About Us: Meet the Team!

Please select a link below or scroll down to find out more about each team member:

Chief Executive: Anita Grover
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Anita became Chief Executive of AVUK in 2013. Before joining the charity, Anita had a successful career in the public sector. As a senior civil servant, she led communications on the government's disability, employers, pensions and poverty agendas, working with a succession of cabinet ministers, business leaders and third sector organisations. She has worked at the Department for Education; Department of Social Security and her last position was at the Department for Work and Pensions as Head of Communications Group. Anita is a Fellow of the Institute of Direct and Digital Marketing, trustee of Chiltern Citizens Advice Bureau and a governor of a primary school in Buckinghamshire. Anita is profoundly deaf after losing her hearing progressively from childhood and had successful cochlear implant surgery in 2006. She brings to the role personal insight into hearing impairment and a passion for improving the life chances of deaf children. Click here to e-mail Anita Grover

Our previous CEO and founder Jacqueline Stokes announced her retirement in late 2012.

Auditory Verbal Therapist: Catherine White BSc (Hons) SLT LSLS Cert. AVT®
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Catherine qualified as a Speech and Language Therapist at Manchester University in 2001. She worked with the Manchester Paediatric and Adolescent Cochlear Implant Programmes for three years and joined Auditory VerbalUK in 2004. Catherine certified as an Auditory Verbal Therapist in 2005 and is particularly interested in working with young babies.  Catherine is currently specialising in the assessment and treatment of oro-motor speech production difficulties using the PROMPT approach (Prompts for Restructuring Oral Muscular Phonetic Target) and has experience in the evaluation and management of feeding difficulties. She is passionate about improving services for families of children with hearing impairment and is on the advisory board for hearing impairment with the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists. Click here to e-mail Catherine White.

Auditory Verbal Therapist: Rosie Richardson BSc (Hons) SLT, Cert MRCSLT, PGDip Auditory Verbal Therapy, LSLS Cert. AVT®
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Rosie qualified as a Speech and Language Therapist in London at University College London.  She moved to Oxfordshire in September 2007 to join the team at Auditory Verbal UK. She qualified as an LSLS Certified Auditory Verbal Therapist in 2009, after training at Auditory VerbalUK. Rosie has undertaken training in the PROMPT (Prompts for Restructuring Oral Muscular Phonetic Target) technique for assessment and management of children with oro-motor speech production difficulties.  She lectures and delivers training in Auditory Verbal Therapy to parents and professionals across the UK. Click here to e-mail Rosie Richardson

Auditory Verbal Therapist: Susie Burden BSc (Hons) SLT, Cert MRCSLT, PgDip Auditory Verbal Therapy, LSLS Cert. AVT®
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Susie qualified as a Speech and Language Therapist in Leicester at De Montfort University. She lives in South Warwickshire and was delighted to join the team at AVUK in October 2008. In 2011 Susie qualified as a LSLS Cert. AVT®. Susie’s previously worked in various roles within Local Government (including; Education, Environment and Economy, Treasury, Revenue and Customer Services and Human Resources). Susie is keen to bring the knowledge and experience gained during her previous employment to her role at AVUK and is particularly interested in partnership working with external organisations. Click here to e-mail Susie Bones

Auditory Verbal Therapist: Louise Hönck SLT, PgDip Auditory Verbal Therapy, LSLS Cert. AVT®
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Louise qualified as a Speech-Language Therapist and Audiologist at the University of Pretoria in South Africa in 2003.  She completed her masters degree in Speech-Language Therapy and Audiology a year later.  She came to the UK in 2004 and has since worked as both an Audiologist and Speech-Language Therapist in various NHS departments across the country.  She completed the PGDip in Auditory Verbal Therapy at the University of Aston in 2011.  She works part-time at AVUK as well as part-time in the NHS as a Specialist Speech-Language Therapist in Hearing Impairment. Louise Certified as an LSLS Auditory Verbal Therapist in 2012. Click here to e-mail Louise Hönck

Auditory Verbal Therapist and Research Co-ordinator: Sarah Hogan DPhil, CS (Audiology), PGDip Auditory Verbal Therapy LSLS CertAVT®
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Sarah Hogan is an experienced paediatric audiologist with over 20 years' experience. She was the director of the Burwood Centre for 5 years and joined Auditory Verbal UK in March 2006. Sarah is a Certified LSLS Auditory Verbal Therapist and our research co-ordinator. Click here to e-mail Sarah Hogan.

Auditory Verbal Therapist: Joyce Lew, CPSP PGDip Spec Ed (AVP) LSLS CertAVT®
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Joyce qualified as a speech-language therapist from the University of Sydney in 2005. She worked primarily in a cochlear implant team at a public hospital in Singapore until very recently when she moved to London 2012. Joyce acquired training in auditory-verbal therapy through a range of different programs including a postgraduate diploma in special education (auditory-verbal practice) at the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children (University of Newcastle) in Sydney. She qualified as a certified auditory-verbal therapist in 2010 and has also had experience in working with preschoolers and school-aged children who have communication disorders of mixed aetiology, including auditory processing disorder. She was also an adjunct lecturer and tutor at the speech-language therapy training course at the National University of Singapore. Joyce joined AVUK in January 2013. She is currently also undertaking research on the efficacy of auditory-verbal therapy with the University of Sydney as well as the National University Hospital (Singapore).’ Click here to e-mail Joyce Lew.

Auditory Verbal Intern: Vicky Watermeyer, SLT, Cert MRCSLT, Audiologist, PGCert Hearing and Development
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Vicky Watermeyer qualified as a Speech and Language Therapist and Audiologist at the University of Pretoria in 2002. In 2004, she relocated to the UK, where she worked for 2 years as an adult Audiologist in various NHS settings. From 2006, she worked at the Portland Hospital in London, initially in the diagnostic Audiology team and from 2007 onwards, as an Audiologist on their Cochlear Implant program. During this time, she attended day courses at AVUK; completed the Post Graduate Certificate in Hearing and Development at Aston University in 2009 and later attended the training and mentorship program, “Working Through Audition” at the AVUK London Centre. Vicky was thrilled join the team at AVUK in October 2012 as an Auditory Verbal Intern and is now working towards LSLS certification! Click here to e-mail Vicky Watermeyer.

Family Liason Officer: Isobel Weller BA, MSc, CQSW, Registered Social Worker
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Isobel is a qualified social worker and before joining AVUK was manager of 2 children’s centres and a family support project in Swindon. She has worked in Taralye, Australia supporting families with hearing impaired children, and at Mary Hare School as a family liaison officer and module leader on the Oxford Brookes/Mary Hare post graduate teacher of the deaf diploma. This is second time around working with Jacqueline, and Isobel is delighted to be back as part of a growing team! Click here to e-mail Isobel Weller

Administration Manager: Rachel French
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Rachel joined Auditory VerbalUK in January 2007 and has over 25 years’ experience working as an executive PA and administration manager. She is responsible for all things administrative, from organising the schedules and managing appointments, to personnel administration and day-to-day facility management including health and safety, systems processes and IT. Rachel also carries out all the administration involved in organising and running our training packages and schedule of short courses. As well as being the voice you’re most likely to hear when you phone us, Rachel does countless jobs behind the scenes to ensure that the charity runs smoothly and is known to be quite handy with a screwdriver and hammer! Click here to e-mail Rachel French

Development Officer: Hannah Burnham
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Hannah graduated from the University of York in 2007 with a degree in History. She then completed a short course on working in the voluntary sector with NCVO and worked as an intern at Christian Aid's International headquarters in London before joining Auditory VerbalUK in April 2008. As Development Officer, Hannah is responsible for fundraising and helping with the general development of the charity. Click here to e-mail Hannah Burnham

Fundraising & Communications Assistant: Lucy Noble
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Lucy graduated from the University of Sheffield in 2012 with a degree in Chemistry. At University, she was part of the Sheffield RAG (Raising and Giving) committee for two years which involved raising money for local charities. After a summer working as an intern in the Corporate Planning department at Action on Hearing Loss she joined AVUK in November 2012. As Fundraising and Communications Assistant, Lucy is your main contact person for community fundraising and sponsored events. Click here to e-mail Lucy

Board of Trustees

Chair: Rod Walker DL
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Rod Walker was educated at Huddersfield, New College followed by University College, Oxford. Rod was Headteacher at The Henry Box School in Witney. He has been a teacher in Oxfordshire secondary schools for over thirty-five years. He was a founder member and is a Trustee of the Oxfordshire Independent State Schools Partnership (OISSP), which was set up in 1997. He was appointed as a Deputy Lieutenant of Oxfordshire in March 2007.

Zia Arden
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Zia Arden is the mother of a young daughter who was born with a sensori-neural hearing loss and who has been on the AV programme since she was three and a half months old. Zia was born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, she moved to Kenya as a young child and her family still live in Kenya. Zia is a barrister. She read law at UCL and has an LLM in international corporate and commercial transactions. She has been at Enterprise Chambers, Lincoln's Inn, London for all her working life. Zia specialises in Landlord and Tenant (commercial, residential and agricultural) and Property Litigation, although her practice has covered all area of Chancery work, including Trusts. She is a co-editor of the Landlord and Tenant Factbook. Zia recently retired as a trustee of the Breast Cancer Campaign.

Dominic Byrne
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Dominic is the father of a young daughter who was born profoundly deaf. He has a background of senior management positions in the charity sector and now runs his own management and marketing consultancy, The Bigger Picture Consultancy. Prior to becoming an independent consultant he was a Board Director at Band & Brown Communications, a leading consumer PR agency, and headed in-house communications functions at Save the Children, Shelter and ActionAid. His consultancy counts PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Arts Council of England, the Environment Agency, the IDeA (Improvement and Development Agency for local government) and the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux among its clients. He advised on the name change of the National Schizophrenia Fellowship to Rethink. Other clients include Nuffield Hospitals, Macmillan Cancer Relief and the Parkinson's Disease Society. As well as having senior management experience inside the charity sector with organisations such as Shelter and Save the Children, he has been a trustee of the One World Broadcasting Trust and a volunteer adviser on the marketing committee of Care International UK.

Elizabeth Mills OBE
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Elizabeth Mills runs public affairs consultancy, Éminence Grise, which provides strategic development, research and fundraising support for a range of voluntary sector organisations. Clients have included DISCS Foundation, Friends of the Elderly, BUPA Care Services, the UK Age Research Forum. She is a visiting Fellow of the University of Northampton and on the Advisory Committee for the Aston Research Centre for Healthy Ageing. She is Honorary Director of Homeshare International, promoting the exchange of accommodation for companionship around the world. She was Director, Research into Ageing (the UK national medical research charity) from 1990 until 2001 when she led the charity into full merger with Help the Aged (now AgeUK). In 2000, she was awarded the British Society for Research on Ageing "Lord Cohen of Birkenhead Medal for Services to Gerontology" and in 2002 she was awarded the OBE in the Queen's Jubilee Honours for "services to ageing research". Her voluntary activities include serving as a trustee of AVUK as well as Homeshare International, Barchester Health Care Foundation and Bulldog Rescue and Re-Homing Trust. She chairs her local residents’ association in East Oxford and is actively involved with the Catholic church of St Aloysius, the Oxford Oratory.

ClaireCampbell
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Claire Campbell is the mother of a young daughter who was diagnosed with Auditory Neuropathy Spectrum Disorder at 18 months old and who has bilateral cochlear implants. The family has been on the AV programme since she was two years old. Until recently, Claire was a Senior Analyst for a FTSE-250 investment manager, specialising in new media and telecommunications. Claire's role also included responsibility for fundraising and investor relations and she was part of the team that grew the business to €5 billion under management in 10 years. Claire is a Director of an international recruitment consultancy and is Treasurer of the fundraising committee of a local independent school in Surrey. She became a trustee of AVUK in 2011.

Jacqueline Hill (JJ)
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JJ Hill is a mother of three young sons. JJ has a BA(Hons) in English and a MA in Classical Heritage. After graduating she spent a period of time working for Christie's in Rome before deciding she wanted to be a lawyer. She returned to London where she undertook the Graduate Diploma in Law and Legal Practice Course. JJ completed her training as a solicitor in the City. In 2001, JJ left the City and went to work for Tate galleries, an exempt charity and non-departmental public body. She remained Head of Legal for Tate until very recently. She is a school governor of 'Chelsea Open Air Nursery School and Children's Centre' where she has particular responsibility for the smooth running of the Children's Centre. She became a trustee of AVUK in 2011.