Meet the leaders, futurists, strategists, catalysts.

Director

Jill Thorburn

She is a founder and Director of Mind Of My Own.

Jill has over 25 years of experience in social work leadership in children’s services and has always worked to develop revolutionary technology to improve practice.

Jill is the director of business development, retention and sustainability. She is responsible for all outward communications, including events. Jill takes a special interest in and oversees all marketing activity, particularly digital media.

Director

Yvonne Anderson

She is a founder and Director of Mind Of My Own.

Yvonne’s career has been spent in the public and voluntary sectors, across education, health and social care, working at national and international level.

Yvonne is the director of product development and as governance lead is responsible for financial and contractual probity, information security and quality assurance.

Non-Executive Director

Mary McKenna

Mary is a well known technology entrepreneur and angel investor.  She co-founded the very successful public sector focused e-learning company Learning Pool.

Non-Executive Director

Chand Chudasama

Chand is a strategy and corporate finance advisor. He is also a Partner at an accountancy and advisory firm and supports a portfolio of high–growth businesses.

Chief Executive

Hunter Jones

Hunter is currently heading up both our Account Management and Business Development teams. His focus supporting the Account Managers to ensure our customers receive the best experience possible, and helping the Business Development team to grow our community.

Hunter has been improving customer experiences for more than 13 years. Having implemented a range of software and services in many large, multi-national organisations, his focus turned to Tech4Good when he joined the Mind Of My Own team in 2016.

Operational Director –
Business Development (Maternity Leave)

Natalie Ward

Natalie directs the business development team in attracting new customers and adding more organisations to the Mind Of My Own community. She leads on business and marketing in the operational board.

Natalie has over 15 years sales experience from market leading tech companies, and moved to Mind Of My Own to help deliver their mission in tech4good.

Director – Australia & New Zealand

Rachel Mackay

Rachel oversees all business development in Australia and New Zealand, attracting new customers by aligning our apps with the needs of multiple organisations that provide services to children.

Rachel has worked in New Zealand social services for over 20 years as a social worker, manager and changemaker.  She is passionate about strengthening the safety and wellbeing of children, youth and their whānau and about finding ways to creatively leverage technology to help do this.

Business Development Lead (Maternity Leave)

Susy Carioni

Susy specialises in developing business within small to medium organisations that provide residential and fostering services. She also engages with local authorities to subscribe to our apps.

Born and raised in Italy, she moved to the UK in her mid-twenties. 

Susy comes from a not-for-profit background, she loves supporting customers and helping people.

Business Development Lead

Louise McGinty

Louise’s specialist role is engaging with schools and departments for children with additional needs, developing our business in the education sector and adding to the diversity of our community. She also engages with local authorities to subscribe to our apps. 

Louise has worked in education for 14 years as a former teacher and SENCo, working in a variety of educational settings including Special Needs Support Units (SNSU). She is passionate about ensuring all young people have the opportunity to have their voices heard. 

Business Development Lead

Olly Mellor

Olly specialises in expanding our community with local authorities, fostering agencies and residential homes. Originally from a tech sales background in the HR space, he made the move to Mind Of My Own in 2022. He is passionate about empowering young people and supporting our mission of advancing universal children’s rights.

Business Development Lead

Barry Lavis

Barry is originally from the corporate wellness space specialising in lead generation after previously working as a strength and conditioning coach for professional athletes in the US and Germany; he has a strong passion for mental health awareness and volunteering and will look to expand our reach and build a community within local authorities, sports teams, fostering agencies and care homes.

Business Development &
Community Coordinator

Fin Henderson

Fin runs the SHOUT programme, linking with organisations that are interested in buying, working alongside them to create effective consultations, running the surveys and creating the reports.

Fin is a student gaining experience at Mind Of My Own in business operations and communications. His previous experience has been in managing music events and has even been on tour with the Gypsy Kings.

Digital Marketing Assistant

Elspeth Coutts

Elspeth coordinates all our digital marketing, creating content for all our social media accounts; Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Originally from a design background, Elspeth has experience delivering social media strategy, visual content, graphic design and copywriting for a range of companies and startups, from textiles to tech.

Account Manager

Charlotte Brannigan

Charlotte manages all the customer accounts in the North of England. She takes a lead in implementing Xchange, our youth justice app.

Charlotte has been an account manager for just over 14 years, prior to that she was a travel agent. She was born in Chester, but grew up in Yorkshire with frequent visits to Madrid.

Account Manager

Melissa Hull

Melissa manages all the customer accounts in Scotland, Wales and the Channel Islands. She is also the editor of the Mind Of My Own blog pages.

Melissa worked for many years in business development and account management for various law firms. She has a voluntary background in youth work with Barnardo’s.

Account manager

Rebecca Kirby

Rebecca manages the customer accounts in the South of England and takes a lead for the organisation in overseeing all the practitioner training, including train the trainer.

Community and Engagement lead

Henry Wells

Henry leads on building our community through engagement as he believes having a positive community with young people champions and top workers is extremely beneficial.

Henry’s experience comes from being an Ambassador for Gloucestershire County Council in which he and the team used their experience of the care system to drive change within children services. Henry isn’t in care but his family have been fostering for 15 years and he has seen first hand the importance of giving children a voice.

Account Manager

Alex Hurst

With a background in Psychology and mental health support, Alex has worked for a variety of international organisations to build strong partnerships and deliver meaningful products and services. Alex has relocated to the UK after six years in the United States, and supports customers in their journey to implement and use Mind Of My Own with young people.

Account Manager – New Zealand & Australia

Sarah Gray

Sarah manages customer accounts for Aotearoa/New Zealand and Australia.

Sarah has worked in education and social services for over 30 years and joins Mind of My Own, after ten years managing an NGO programme in Aotearoa New Zealand. She is passionate about child-centric best-practise delivery that ensures tāmāriki, rangatahi and whanau are well-supported.

Finance Manager and Business Support Co-ordinator

Amanda Mieras

Amanda’s role is to run the company’s day to day finances, using accounts software, invoicing and arranging payments. Linked to this she oversees all contracting and ensures that agreements are signed, dated and logged. Amanda runs the support desk and is spearheading the quality management system that will lead to certification with ISO9001.

Born in the Middle East, educated in the UK, having lived in Kent for 40 years has relocated to The Cotswolds, having had 2 jobs whilst in Kent she is now concentrating on where her heart is in Mind of My Own and making preserves and chutneys.

Account Management & Information Security Officer

Roz Allan

Roz’s responsibilities are to manage our information security management system, ensuring continued certification with ISO27001 and its links to ISO9001. She also organises all implementations of new customers and trains their staff on service portal security.

Account Management & Information Security Officer

10 years Team Leader experience in a call centre environment supporting highest level of care to both internal and external customers.

Product Director

Tom Cella

Tom leads on all aspects of producing our apps, from the findings of user research through to managing the development sprints. He also is the Account Manager for all CareTech services using Mind Of My Own.

Tom has experience working in criminal justice, delivering and managing digital products and programmes in UK prisons.

Design Lead – Service Design

Vinishree Solanki

Vinishree is responsible for user research through co-production, service design and user experience of all the Mind of My Own products.

Vinishree has over 16 years of multi-disciplinary design experience across service design, user experience design, industrial design and architecture. She has designed and delivered many digital products successfully which have wider impact on people & environment.

Expert Consultant and Trainer

Natalie Trentham

Natalie has worked in Children’s Social Care for over 35 years, working across sectors as a practitioner, senior manager and Ofsted Inspector.

Trainer

Avril Howarth

Avril has over 20 years experience as a senior manager in the fields of Education, Health and Social Care, the Voluntary and Community Sector.

Trainer

Jane Wheeler

Jane worked for 18 years within Children’s Services within both Early Help and Children’s Social Care leading on involving children and young people in decision making about their own lives and also on the services they receive.

Trainer

Megan Geddes

Megan has 12 years of experience in residential childcare and loves being involved in anything participation.

She became a trainer for Mind Of My Own nearly 4 years ago after her own organisation got the app and she was excited and interested to have a more direct role without the Mind Of my Own Team. Megan continues to be an operational lead in her organisation giving dual learning to those she is training in her sessions.

Trainer

Nicola Higham

Nicola has over 20 years experience working with children and families as a social worker manager and as a strategic lead in residential care

Trainer

Arlene Kyle

Before becoming a trainer for Mind Of My Own, Arlene was managing director for a residential childcare company that supported children and young people affected by trauma, abuse and neglect. She was responsible for 18 residential children’s homes and two schools across Scotland.