Our team
Our 50+ strong team is passionate about what we do and about supporting you on every step of your disability-smart journey.
We are here to help you with all things disability-inclusion, whether that’s reviewing a policy, speaking to our expert Advice Service to discuss a current issue for your team, a learning and development need or some cutting-edge thought leadership input.
Meet some of the team
Diane Lightfoot, CEO
Diane is responsible for leading and shaping all aspects of Business Disability Forum’s strategy and delivery and for representing the organisation at the highest levels of business and government.
Diane is co-Chair of the Disability Charities Consortium, a group of nine major national disability charities in the UK. She is Vice chair of the Disability Confident Business Leaders’ Group and also sits on the steering board for the Lilac Review, the CMI Everyone Economy Advisory Committee and the Steering Group for the Global Business Disability Network, hosted by the International Labor Organization. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and is part of the Steering Group for the RSA Inclusive Work, Disability and Ageing Network.
Prior to joining Business Disability Forum in February 2017, Diane was Director of Policy and Communications for national disability charity United Response, where she also took on the strategic leadership of the organisation’s employment services as a whole. She is passionate about the role that good work has to play in transforming people’s lives.
Lara Davis, Director of Communications and Marketing
Lara is the strategic lead for communications and marketing activity to recruit membership and to market our products, services and events. She also leads our Changing the image of disability campaign.
Lara has over 25 years’ experience in marketing communications in the public, private and not for profit sectors. Previous roles include Head of Communications for national charity Citizens Advice, and working for a health and education specialist communications consultancy.
Adrian Ward, Director of Operations
Adrian leads the teams responsible for all relationships with Business Disability Forum’s Members and Partners as well as overseeing our Advice Service, consultancy and Learning & Development services. He is an experienced disability consultant with experience of overseeing numerous disability inclusion consultancy projects with both public and private sector organisations.
Adrian also has an extensive background in human resources and diversity and inclusion within the public sector. Before joining Business Disability Forum, Adrian led a diversity and inclusion experts team within a large Civil Service organisation specialising in all aspects of disability as well as leading on Public Sector Equality Duty work. Adrian has practical experience of developing departmental policies (including disability-specific policies) and procedures and overseeing effective implementation.
Adrian is also a qualified mediator with an extensive background in both employment and housing mediation.
Angela Matthews, Director of Policy and Research
Angela leads Business Disability Forum’s policy and research team and specialises in UK work, health, and disability policy.
She is an adviser to and research partner on several academic research projects related to health, disability inclusion, and inclusive employment.
Angela regularly contributes to HR and disability ‘lifestyle’ publications. She has appeared on BBC Radio 4, speaking on topics including women’s work and care ethics, and the disability employment gap. She has given evidence at various Parliamentary Select Committee inquiries.
Angela has professional experience in diversity and equalities management, disability and workplace adjustments, equalities data management, employee relations, and occupational health. She also holds several postgraduate research qualifications.
Bela Gor, Director of Legal and Content
Bela is a lawyer with over 20 years’ experience of disability discrimination law and best practice.
She advises on a variety of subjects ranging from the law and reasonable adjustments in both employment and customer contexts, to consumers in vulnerable situations, and mental health.
Before joining Business Disability Forum, Bela represented disabled clients in some of the earliest cases under the then new Disability Discrimination Act 1995 to test the new law and has influenced the development of the legislation. She continues to write and speak about how disability legislation might be failing disabled people and business and the need for revision and review.
Ben Kelly, Director of Finance
Ben heads up our Finance, HR and Administration team and is also Company Secretary on our Board of Trustees.
Lucy Ruck, Taskforce Manager
Lucy is responsible for managing the Technology Taskforce, as well as the Customer & Service User Network, the Northern England Network and the Procurement Network.
Lucy is a regular speaker at events, including AbilityNet’s TechShare Pro, GEIS Summit for Hong Kong Social Services, AXSChat, and many more.
Lucy has a lived experienced of disability for 30 years, after an accident that left her as a right leg, below knee amputee.
Sarah Eason, Head of Memberships
Sarah joined BDF in 2022 as the lead for the Business Partner Team and is now Head of Memberships, overseeing the successful delivery of our Member and Partner offers, ensuring all our stakeholders are maximising the benefits we offer, better including disabled employees, customers and service users in their organisations. Sarah is also responsible for the recruitment of new Members and Partners into BDF Membership.
Sarah began her career in education, teaching for more than 15 years in mainstream and special needs settings. She has significant experience of supporting people with disabilities to be successful in employment and enabling employers to create workplaces that ‘work’ for everyone.
Natalie Leister, Head of Practice
Natalie leads our Advice Service and oversees our internal upskilling programme, ensuring that our Member/Partner facing teams are continually improving the advice and information they provide.
She is an experienced senior leader with an extensive background spanning across operational, commercial and charity sectors in both Human resources and Diversity and Inclusion.
She has for many years led projects and teams at a senior level focused on removing barriers for people with disabilities.
Hazel Leighfield, Lead Disability Business Partner
Having spent three decades leading Talent teams in largescale recruitment outsource programmes and managing HR and Technology transformation projects, Hazel now uses her experience to help guide our Partners to becoming Disability Inclusion leaders.
As a long-standing School Governor Hazel has a particular interest in improving accessibility for Neurodiverse pupils and those with Mental Health challenges and how this needs to be supported through the transition to University, or into work.
Rebecca Elliott, Lead Disability Business Partner
Rebecca brings diverse experience in law, social enterprise, and welfare to work to BDF. With a focus on employability and disability support, she is currently studying for an MSc in Strategic Human Resource Management. Outside work, she enjoys creative writing and crochet.
Connect with Rebecca on LinkedIn
Daniel Cadey, Senior Business Disability Partner
Daniel provides advice and support to several BDF Partner organisations to enable them to become disability smart. He also co-leads our Global Taskforce and co-hosts our podcast series, ‘If you don’t mind me asking’.
Katie Coates, Senior Disability Business Partner
Katie studied law at the University of York and has a continued interest in employment law, professional ethics, equality and human rights. In work, her passion lies in neurodiversity, accessible workplaces and disability representation and inclusion at all levels.
Emily Jackson, Senior Business Disability Partner
Emily joined BDF in 2015 and has extensive experience advising public and private sector employers on disability best practice, inclusion, and the law.
As a Senior Disability Business Partner, Emily works closely with BDF Partner organisations to enable them to achieve their strategic aims on disability inclusion and to adopt leading practice across all areas of the business.
Her key interests are workplace adjustments and supporting businesses to implement robust adjustment processes, barrier-free recruitment, policy making and The Equality Act 2010.Â
Sandra Coley, Senior Disability Business Partner
Sandra’s career spans the private, public and education sectors. She is an experienced consultant and has worked with organisations across a range of sectors. She also has experience in the employability and skills arena including training and coaching, managing internship and degree apprenticeship programmes, and supporting disabled people to enter, return to and remain in work.
Robyn Challis, Senior Disability Business Partner
Robyn’s career spans the public, higher education and voluntary sectors. As well as providing strategic and operational support to universities and colleges on disability inclusion, she has over ten years’ experience of managing teams to deliver services in community and education settings, including health, advice and support services for disabled people.
She explored her interest in disabled employee experience when studying for her recent Research Masters degree.
Midge Blake, Senior Disability Business Partner
Midge has a long history of managing relationships within the corporate and charitable sectors. She has a passion for creating barrier-free workplaces and a particular interest in neurodiversity. In 2020 Midge was awarded the Postgraduate Certificate in Health Research from the University of Stirling and is undertaking further postgraduate study with the University of Nottingham in Mental Health Research.
Joel Young, Senior Disability Business Partner
Joel has extensive experience of working to improve accessibility and inclusion.
He enjoys facilitating change and supporting businesses on their inclusion journey. He does this through education and collaboration.
His expertise lies in built environment accessibility, equality law in relation to the rights of disabled people and coaching for self-advocacy.
Rachel Smitheman, Senior Disability Business Partner
With over 25 years’ experience in HR & Employee Relations roles, Rachel has a good understanding of the barriers to disability inclusion that can exist within organisations and is passionate about working with our partners to identify these barriers and to remove them.
Rachel has a particular interest in mental health and neurodiversity and in addition to her Business Partner role, she is a qualified Integrative humanistic counsellor and workplace mediator.
Brooke Mauro, Senior Disability Business Partner
Brooke engages with BDF Partner organisations, from starters to veterans, to support them in achieving their disability inclusion goals with best practice advice.
She has extensive previous work experience as a HRBP for matrixed, international conglomerates and is no stranger to overcoming organisational obstacles.
Her passion is in working with organisations to create more inclusive processes, upskilling line managers, and overcoming organisational barriers.
Alan Collins, Disability Business Partner
Alan joined the BDF team after many years in financial services. He also set up Ability First, a not-for-profit social enterprise supporting those with life-changing health conditions.
Keith Harris, Disability Business Partner
Keith’s role is in building and maintaining effective business relationships with a wide range of BDF Members across the public and private sectors.
Karan Snuggs, Disability Business Partner
Disability Business Partner Karan has extensive experience of both building and maintaining relationships, and a varied background with 20 years within the NHS.
Courtney Swaby, Disability Business Partner
Courtney specialises in supporting and advising Member organisations within the finance, emergency services and law enforcement, IT, and insurance sectors.
Sasha Hailey, Disability Business Partner
As one of the Business Partners, Sasha looks after members across various sectors and at various stages of their Disability Smart journey. Supporting organisations to reach achievements such as getting a reasonable adjustment policy, having leadership talk about disability, or progressing through the Disability Confident Scheme, is what keeps her passionate about work.
In her spare time, she enjoys bird watching and cycling on the e-bike. Sasha has a degree in Sociology with a specialism in Disability Studies from Warwick University and has a background of working in finance.
Val Cox, Disability Business Partner
Val’s previous experience includes supporting individual professionals, mainly lawyers and accountants, with career planning and lifelong learning. She has coached and mentored people who were studying while working full time, or who needed adjustments due to disabilities.
Georgina Wright, Advice Service Manager
George gives guidance to BDF Member and Partner organisation on all aspects of disability in the world of business.
Connect with Georgina on LinkedIn
Samuel Buckley, Campaigns and Engagement Manager
Sam is responsible for communications related to our policy and research work, and his role includes producing content, supporting our responses to consultations, and representing the Policy and Research team at events and on working groups. Sam was previously Business Disability Forum’s Press Officer from 2016-2018, rejoining the team in 2023.
Ruth Fisher, Learning and Development Manager
Ruth’s responsibilities include working with membership to determine their current and emerging development needs, designing learning programmes and managing a team of trainers. She has several years of experience working in learning and development both as an in-house specialist and a private consultant and has a background working in Diversity and Inclusion.
David Goodchild, Membership Director
David’s focus is on introducing organisations to the benefits of working with Business Disability Forum, illustrating our whole-organisational approach to disability inclusion.
Michelle Wickenden, Member Development Manager
Michelle joined BDF in 2013 after working in student finance and disability management. With experience in higher education, government, and specialist disability services, she brings a strong background in supporting disabled students and implementing equality initiatives.
Sarah Bartlett, Media Relations Lead
Sarah oversees our media and press work. Sarah has also authored several resources for Business Disability Forum, such as the Inclusive Communication Toolkit.
Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn
Georgina Whitehead, Events Manager
George leads BDF’s events program. With over 20 years in events and marketing, primarily in the nonprofit sector, they have organized events from small receptions to large-scale conferences. Previous roles include UCL, Action for Children, Pancreatic Cancer UK, and Age UK.
Rick Williams, Head of Consultancy
Rick is an experienced consultant and trainer with a high level of expertise in disability issues and leads our consultancy team. He’s a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).
Jan Loveless, Senior Consultant
Jan is a registered occupational therapist with over 20 years in access and inclusive design. Her expertise spans cinemas, museums, offices, and the countryside. With a postgraduate diploma in Environmental Access, Jan offers practical advice to create welcoming environments for all.
Graeme Whippy, Senior Consultant
Graeme is a leading expert in digital accessibility and disability inclusion. With a career spanning IT, finance, and disability management, he has shaped industry standards and government policy. Recognised for his contributions, Graeme received an MBE and is a trusted advisor to organisations seeking to create inclusive workplaces
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