Governance
Our Advisors
Our Young Leaders guide every action we take; from identifying the need for new strands of after-school classes, crisis support, and collaboration projects to advising us on how we can best fulfil our role as committed allies. Our whole organisation is lead by their needs and those of their peer group (both expressed and observed). Our directors, trustees, and staff members sign on to supporting and working with PFP with this principle deeply understood: the young people always come first.
Our Trustees
Anne Benedict (Chair)
Tamzin Aitken
Keisha Crooks
Alison Griffin
Julia Beart
Harmin Sijercic
Naomi Popli
Tamzin is a freelance arts manager, creative producer, and strategic consultant. She has extensive experience across the arts sectors, including theatre, opera, classical music and dance including working with Intermusica Artists’ Management, English National Opera, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Glyndebourne Opera, Wilton’s Music Hall, and the Royal Opera House. Tamzin is passionately committed to supporting the rights of all people, and successfully galvanised the music industry in January 2018, producing fundraising concert ‘A Child of Our Time’ at the Royal Festival Hall in aid of the Refugee Council's Children’s Section. Having worked with Play for Progress (which participated in the event), she is thrilled to be on the board and to support the organisation in its development.
Keisha joins Play for Progress as a trustee to support the organization's mission of helping young people build and maintain positive well-being. With a wealth of experience in business development, engagement, and executive support, Keisha brings strategic insight to help deliver the organization's objectives.
Known for her consultative management style, Keisha adds value to the leadership team by encouraging data-driven decision-making to maximize impact and scale. Her background in financial services and education, combined with a strong passion for diversity and inclusion, aligns perfectly with the mission of Play for Progress. Additionally, Keisha’s interest in the creative arts makes her excited to be part of an organization dedicated to fostering both personal and creative growth in young people.
Alison works as Head of Influencing on conflict and humanitarian issues at Save the Children UK, where she leads a team to influence policymakers and galvanise the public to take action. She’s passionate about building power alongside children and those with lived experience to make change. Previously she’s led communications and fundraising at Refugee Action and before that spent time working on local advocacy projects in West Africa with Action Aid Senegal. As a keen pianist she knows the power of music in helping young people feel like themselves again and is really pleased to be able to support the Play for Progress team at such a vital time in UK politics and culture.
A long-standing member of the team at Freedom from Torture, Harmin is a Music Therapist in the Children, Young People and Family Team, where he has developed a strong insight into the complex psychological and practical needs of young people who have experienced significant trauma. Having arrived in the UK as a refugee from Bosnia in 1992, he soon started working as an interpreter and then caseworker in Newcastle and later in Birmingham. Having grown up surrounded by music at home, and being a keen pianist, he now uses the medium of music to help heal others of their trauma and rebuild their lives.
Julia is a strategist, facilitator and changemaker who founded Pragmatic Radicals as a route to working with a diverse range of social justice organisations. She is also exploring and convening around routes to a just transition through the Climate Migration Collaborative. Prior to this, Julia was CEO at Primary Care International, a social enterprise working at the intersection of migration and health.
Naomi is a theatre producer and charity executive. She has worked at a number of major UK theatres, and as producer for internationally renowned theatre company Complicité. It was during this time that she first visited the Calais ‘Jungle’ refugee and migrant camp in 2015 and began to combine her arts experience with humanitarian work. She is currently Executive Director of Good Chance, an arts and human rights charity created out of the belief that art has a pivotal role to play in humanitarian crises. Good Chance now collaborates with refugee artists across all art forms and runs a range of programmes which bring together local people with refugees and asylum seekers across three interlinked strands of artistic work. Naomi believes passionately in the power of art to transcend borders and barriers and amplify important through often unheard voices, and she is delighted to support the Play for Progress team and their vital work with these exceptional young people.
Anne is an experienced corporate and charity executive who has led organisations across many sectors including media, technology and health care, with particular expertise in people and human resources.
She most recently spent 20 years in New York where she led a non-profit called Futures and Options which was aimed at career development opportunities for underserved inner city youth.
She has seen firsthand the need for this crucial work in our society today and the impact this creative and compassionate approach has for unaccompanied refugee and asylum-seeking young people and is excited to lead and support this team and the organisation going forwards.”
Our Co-Founders
Anna MacDonald
Alyson Frazier
Alyson is a London-based American orchestral and experimental freelance flautist who has had an active role in the commission and performance of over 100 pieces of new work, and who works with, among others, the Philharmonia, London Symphony Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, and London’s session orchestras. As a volunteer she worked in refugee camps at various stages of settlement, from long-established communities of Burmese people seeking refuge in Thailand and partially settled communities in Athens, to the transient hub of Calais. In 2013 she worked in Shey, Ladakh where she explored and developed educational tools and programmes that contributed to the creation of the Play for Progress model. She strives to combine her passions in socially impactful work and as such, is determined to expand the community of allies vulnerable young people impacted by trauma have to rely on, and to unite the arts industries in solidarity with and in celebration of our resilient, vibrant, and expressive, global community. We are, after all, one planet and one people who are inherently creative and in need of connection, community, love, and play.
Anna is a Scottish singer, writer, and medical doctor. Originally from Glasgow, she came to London to pursue her musical and creative professions. Her interest in music as a cornerstone of social and academic education has been life-long and has lead her into much philanthropic work. Having worked in A&E departments throughout the UK and traveled extensively with her music, Anna has seen the benefit of how seemingly small changes can make immense differences to people’s health and wellbeing. She was inspired to establish a foundation for children following a visit to the Children’s Orphanage of Erbil, Iraq in early 2014, which lead to the development of Play for Progress.
Our Team
Bridget Banda
Sharon Schofield
Alice Williamson
Theo Kostidakis
Bridget is our Executive Director who is a warm, energetic and inspirational leader. She brings innovation, creativity and radical love to the Play for Progress community of unaccompanied young people seeking sanctuary. sanctuary. A talented executive with senior management experience in the private and charity sector, Bridget models a compassionate and reciprocal approach to migration, centred on wellbeing, cohesion and solidarity. Bridget’s determination and passion to advocate for the rights of people stuck in the immigration system was born out of her own lived experience of the hostile immigration system
Sharon is our Finance and Operations Manager. She oversees our governance stewardship, financial checks and balances, and keeps a keen eye to ensure that our work remains sustainable.
Alice is our Head of Creative Programmes, she is a musician, artist, teacher, facilitator and organiser with a trauma-informed background and a love for community, individual expression and mental health support. Alice has been working with Play for Progress for 7 years, teaching instrumental lessons, leading workshops and facilitating public events - including performances at Royal Festival Hall, V&A, Queen Elizabeth Hall.
Theo is our Head of Therapeutic Service. He studied at The Royal School of Speech & Drama for his MA in Drama & Movement Therapy and has additional training in Systemic Psychotherapy and Counselling and an MA in architecture. He is also a shadow puppeteer, in Greek traditional shadow theatre.
Theo works in private practice offering dramatherapy sessions to adults and children. He has worked extensively with children of all ages, often with complex and multiple needs, offering culturally sensitive, trauma-informed therapy within school and colleges. Over the last eight years, Theo has worked with unaccompanied asylum-seeking young people as a drama facilitator and keyworker in Cyprus, as a Dramatherapist in Greece and the UK, and as the national manager of therapeutic services for separated children at the British Refugee Council.
As a drama facilitator and shadow theatre practitioner, Theo has delivered workshops and performances in Greece and Cyprus, with a focus on socially excluded children and families. He has also offered training and lectures on dramatherapy as a guest lecturer in various UK-based universities and has presented his work in many national and international conferences.
Zoe Illingworth - Head of Advocacy & Casework
Madeleine Prior - Casework & Advocacy Coordinator
Adam Abdlebagie - Casework Support and Young Leader
Ahmed Alzein - Casework Support and Young Leader
Amy Nicholls - Fundraiser
Karen Benjamin - English Tutor
Our Delivery Staff
See our roster of exceptional delivery staff by visiting each department’s listing on within our Services tab.