Trustee

Professor Sabine Lee

Sabine is Professor of Modern History at the University of Birmingham. She is a specialist in the social consequences of armed conflict, and has published extensively on conflict-related sexual violence, children born of war (CBOW) and on unintended consequences of UN peacekeeping. Sabine has extensive experience in leading international partnerships and large collaborative projects. Her monograph Children Born of War in the 20th Century won the 2019 proxime accessit Social History Book Prize (UK).

Trustee

Dheeraj Akolkar

Dheeraj is an award-winning director and producer, and the founder of Vardo Films with experience of 15 years in making international fiction and non-fiction films. His work has received acclaim all over the world. Dheeraj started working with stories of children born of war in 2007 and has made three films on that subject so far. In 2021, Dheeraj teamed up with an Oscar-nominated production company, Sant og Usant, producer Anita Rehoff Larsen and activist Gerd Fleischer on one of his most ambitious films to date, titled The Other Side of Silence. This film focuses on stories of children born of conflict-related sexual violence in seven war zones: Germany, Bosnia, Uganda, Vietnam, Columbia, Iraq and Ukraine. The film is currently in production.

Trustee

Dr. Rachel Canty

Rachel has more than 15 years’ leadership and management experience in Higher Education. For the past 8 years, she has been Head of Operations in a large Higher Education unit with responsibility for strategy, governance, compliance, financial and HR processes, and managing administration and delivery of externally-funded activities, including a variety of international research projects. In previous senior management roles, she also was responsible for the management of quality assurance processes, including external partnerships and collaborative agreements.

Trustee

Dr. Karen Houghton

Karen has had a varied career, with professional experience in online publishing and US federal contracting, in addition to a short stint as an academic lecturer. For most of the past decade, Dr. Houghton has worked in academic research development, supporting researchers to secure research grants from UK, EU and international funders, and in research management, particularly to develop impact and engagement from their research, including partnership-building with stakeholders in a variety of sectors. She has held a variety of strategic planning roles and is an experienced people manager.

Trustee

Dr. Toni Smith

Toni Smith is a Research Fellow in History at the University of Birmingham. Her doctoral research focused on colonial histories of slavery and sexual and gender-based violence in Belgian Congo during the early twentieth century. Currently, she conducts research for the Peacekeeper Perpetrated Sexual Exploitation and Abuse Project, analysing training programmes aimed at peacekeepers on topics of gender and the Prevention of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA). She has several years of research and impact-related experience.

Trustee

Andy Canty

Andy Canty is the Director of Technology Services at Focused Education Resources Society, a not-for-profit organization supporting and strengthening K-12 education in BC, Canada. With over 25 years’ experience in technology leadership, Andy has focused his career on public education delivering safe and responsive technology solutions to empower students and educators. He has a wealth of knowledge and practical expertise in data governance, cyber security, platform integration, and cost-effective technical solutions. Andy is currently researching the potentials and pitfalls of Artificial Intelligence and related emerging technologies within the education sector.

Trustee

Lejla Damon

Lejla is a child born out of the war that occurred in Bosnia in 1992. She was adopted by two British journalists, who brought her back to the UK. She was 19 when she began her activism and has worked with different governmental and non-governmental organisations (UK's Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, War Child, Forgotten Children of War Association) to highlight the issues around sexual violence that women and their children face. She currently lives in Manchester and works as a Shopper Marketing & Kids Brand Manager for a fast-moving consumer goods company in the UK. She has a degree in Advertising BA (Hons) and a masters in Business Administration (MBA). She regularly goes back to Bosnia, as after 23 years she made a connection with her birth mother (a survivor), and they started on a journey of building a relationship together.

Associate

Professor Heide Glaesmer

Heide is a psychologist and psychotherapist (Cognitive-behavioural psychotherapy) by training. She is the deputy head of the Department of Medical Psychology and Medical Sociology at the University of Leipzig/Germany, where she is heading the Psychotraumatology and Migration Research Lab. 

She is a specialist in the psychological consequences of traumatic experiences, especially in conflict related sexual violence, in trauma in the context of war and forced displacement, and in Children Born of War. Her scientific work is reflected in more than 300 scientific publications and has recently been awarded with the Ralf-Dahrendorf-Award for the European Research Area.

Trustee

Dr. Chris Biehl

Chris is a responsible investment professional and academic, with more than 15 years of experience in the field. The focus of his academic work is to research multi-stakeholder dialogues that address complex questions surrounding environmental, social, and governance questions. In his professional career he applies his research in projects addressing interconnected key-challenges of our time, inlcuding threats to human rights, biodiversity loss, and climate change. In addition to his work with GRACE, his voluntary work focuses on organising seminars and lectures to empower the next generation to address the sustainabilty challenges of their future.

Associate

Shreeniket More

Shreeniket, who holds a Master’s in International Business, currently serves as a Marketing, Communications & Administration Lead for a charity and also works at Arts University Bournemouth as a CRM and Communications Administrator. Passionate about volunteering and supporting charitable causes, Shreeniket is additionally active as a volunteer listener. The motivation for supporting Grace stems from this commitment to helping others and from the desire both to contribute existing expertise and to continue growing within a non-profit organisation.

Associate

Becky Alexander

Becky has spent over ten years working in education, with a focus on pastoral care and wellbeing. She is now completing her Masters in International Development at the University of Birmingham and excited to be interning with Grace International. She has particular interests in gender-based violence and gender equality, as well as child welfare. She hopes to transition her career into the third sector, to make a meaningful impact and promote positive social change.

Trustee

Erica Hall

Erica is an American lawyer and advocacy expert specialising in child rights and women’s rights. She has more than 20 years of experience working for NGOs and the United Nations on human rights policy and programming across a range of conflict-affected and post-conflict contexts. She is currently the Head of Policy & Government Relations at World Vision UK, where she has worked since 2011. From 2020 to 2023, Erica supported the UK government as a deployable civilian expert, developing a global Platform of Action to improve the situation of children born of sexual violence in conflict.