Graham Allen

Graham Allen is a partner in Marriott Gibbs Rees Wallis, Chartered Certified Accountants, in Sheffield. Graham trained as a Chartered Accountant with a ‘big four’ accountancy firm after university, where he read law, and has since had wide experience of working in industry and in private practice.
His career has brought him into close contact with a very wide variety of commercial, industrial and charitable organisations.
Graham was born in Chingola, Zambia. He came to live in England as a teenager and subsequently went to Sheffield University. His family originally came from Sheffield and his grandfather emigrated to South Africa in 1904. Graham has spent his career working in South and West Yorkshire and, in particular, in Sheffield. He is a keen gardener and hill walker and a life-long supporter of Sheffield Wednesday Football Club, his family connections with Sheffield Wednesday going back more than one hundred years. He is married, with a son and daughter.

Avinoam Armoni

Born in Jerusalem Avinoam Armoni is a graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Faculty of Law and has an MPA from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University where he studied as a Wexner Fellow.
Avi has had a lifelong impact on many organisations throughout the world. He was the founder and Chairman of Yedid, Israel’s largest democracy and empowerment programme, he has served as Chairman on the Boards of The Technological College of Beer Sheva and the B’nai B’rith Residential Treatment Centre in Jerusalem and was also a Board Member of Matan (United Way of Israel). He is an immediate past Vice President for external relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. As well as the above he has been a strategic consultant and advisor to a number of organisations, mainly in the academic and voluntary sector. As Executive Director in Israel of the New Israel Fund from 1991 to 1997 he managed and developed its programmes in Israel, oversaw grant making activities, fundraised and represented the organization internationally. During his period at The New Israel Fund the Fund grew from being a $5 million to a $17 million a year organisation.
Avi has lectured extensively in Israel and abroad on strategic planning for resource development, Israeli civil society and the development of social responsibility within the business sector in Israel. Over the years he has developed an extensive network of contacts throughout the world and specifically in the USA where he has frequently been invited to speak.
Avinoam Armoni is currently serving as an adviser to the Edmond J Safra Philanthropic Foundation.

Helen Purnelet

Helen has worked in the City for nearly 20 years, firstly as a solicitor and then as an investment banker, with a number of leading banks, advising companies on mergers and acquisitions and corporate strategy.

She is currently a ‘hands-on’ charity trustee of The Royal Wanstead Children’s Foundation, where she is primarily involved in marketing and strategy, Combat Stress where she is a member of the strategy and the fundraising sub-committees and the National Society for Epilepsy.

Emma Harrison

Emma Harrison is founding Chairman of Trustees and a well-known, charismatic and respected entrepreneur. Emma has a unique approach to leadership, seeing her role as being to ‘inspire, encourage and elevate’. It is this philosophy along with her principle of ‘doing well by doing good’ to improve people’s lives that has seen her turn a small regional training provider, A4e, into an international, multi award winning company and her reason behind creating The FSI.

Emma has supported charitable causes for many years through her businesses such as Novantia, which sponsors schools in Southern India and through her role as Chairman of the NSPCC’s Regional Full Stop Appeal where Emma played a prominent role in helping them reach the fund raising target of £50m.

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