Our Board

Dame Sandra Horley

Board Member

Dame Sandra Horley was appointed to the VSS Board in October 2022.  Born and raised in Canada, Sandra was educated at McGill University, Montreal, and Birmingham and Oxford Universities in the UK. Over four decades Sandra worked in the field of homelessness and domestic abuse in the UK.  For 38 years she was Chief Executive of Refuge, the national charity, supporting 7,000 victims and survivors each day.  Sandra grew a single shelter for abused women and children into the UK’s pre-eminent provider of support services for victims and survivors of domestic violence, rape, sexual assault, stalking, forced marriage,  ‘honour-based violence’, modern slavery and human trafficking. She used her position at Refuge as a platform to advocate for change, and worked closely with the police, the legal profession, and government, both in the UK and overseas, to deliver legal, institutional, and attitudinal reform. Previously, Sandra worked as director of the Haven Project in Wolverhampton supporting homeless women and children. She has been a homelessness officer in Shropshire and a housing advice worker for a local authority in London. Sandra is currently a board member of Bromford Housing Association providing social housing for 100,000 people.  She chairs its Customers and Communities Influence Network, giving customers a say in the design and delivery of services. In 2021, Sandra was conferred a Damehood for her contribution to the protection of women and children and promoting greater understanding and awareness of domestic abuse.

John Cahill

Board Member

John was appointed to the VSS Board in October 2022.  John Cahill is a graduate of Queen’s University Belfast and Warwick University.  He worked as a Cost Accountant for Glen-Dimplex before joining Short Bros Plc as a Systems Analyst.  He was also head of Information Technology Services for the Bombardier Aerostructures Division, managing IT in Belfast, Morocco, USA, Canada and Mexico and a member of the senior management teams in Montreal for Bombardier Aerostructures Division and Shorts Bros plc (now Spirit AeroSystems Belfast).  John is also Information Technology advisor to Praxis Care.

Brian Gilfedder

Board Member

Brian was appointed to the VSS Board in August 2023. He is a well known business figure having worked at a senior levels in FMCG (Cadbury Ltd), Energy (DCC PLC) and in the Office Products & Services arena more recently as a Director with Banner Group Ltd where he headed the business in Northern Ireland and Scotland, as well as a number of business units across England. He has extensive experience negotiating and delivering complex Public Service contracts as well as working with many Private Corporate and SME Businesses in Northern Ireland.

A graduate of Queen’s University Belfast, he is currently a business consultant and advisor/mentor.

Catriona MacArthur

Board Member

Dr Catriona MacArthur was appointed to the Board in August 2023.

She is an award-winning social impact strategist with more than 30 years’ national and international experience at the highest echelons of government and the third sector.

Catriona has a life-long interest in and commitment to promoting peace and reconciliation, having worked with some of the most disadvantaged communities in post conflict societies around the world.

She holds an MPhil in Peace Studies from the Irish School of Ecumenics (Trinity College Dublin) together with a PhD in Media and Communications.  On her return to Ireland in 2017, she set up her own consultancy working primarily for the voluntary and community sector.