sheffield-based food redistribution business. He is also involved with several charities including the international food waste campaigning charity, The Real Junk Food Project. Jonathan has invested in several start-ups, including solid-state photonic cooling business Inclusive Designs Limited where he chairs the board.
Through his business career, he is best known as the founder of Straight plc, the UK’s leading supplier of waste and recycling containers. 10 years after founding the business he floated it on the London Stock Exchange Alternative Investment Market. He exited the business in 2014 having led it for 21 years and having delivered more than 50 million recycling bins. At least half of the households in the country will have had at least one Straight product at some point in time.
Johnathan is a former winner of the EY Entrepreneur of the Year competition with a long-standing passion for entrepreneurship and is currently an Enterprise Ambassador for the Leeds University Business School.
Jonathan is a regular presenter on local television. He is currently working on a memoir of his career to date.
Contemporary Artist - IVE Board
Pippa Hale is a contemporary artist whose practice centres around social history and geography and her work includes large-scale installations both in heritage venues and the public realm.
Pippa studied at the University of Leeds. Her previous projects include ‘Consumption’ for Ripon Museums Trust; ‘Seat’ for Pannett Art Gallery (Whitby) with Arts & Hertiage, ‘Beyond The Dustheaps’ at the Dickens Museum (London); ‘Pool’ a temporary installation at Leeds International Pool commissioned by Leeds City Council and ‘North and South’ for Southampton Art Gallery.
Pippa recently returned to full-time practice after co-founding The Tetley Centre For Contemporary Art on South Bank, Leeds which was developed from a small-scale artist-led space into an award-winning gallery with trading arm.
Trustee
Professor Simon J. James is Professor of Victorian Literature in the Department of English Studies, Durham University. Simon is a specialist in Victorian and early twentieth-century fiction in particular, and in forms of narrative more generally. He was the Principal Investigator for the Durham Commission on Creativity and Education. A partnership between Arts Council England and Durham University, the Durham Commission investigated the benefits of teaching young people to be creative and to think creatively.
Simon is also the author of Unsettled Accounts: Money and Narrative Form in the Novels of George Gissing and Maps of Utopia: H. G. Wells, Modernity and the End of Culture and the co-editor of The Evolution of Literature and George Gissing and the Woman Question: Convention and Dissent. He has also edited books by Gissing and Wells, and written on Charles Dickens, Arnold Bennett, Marie Corelli and turn-of-the-century realism.
Chief Executive Officer
Rosi is responsible for providing organisational leadership and overseeing day to day business operations. Working closely with the Board of Trustees, Rosi leads on the strategic direction of IVE, with the help of the senior management team.
Rosi has clocked up thirty years’ of work experience. More than fifteen of those years were spent in further and higher education; designing HE curriculum and lecturing in the principles of design, the creative process and related critical studies to mainly undergraduates. Rosi has since held senior management positions in a number of arts and education organisations and within Cultural heritage and tourism. Although referring to herself as a ‘designer by nature and by trade’ Rosi’s MPhil thesis The Art of Survival took the idea of design-thinking into new realms and focused on how community participation in the creative process can affect behavioural change. A theme that stuck throughout Rosi’s career, applying it in different contexts. In 2008 whilst working in the strategic partnerships office at Hull University, Rosi convened a North of England conference at the Sage Gateshead entitled ‘Creativity – A Skill for Life?’ publishing a paper of the same name alongside in the Times Educational Supplement. Rosi arrived at IVE in June 2016 taking over the reins from the organisations retiring founder Pat Cochrane.
Rosi’s other qualifications include an HND in Interior Design a BA (Hons) in Museum & Exhibition Design, a Certificate in Post Compulsory Education, a Higher Education Teaching Certificate and NVQ Assessor Training Qualifications.
Outside of the day job Rosi is into property development and currently has three separate projects on the go. She enjoys ‘open water’ swimming (sometimes spotted in a wetsuit on the beach at Hunmanby Gap on the East coast of Yorkshire), veg gardening and (responsible) green-laning in a bright red Wrangler Jeep that she refers to as the ‘Fire Engine’. Rosi lives on a farm in North Yorkshire with partner Antony, a pack of Siberian Huskies and Tig the Jack Russell.
Email: Rosi@weareive.org
Associate Director
Sarah leads on the development of Creative Learning Programmes that develop the creative potential of talented and diverse young people, preparing them for the future. Sarah’s current focus is on the delivery of Applied Creativity Labs that cultivate creative thinking skills to enable young people to find innovative solutions to real world challenges, with a focus on different aspects of climate breakdown. Sarah is also developing high level partnerships; fundraising & securing new income to support the ongoing delivery & growth of IVE’s Creative Learning Programmes. She develops & delivers commercial training products and services including Unconscious Bias workshops and Inclusion & Diversity Labs.
Sarah’s expertise includes education (including film, media, primary & advisory teaching) coaching and leadership. She is also an experienced project, budget, people and events manager.
Her previous roles include: Cultural Education Director at IVE; Programme Director for North & West Yorkshire at CapeUK; Head of Learning at the National Media Museum; Head of Education at Eureka! The Museum for Children; Advisory Teacher for Photography and Media Education and Education Officer at the National Museum of Photography, Film & TV and Primary Teacher.
Sarah shares a love of musical theatre with her daughter and outside of work spends much of her time her daughter’s singing, dancing and acting development.
Email: Sarah@weareive.org
Associate Director
Drew spent 4 years acting professionally, before making the choice to go into higher education. He was fortunate enough to be able to combine study with performing throughout his degree and then into a career in teaching where he remained for 26 years; rising to the heady heights of Headteacher.
During this time his focus was on inspiring young people to love learning and to particularly seek-out their own passions and strengths. For most of his teaching career he was lucky to have roles whereby he was able to influence whole school and local authority strategy and therefore drove a focus that aimed to prepare students for employment and life after school as well as examinations. The reality was that by concentrating on the former, the latter generally took care of itself. He developed a depth of understanding, knowledge and expertise around creativity and how to teach it as a transferable skill so that it became a core competency that underpinned a person’s ability to learn and thrive in a modern and rapidly changing world.
Since joining IVE in 2013 he has been able to apply this passion across a wide range of sectors; developing and delivering training both nationally and internationally. Clients include; school leaders and teachers, army and senior police officers, nuclear engineers, senior leaders in Tech, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, builders, SMEs, the gaming development sector and university students. In addition to leading training, Drew is an experienced leadership coach and mentor and has over 20 years’ experience in governance across education, arts and culture, the third sector and business.
Although he ‘retired’ from full time employment in January 2021, he continues to work as an Associate Director with IVE.
Email: drew@weareive.org
Associate Director
Director of Skills and Employability, Chris Strong leads on our skills and employability programmes including the development of an IVE Apprenticeship Training Provider. He ensures career opportunities are a real option across a range of industries.
Chris is experienced in Partnership Development, Vision & Strategy, Programme Management, Skills and Further Education. He develops industry study programmes, employability programmes and ensures more diverse groups of people have access to a better range of careers.
Chris’s background is in music – he is a trustee at the youth music development charity NYMAZ and sits on the Mayor of Sheffield’s Music Industry Board.
Email: Chris@weareive.org
Finance Manager
Sharron is the guardian of the finances and the office, keeping us all on track with her master skills in using the Excel spreadsheet. She is the one that makes sure our bills and salaries get paid on time! Sharron has 15 years’ experience at CapeUK, now IVE starting as Finance Officer, studying for AAT qualification and working up to the position of Finance Manager.
She has 20 years’ experience as a Finance Assistant working in the Private Sector in both Mail Order and Freight Forwarding companies.
Sharron has always been in finance work with all her previous roles being as a finance assistant for various companies.
Her interests are mainly motorcycling and spending all her free time and holidays touring Europe with her partner who runs his own motorcycle tour company.
Email: Sharron@weareive.org
Artsmark Associate
Dave Herbert has been working in creative education for 24 years. He worked as a secondary Drama teacher in South Yorkshire for 16 years. Since then, he has been working to enable teachers, mainly primary teachers, to use creative approaches across the curriculum. Dave has been an Artsmark Associate with IVE for 4 of the last 6 years, and has a wealth of experience in helping schools through each stage of their Artsmark journeys.
Artsmark Associate
Aoibheann supports a network of educational settings to develop and celebrate their commitment to arts and cultural education and embed creativity across their whole curriculum, through Artsmark.
Originally from Northern Ireland and now based in Leeds, Aoibheann has been working in the arts and cultural sector for almost twenty years, with experience as a teacher, performer, consultant, practitioner, and manager in a multitude of different settings including theatres, hospitals, schools and communities. She has much experience in using theatre and drama as a catalyst to raise awareness about important issues, drive change and fully believes in the arts’ capacity to transform, illuminate and galvanise.
Her experience as a teacher and school governor has enabled Aoibheann to develop a detailed understanding of the challenges schools face but also about the incredible possibilities forging new partnerships and applying creative approaches can bring for young people and educators alike.
As a side note, Aoibheann also plays the Harp.
Programme Coordinator
Evangeline (Evie) is a Programme Coordinator for IVE, she oversees the successful delivery of IVE’s multiple, funded, creative education programmes and paid-for training services. Evangeline is also a practicing artist and member of the Working Class Creative database which aims to increase the number of working class people in creative industries. Evangeline graduated from Leeds Beckett University in 2020 with a BA Honours degree in fine art and from puppet making to constructing sensory spaces, Evangeline has a passion for creating opportunities for play and exploration. As an artist that puts interaction at the heart of her work she wants to support young people to engage in their creative journeys.
She is also influenced by the several years she worked for The Lego Company; gaining an insight to how young people learn through their creativity. This motivated her into wanting to contribute towards positive change in education settings. In her spare time she enjoys hiking, camping and forages throughout the year. Evangeline is hoping to one day buy a canal boat and set up an art studio for freelance artists and herself to use.
Email: evie@weareive.org
Hello! We are IVE. We’ve been around a long time now and we’ve got a real passion for creativity and the transformative power this has on people so they can reach their true potential. Creativity is not just about the arts but a life-long skill through which we can inspire and engage our young people.
We’re lucky to have an amazing staff team that are drawn from schools, colleges, universities, arts organisations as well as the private sector. They have a wealth of experience and expertise from the arts, creative, education and business sectors.
The one thing that unites all our staff is their passion and belief in the power of creativity to change lives. You can take a look at us here.
Join us – All our current vacancies are listed below and we are always looking out for talented people.
Chair of Trustees
Trustee
Trustee
Trustee
Trustee
Contemporary Artist - IVE Board
Trustee
Chief Executive Officer
Associate Director
Associate Director
Associate Director
Finance Manager
Artsmark Associate
Artsmark Associate
Programme Coordinator
All our current vacancies are listed below and we are always looking out for talented people. If you are interested in working with us but do not see the right vacancy, on an employed, freelance or volunteer basis, please get in touch with a copy of your CV.