Our Board

Oliver Wilkinson

Chair

Oliver Wilkinson was appointed to the VSS Board on 13 December 2013, and to the position of Chair on 1 April 2015. He has approximately twenty years senior management experience in the voluntary sector, firstly as CEO of Victim Support NI from 1992- 2002 and CEO of Discovery 80 Ltd from 2002-2011. Oliver is also a founding member of Healing Through Remembering.

Patricia Haren

Board Member

Patricia was appointed to the VSS Board on 1 April 2015. She has over 14 years’ experience in Senior Management positions in the Voluntary Sector, including as Director of the Bytes Project (2000 to 2004) and as Director of the Women’s Support Network (October 2004 to January 2014).

Bertha McDougall

Board Member

Bertha McDougall was appointed to the VSS Board on 4 December 2013. Previously, Bertha was a Commissioner for Victims and Survivors from 2008-2012, and also held the role of the Interim Commissioner for Victims and Survivors from 2004-2006. Bertha is currently the Chair of Forgotten Families.

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 successful NI Business figure having worked at a senior level in FMCG (Cadbury Ltd), Energy (DCC PLC) and in the Office Products & Services arena more recently as a Director with Banner Group Ltd in NI, Scotland and England.

A graduate of Queen’s University Belfast, he has worked primarily within the local business community and is currently a business consultant and advisor/mentor within our business community.

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.