Dame Vera held the role of Victims Commissioner for England and Wales from 2019-2022 responsible for championing the interests of crime victims and witnesses and reviewing the operation of the Victims Code of Practice (the Code).

Dame Vera is the former Police and Crime Commissioner for Northumbria (2012-19).

She previously spent much of her working life as a criminal barrister. She was called to the Bar in 1975 and took silk in 2000. She served as Labour MP for Redcar from 2001 to 2010. She was a Government Minister from 2006 to 2010 and Solicitor General from 2007 to 2010 – the House of Common’s most senior law officer. As Solicitor General she was closely involved in criminal justice policy and legislation and is particularly proud of her role in taking the Equalities Act 2010 through its House of Commons stages

In 2017 she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) for services to women and equality.

Almudena has almost 20 years’ experience gained across the private, public, regulatory and charity sectors.

She joined Ofcom in 2023 as the Online Safety Policy Director with responsibility for child protection. She has worked at Google as global lead on child safety public policy where she advised on how to create safer and more age-appropriate experiences for children, including from sexual abuse and exploitation.

Prior to her role at Google Almudena worked at the NSPCC, where she led its public policy team and championed legal reform to help bring about better protections for children. She also held policy roles at the Department for Education, Cabinet Office and the Prime Minister’s strategy unit.

She jointly leads Ofcom’s Online Safety Policy Development unit, with a focus on developing and implementing policy and regulatory tools relating to online protection for children and safer experiences online for women and girls.

ACC Dee Perkins is the Strategic Programme Director for the Soteria Joint Unit.  She brings with her 28 years of experience in policing and is seconded from Bedfordshire Police, where she was Head of Crime and Public Protection.

Having joined Hertfordshire Constabulary in 1996, she has worked across numerous portfolios including public protection, professional standards and serious and organised policing, spending six years on the Eastern Region Specialist Operations Unit.

In 2015 she returned to public protection in Herts before an 18-month secondment to Essex heading up a strategic change programme.

Dee returned to working across the public protection portfolio in Herts until 2020 when she transferred to Bedfordshire Police as their Head of Crime and Public Protection.

Dee has a master’s degree in business and organisational strategy and is passionate about societal issues impacting upon women, having written her dissertation on the impact policing culture has on the decision to arrest a female offender.

While in force she was the strategic lead for VAWG, victims and witnesses, investigation standards and the chair of Bluebell, a support group for police officer/staff victims of inappropriate sexual misconduct.

Externally she worked within the community at grass roots level to influence and change policy that impacts hard to hear communities and developed the ‘Be Heard’ project.

Despite being seconded to the NPCC since August 2023, Dee remains operational as both a strategic firearms commander and public order, public safety gold commander for Bedfordshire.

Harriet is the founder and director of  the Centre for Women’s Justice and a solicitor of 25 years experienced who worked for many years with renowned civil liberties firm, Birnberg Peirce Ltd. She is the winner of the Liberty Human Rights Lawyer of the Year award 2014, Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year 2018 for public law and Law Society Gazette personality of the year 2019.  She has acted in many high profile cases around violence against women including on behalf of women who challenged the police and parole board in the John Worboys case, women deceived in relationships by undercover police officers and on behalf of women appealing murder convictions for killing abusive partners, most recently Sally Challen and Farieissia Martin. She is also founder member of the campaign group, Justice for Women and trustee of the charity, the Emma Humphreys Memorial Prize. 

Professor White has been the Medical Director of the Institute for Addressing Strangulation since it was established in October 2022. Prior to that she was the Clinical Director of the Saint Mary’s Sexual Assault Referral Centre, Manchester, UK for 19 years, having started as one of the forensic physicians in 1995 specialising in the examination of women, men, and children where there has been an allegation of rape or sexual assault. She continues to undertake clinical forensic medical examinations. She has provided expert evidence on behalf of both the prosecution and the defence. 

She has been a UN Consultant on Sexual Violence and has been involved in a UNODC Project involving the establishment of sexual assault services in Palestine, 2012 –2018 and as of 2016 was also involved with a similar UN project in Egypt. 

Professor White has written and published widely on the topic of clinical forensic medicine, sexual violence & non-fatal strangulation. 

Professor White has been heavily involved in raising awareness of the dangers of non-fatal strangulation. Her research in this area was used as evidence for a successful call to change the law regarding strangulation in England and Wales. 

Claire Waxman OBE is the Victims’ Commissioner for London, and since her appointment by the Mayor of London in 2017 has undertaken an ambitious programme of work. Claire works alongside victims, amplifying their voice and promoting their interests throughout the criminal justice journey; ensuring their experiences are used to inform and shape practices, policies, and service provision.

Her achievements in the role include convening London’s first ever Victims’ Summit; publishing the Victims Code of Practice Review and London Rape Review; holding a series of roundtables to better understand the experiences of specific groups of victims; and successfully lobbying for key changes to the Domestic Abuse Bill.

She recently published the London Stalking Review 2024 Report, commissioned especially to investigate the Metropolitan Police’s response to stalking in London.

Claire was awarded an OBE in the 2022 New Year’s Honours for services to victims of crime.

Emma is a registered, practicing Social Worker with over 20 years’ experience of working in the field of Child Protection.  Emma has worked in both the statutory and voluntary sector; including various Local Authorities, Rape Crisis, The Centre of Expertise in Child Sexual Abuse and The Lucy Faithfull Foundation.  Emma is an expert witness for family courts, completing complex parenting and risk assessments.  She is also trained in Psychodynamic Therapy and has recently become a Trustee of StopSO, a specialist treatment organisation for perpetrators and survivors of sexual offending.  The specially trained therapists work with those at risk of turning thought into action, through a range of counselling interventions.

I am the founder/Director of Silenced, an organisation delivering accredited training, consultation, and research to support professionals addressing child-to-parent abuse. With over a decade of direct experience in family violence and a background in community development,  I also serve as an independent social worker/ Practice Educator,  and sessional risk assessor conducting risk assessments for the Family Court’s DVIP-Waythrough team. Formerly a practitioner and manager at DVIP, I supported men and young people exhibiting abusive behaviour and managed the YUVA team, assisting families facing child-to-parent abuse. I was employed as the violence against women and girl’s operations manager chairing daily safeguarding meetings a multi-agency risk assessment conference (MARAC). I have contributed to, delivered and managed innovative interventions with families who have experienced violence and abuse.  I am currently co-chair for the Drive racialised communities’ advisory group, and I am part of a research team commissioned by MOPAC to explore adult child to parent abuse and the VRU to evaluate the efficacy of child to parent abuse programmes. The families and individuals I have worked with have experienced multiple disadvantages and barriers to engagement and have informed my specialist knowledge in domestic abuse.

Naana is a feminist gender justice activist and current Executive Director of FORWARD, a pioneering organisation led by and for African women. FORWARD seeks to transform responses to addressing multiple forms of violence against women and girls including female genital mutilation.  With a wealth of experience globally and locally, Naana champions gender justice, young women’s leadership, and the wellbeing of African women and girls.  She is a passionate trainer, researcher and mentor.  Naana received an MBE in 2009 from the Queen for “services to Human Rights Issues for Women”. Naana has served as a trustee on a number of development organisations and was co-founder of the End FGM European Network, which advocates for ending FGM in Europe.

Michael Conroy is founder/director of Men At Work CIC, which trains professionals in multiple sectors (including Education, Social Work, Early Help, Mental Health, Youth Justice and Youth Work) in having constructive dialogues with boys and young men about what the world invites them to believe, do and want – as men – and the implications this has for women and girls. The work is strengths-based and founded on developing the twin capacities of critical thinking and empathy. Since 20021 almost 3000 professionals have taken part in the ’12 Dialogues’ training and many have facilitated regular, ongoing sessions with boys and young men of diverse demographics in a wide range of settings

Dr Tamasine Preece is Curriculum Lead for Health and Wellbeing at a secondary school in South Wales where she designs and delivers a flexible and adaptable curriculum in response to the rapidly changing technological landscape and as well as her interactions and interventions with children.