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Speakers

Who did we hear from?

We heard from lawyers, academics, journalists, activists, whistleblowers, politicians and innovative practitioners. Confirmed speakers included:

Zelda Perkins

Founder of Can’t Buy My Silence

Lubna Shuja

President of the Law Society for England and Wales

Helen Evans

Oxfam whistleblower, former whistleblower of the year

Jonathan Taylor

Oil Industry Whistleblower

Robert Spano 

Partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, former President of the European Court of Human Rights

Kevin Hollinrake

Minister for Enterprise, Markets and Small Business, MP for Thirsk and Malton

Meirion Jones

Former Editor, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

Gavin Millar KC

Media and employment law specialist, Matrix Chambers, leading expert in election law and The Guardian’s top 100 most influential people (2012)

Desiree Fixler

DWS whistleblower and ESG specialist 

Natalie Prosser

CEO, Office for Environmental Protection

Gabriel Bourdon-Fattal

Co-founder and co-director, Climate Whistleblowers

Mukhtiar Singh

Barrister, Doughty Street Chambers

Tas Brooker

Founder of Wiser Films, Director of When We Speak

James Laddie KC

Barrister, Matrix Chambers

Helené Donelly (OBE)

Head of Safety Culture, Nuffield Health

Professor Ross Cranston

Former Protect Trustee Chair (1992-1996), former High Court judge and Solicitor General for England and Wales (1998-2001)

Clive Robins

Senior compliance manager, Nationwide Building Society

Christian Hunt

Founder, Human Risk, a Behavioural Science (BeSci) led Consulting and Training Firm

Shantha David

Head of Legal Services, UNISON

Beth Hale

Partner, CM Murray LLP

Andy Noble 

Head of Whistleblowing and Speak Up, NatWest Group

Tom Devine

  Legal Director, Government Accountability Project

Charlie Holt

 Co-chair of the UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition

Ian Foxley

CEO, Parrhesia

David Bowles

 Non-Executive Director, The Audit Committee of the National Police Chiefs’ Council,

Ewen Fergusson

Committee on Standards in Public Life

Arpita Dutt

Campaigning Employment Lawyer and whistleblowing specialist

Sarah Veale CBE

Chair of Protect’s Advisory Council and former Head of Equality and Employment Rights, TUC 

Anna Myers

CEO, Whistleblowing International Network

Nick Marshall

Partner, Employment & Incentives group Linklaters

Kieran Pender

Senior lawyer, Human Rights Law Centre Australia

Fraser Simpson

Associate General Counsel, Ethics, Governance and Compliance at the Wellcome Trust.

Professor Yvonne Cripps

Council Member, Protect

Sean Parker

Just Culture Safety Reporting Specialist, Civil Aviation Authority

Jeremy Lewis KC

Barrister, Littleton Chambers, Co-Author of Whistleblowing, Law and Practice 

Paul Caruana Galizia

Editor and reporter, Tortoise

Pusetso Morapedi

Southern Africa Director, Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa (PPLAFF)

Suzanne McCarthy

Independent Chair of National Guardian Office

Guy Dehn

Founder, Protect

Elle Holland

Law graduate

Schona Jolly KC

Barrister, Cloisters Chambers

Justin Madders, MP

MP for Ellesmere Port and Neston & Shadow Minister for Business, Employment Rights and Levelling Up

Elizabeth Gardiner

CEO, Protect

Caitlín Comins

Legal Officer, Protect

Sybille Raphael

Legal Director, Protect

Andrew Pepper-Parsons

Andrew Pepper-Parsons

Policy Director, Protect

Agenda

Zelda Perkins

Zelda Perkins has been campaigning since 2017 when she was the first woman to break an NDA, signed decades earlier, with Harvey Weinstein. She brought the systematic abuse of NDAs to the attention of the British Government and international press, giving evidence at two parliamentary inquiries, which uncovered an epidemic of misuse, and pushed the Solicitors Regulatory Authority to take disciplinary action against the lawyer who created her NDA for Weinstein. Her actions have been inspiring others to come forward by her example and she was named a Person of the Year by Time magazine in 2017 and by the Guardian in 2020. In 2021 she launched the Global campaign Can’t Buy My Silence cantbuymysilence.com with Professor Julie Macfarlane and they are working successfully with Government’s and regulators in Canada, Ireland, the UK and Australia to change legislation and regulation around the misuse of NDAs.
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Lubna Shuja

Lubna Shuja is the first Asian, the first Muslim and only the 7th female to become President of the Law Society of England and Wales, which was established in 1825, almost 200 years ago. The Law Society represents, promotes and supports over 220,000 solicitors.

Lubna is originally from Bradford and qualified as a solicitor 30 years ago in 1992. She is a sole practitioner at Legal Swan Solicitors in Birmingham, a firm she set up in 2007, where she now specialises in litigation, professional discipline and regulation. She has experience in dealing with family law, litigation, personal injury claims, wills/probate and conveyancing. Prior to 2007, she was a Partner in a high street firm in West Yorkshire where she worked for 14 years undertaking litigation and personal injury work.

She is also a Mediator (CEDR accredited) conducting civil and family mediations.

Lubna works with a number of professional regulators. She is currently an Adjudicator Chair of Social Work England’s Fitness to Practise Committee, a Legally Qualified Deputy Chair of the General Pharmaceutical Council’s Fitness to Practise Committee and a Chair of the General Chiropractic Council’s Investigating Committee. Lubna was a Chair of the Health and Care Professions Tribunal’s Conduct and Competence Committee and Interim Orders Committee. She was also a Chair of the Disciplinary, Appeal and Regulatory Committees of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants for 11 years and a Deputy Clerk at the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal for over 13 years.

Lubna is a member of the Law Society Board and a past Chair of the Law Society’s Strategic Litigation Group. She was the inaugural Chair of the Law Society’s Membership and Communications Committee for 3 years and previously a member of its Membership Board as well as the Finance and Investment Committee. Lubna has been a member of the Law Society Council since 2013 representing the interests of sole practitioners.

Lubna is a member of the Board of Trustees for LawWorks, a charity which connects people on low income in need of legal advice, with volunteer lawyers and not for profit organisations who can support them.

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Helen Evans

In 2015, Helen Evans first blew the whistle on systemic sexual exploitation and abuse at Oxfam GB. It wasn’t until the story hit the press in 2018 that action was finally taken with inquiries led by the Charity Commission and International Development Committee. Helen Evans is now CEO of a neurological condition charity, a parent carer and continues to be an advocate for whistleblowers. Helen is also Autistic and has spoken publicly about the value of a neurodivergent workforce in helping to keep the workplace safe.
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Jonathan Taylor

Jonathan Taylor alerted the authorities to large-scale, systematic corruption in the oil industry. His disclosures about SBM Offshore led to criminal prosecutions and multi-million dollar fines being levied in four countries. In October 2022, Jonathan Taylor welcomed the ruling of the Monaco appeal court, which “will give me back control over my life.” The extradition attempt marked the end of Taylor’s career as a lawyer in the oil and gas industry, wrecked his marriage and cost him a year of his life.
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Robert Spano

Robert Spano is Of Counsel in the London office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher where he is a member of the firm’s Dispute Resolution Practice Group. He is the former President of the European Court of Human Rights. Robert Spano is a Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Oxford for the 2022-2023 academic year and a Professor of Law, University of Iceland. He is an Honorary Bencher of the Middle Temple.
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Kevin Hollinrake

Kevin Hollinrake was appointed Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Business and Trade on 7 February 2023. He was previously Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy between 27 October 2022 and 7 February 2023.

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Meirion Jones

Meirion Jones spent many years running investigations for the BBC at Newsnight and Panorama on everything from vulture funds to US election fraud. He won the Daniel Pearl award for his investigation into the dumping of Trafigura’s toxic waste in Africa, the London Press Awards Scoop of the Year for his part in the Jimmy Savile revelations and was nominated for a Royal Television Society award for his investigation into the “fake sheikh”, Mazher Mahmood. He joined the Bureau in 2016.
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Gavin Millar KC

Gavin specializes in media and employment law. He has defended many journalistic source disclosure cases. In Jameel v Wall Street Journal he established a new strike out for abuse of process in libel. He advised the Guardian on its Edward Snowden stories. He acts for Carole Cadwallader in the libel proceedings against her by Arron Banks, and Josie Stewart in her PIDA case against the FCDO concerning her disclosures to the BBC about the failures of the Afghan Crisis centre.

He has acted as a Council of Europe and EU expert in media law and is a Crown Court Recorder. He practises in Northern Ireland as well as England and Wales.

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Desiree Fixler

Desiree Fixler is an advocate for change and impact in the practice of ESG investing and sustainability. She works as a senior advisor to financial institutions and is a member of the U.K’s Financial Conduct Authority’s ESG Advisory Committee.
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Natalie Prosser

Natalie is a solicitor by background, with fifteen years in government, specialising in public and regulatory law, regulatory operations and governance. Her previous roles have included General Counsel at the Gambling Commission, Director of Operations, Vocational and Technical Qualifications and Director of Legal at Ofqual and regulatory and policy lead on the independent Farm Inspection and Regulation Review.

Natalie started her role as Interim CEO in February 2021 and was appointed to the role permanently in April the following year.

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Gabriel Bourdon-Fattal

Gabriel Bourdon-Fattal is the co-founder and co-director of Climate Whistleblowers, an NGO that protects individuals who expose wrongdoings that worsen the climate crisis and helps them have a greater impact. Gabriel is a lawyer who previously worked as a project manager and then director of programs at the Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa (PPLAAF) and on environmental justice issues in the Middle East. Gabriel has an LL .B from the University of Haifa and a Master in comparative law from Université Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne.
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Mukhtiar Singh

Mukhtiar Singh is a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers and practises in employment and commercial law with a particular focus on senior manager and executive cases involving whistleblowing; discrimination; and business and commercial ethics. He works predominantly in three regulated sectors: financial services, healthcare and the police.

He is ranked in employment and commercial litigation by Chambers & Partners and the Legal 500 and represents Claimants and Respondents. He has advised on a number of whistleblowing cases as part of Protect’s Legal Support Network and is a member of Protect’s Advisory Council.

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Tas Booker

Tas Brooker is an award-winning producer and director with over 20 years of experience. Recently Tas finished her debut feature length documentary “When We Speak”. This film explores the stories of three courageous women who stood up for what they believed in, exposing injustices committed by some of the most powerful people on earth. When We Speak was nominated for Best Documentary at the prestigious Raindance Film Festival, Longlisted for a BIFA (British Independent Film Awards) Discovery Award and won Best Documentary at the Whistleblowers Summit and Film Festival.
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James Laddie KC

James Laddie KC practises principally in employment and discrimination law. He has been awarded “Employment Silk of the Year” by both Chambers & Partners and the Legal 500. James has a particular interest in whistleblowing law and has appeared in many of the leading PIDA cases, making a significant contribution to the development of the law, including designing the “public interest” test in Chesterton v Nurmohamed. He was a trustee of Protect for six years.
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Helené Donelly

Helené was appointed in 2013 to act as NHS Ambassador for Culture Change, developing a role to support staff to raise concerns, ensuring the voice of the frontline is heard clearly at a senior level within organisations. Helené previously worked in the A&E department at Stafford Hospital and following her experience and difficulties in trying to raise concerns there, she was a key witness at the Public Inquiry held by Robert Francis QC into the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust.

In 2022 Helené was appointed National Head of Safety Culture for Nuffield Health the UKs largest healthcare charity. She continues to advise and support the NHS, the government and relevant stakeholders on the importance of embedding and sustaining positive cultures, where staff are genuinely encouraged and enabled to speak up and voice concerns to protect staff, patients and the public.

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Professor Ross Cranston

Ross Cranston was a trustee of Protect 1992-1996. He was chair of trustees in 1996 until his election as an MP the following year. He has been a High Court judge and was Solicitor General for England and Wales, 1998-2001. He is currently professor of law at the LSE.
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Clive Robins

Clive Robins is a Senior Manager at Nationwide Building Society and manages the whistleblowing function there.  Passionate about providing support to whistleblowers, particularly those who are most vulnerable, he has led their whistleblowing team for the last 4 years.  Prior to that, Clive worked for the Competition and Markets Authority (the UKs competition regulator), leading their ‘Prescribed Person’ whistleblowing arrangements, but the vast majority of his career was spent in the Army (Royal Military Police).
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Christian Hunt

Christian is the founder of Human Risk, a Behavioural Science (BeSci) led Consulting and Training Firm specialising in Ethics & Compliance and the author of a book, ‘Humanizing Rules’. He was formerly Managing Director, Head of Behavioural Science at UBS. Christian joined the Firm in Compliance & Operational Risk Control, leading the function globally for UBS Asset Management. Before joining UBS, he was COO of the UK Prudential Regulation Authority, a subsidiary of the Bank of England responsible for regulating financial services.
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Shantha David

Shantha David is a practising solicitor – advocate (and non – practising barrister) who has won many strategic and ground – breaking employment law cases in the UK, Supreme Court and the European Court of Justice. She is the Chair of the Employment Law Committee of the Law Society; a committee member of the Employment Lawyers’ Association’s Legislative & Policy Committee; and a member of the Industrial Lawyers’ Society. Additionally, Shantha was the Lawyer’s Hot #100 lawyer in 2020, won the Lexis Nexis Halsbury Rule of Law award in 2018, and was Liberty’s Human Rights lawyer of the year in 2017.
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Beth Hale

A Partner and General Counsel at CM Murray LLP, Beth Hale has a wealth of employment and partnership law experience. Valued by clients for her ability to give “clear and succinct advice”, she advises clients from multiple sectors, employers and employees, on all aspects of employment law with specific extensive experience on whistleblowing, sexual harassment and restrictive covenants including frequently in relation to cross-border issues involving multiple jurisdictions.
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Andy Noble

Andy is Head of Whistleblowing and Speak Up for the NatWest Group. Starting his career with NatWest in 1984, he has held numerous front line and risk function roles, predominantly in the Retail and Private Banking sectors. His experience spans compliance, operational risk, credit risk and financial crime.

Following the introduction of new whistleblowing regulations by the UK’s financial regulators in 2016, Andy led the development and implementation of a group-wide whistleblowing framework at NatWest (formerly RBS). This provides a mechanism for colleagues across the bank to confidentially raise whistleblowing concerns.

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Tom Devine

Since 1979 Tom Devine has been the Government Accountability Project’s legal director, where he has assisted over 8,000 whistleblowers and not lost a case since 2006. He also has been on the front lines for passage and oversight of 37 whistleblower laws, including nearly all U.S. federal laws and internationally from Serbia to the UN and World Bank, most recently the EU Whistleblower Directive and Ukraine. He is an adjunct professor at the DC Law School, has been recognized annually since 2012 by the Metropolitan Washington Lawyer’s Association as one of Washington DC’s top employment lawyers, appears regularly as a media expert, has authored numerous books and law journals, spoken in over a dozen nations as the State Department’s informal “Ambassador of Whistleblowing,” and co-founded Whistleblowing International Network where he serves on the Board.  
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Charlie Holt

Charlie Holt is the European Head of Global Climate Legal Defence (CliDef), an organisation set up to support climate activists facing SLAPPs and other legal threats. He also advises on legal strategy for Greenpeace International, where he leads the organisation’s SLAPP resilience strategy and sits on the European Commission’s Expert Group on SLAPPs. He sits on the Steering Committee of the Coalition Against SLAPPs in Europe (CASE) and co-chairs the UK Working Group on SLAPPs, and in 2018 helped to set up the US anti-SLAPP coalition Protect the Protest.
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Ian Foxley

Ian Foxley is a veteran with 24 years’ service in the British Army, he was a lecturer at the Army Command and Staff College and spent two years in counter-terrorism and a further two years on secondment instructing junior officers in the Australian Army.

Ian became a whistleblower in December 2010 after discovering corruption in a £2 billion government defence procurement contracts whilst working as the Programme Director in GPT (Special Project Management) Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Airbus Group. His actions resulted in criminal prosecutions, the complete overhaul of the Airbus Group Senior Management Team and the largest fine (£3.6 billion) ever imposed on a commercial company under a Deferred Prosecution Agreement in the world.  GPT pleaded guilty in 2016, was fined £30. 2 million and has now ceased trading.

He co-founded Whistleblowers UK in 2012 as a whistleblower support interest group, and acted as Chairman until 2015, establishing the whistleblowing study and discussion programme at the Cambridge International Symposium on Economic Crime held annually in Jesus College, Cambridge University.  In May 2021, he founded Parrhesia Inc, a charity focussed on the practice, protection, and promotion of the human rights of whistleblowers in the UK, by producing high-level research that can be used by practitioners and policymakers alike.

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David Bowles

David has been the Chief Executive of four local authorities and, with Deloitte’s, Business Development Director for their outsourcing subsidiary.  He has also been a Director of Finance in the NHS.

When he was Chief Executive of Lincolnshire County Council, he blew the whistle on his Leader, referring a number of matters to the police and external auditors. He was subjected to a campaign of threats and intimidation leading up to the trial at which the Leader was convicted and jailed. Afterwards senior politicians refused to work with him and forced him out of the Council. Subsequently as Chair of an NHS Trust he resigned to draw attention to a bullying culture in the NHS and the risk to patients by the pursuit of targets in understaffed hospitals.  He gave evidence to the Health Select Committee and supported the Mid-Staffordshire campaign group.

David now concentrates upon governance and is a Non-Executive Director on the Audit Committee of the National Police Chiefs’ Council and is Chair of the SAAA, which oversees the appointment of auditors to small public bodies.

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Ewen Fergusson

Ewen Fergusson was formerly a partner in the Finance Division at Herbert Smith Freehills from 2000 to 2018. He was Head of their General Banking and Acquisition Finance team (2004-2015), and also sat on the Partnership Nominations Committee (2013-15). During his time at Herbert Smith Freehills, Ewen ranked consistently as one of the City of London’s leading individual lawyers in his sector in the main independent directories. Currently he is a non-magistrate member of the Lord Chancellor’s advisory committee for South East England, and is also a co-producer on various film projects. 

Ewen Fergusson was appointed to the Committee on 1 August 2021 for a five-year term. 

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Arpita Dutt

Arpita Dutt is a campaigning employment lawyer, nationally reputed and ranked as a specialist in equality and whistleblowing law, policy, practice and thought leadership across the public and private sectors. She has been a frequent media commentator working with investigative journalists to expose egregious abuses. An excellent negotiator and mediator of complex workplace disputes, Arpita brings empathy, curiosity and verve to conflict resolution and all her endeavours. She is a trustee of whistleblowing research charity, Parrhesia.
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Sarah Veale

Sarah Veale CBE is the former Head of Equality and Employment Rights at the TUC. She was a board member of The Equality and Human Rights Commission and has advised the government on their regulatory and de-regulatory proposals as a member of the Regulatory Policy Committee and the Wales Fair Work Commission. Sarah is a non-executive Director of the United Kingdom Accreditation Service and Chair of the Advisory Council for Protect.
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Anna Myers

Anna Myers is the founding Executive Director of WIN. She has worked in the field of whistleblowing for 20 years – advising individual whistleblowers, employers of all sizes and sectors, and national and international policy makers

Anna is originally from Canada and prior to getting her law degree at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, she did a history degree at the Université de Montréal in Québec. Anna was Deputy Director of Public Concern at Work (now called Protect) for 9 years and has worked at Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) and at the Government Accountability Project in Washington DC.

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Nick Marshall

Nick is a Partner in the Employment & Incentives group at Linklaters. He regularly advises clients on bringing and defending high-value, complex and reputationally sensitive litigation (including whistleblowing claims), as well as on contentious regulatory investigations and day-to-day HR matters. Nick has a keen interest in whistleblowing, and co-chairs Linklaters’ UK-EU Whistleblowing Working Group. His practice involves advising clients on conducting internal investigations and on engagement with regulators, often in relation to concerns raised by whistleblowers. He also provides training and advice on speaking up policies and arrangements to clients across a range of sectors. Nick is the co-author of “Whistleblowers: The UK Perspective”, a chapter in the seventh edition of The Practitioner’s Guide to Global Investigations (2023, Global Investigations Review). He is an active member of Linklaters LGBT+ network, and sits on the steering committee of our UK social mobility employee forum.

Anna is originally from Canada and prior to getting her law degree at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, she did a history degree at the Université de Montréal in Québec. Anna was Deputy Director of Public Concern at Work (now called Protect) for 9 years and has worked at Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) and at the Government Accountability Project in Washington DC.

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Kieran Pender

Kieran Pender is a senior lawyer at Human Rights Law Centre in Australia, leading its work on whistleblower protections. He is also an honorary lecturer at the ANU College of Law and an award-winning journalist, contributing to The Guardian, The New York Times and The Saturday Paper. Kieran is one of Australia’s leading experts on secrecy and transparency laws, and has published widely on whistleblower protections. He previously worked at the International Bar Association in London.
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Fraser Simpson

Fraser Simpson has built and leads the Wellcome Trust’s Ethics, Governance and Compliance function. Wellcome is a charitable foundation that exists to improve global public health, funding this work from its significant endowment, currently worth circa £40bn. Fraser started out as a lawyer at Linklaters before shifting his focus to not-for-profits. His work has taken him across the world, including time spent living and working in Tanzania. He is passionate about ensuring that purpose-driven organisations not only do the right things, but that they do them in the right way – with a genuine focus on human behaviours.
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Professor Yvonne Cripps

Yvonne Cripps is a Council member of Protect. She specializes in the law relating to disclosure in the public interest, and in intellectual property law and biotechnology. Amongst her books is: The Legal Implications of Disclosure in the Public Interest (2nd ed). She has also written more than 40 articles on intellectual property, privacy law, and biotechnology. In addition to her years in the faculty of law at Cambridge University, she has regularly taught as a visiting professor at the Cornell Law School and at the University of Texas at Austin as well as in Paris. Professor Cripps is a barrister in both England and New Zealand. She has served as an advisor on intellectual property law and biotechnology to the House of Lords, and on biotechnology issues to the New Zealand Government. Her work has been discussed in the Harvard Law Review, The Boston Globe and by the BBC.
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Sean Parker

Now specialising in safety reporting Sean has over 25 year’s regulatory experience with the CAA across several technical disciplines. He initiated the CAA whistleblowing processes in 2008 and continues to lead this activity. As the Head of the CAA Safety Data Department between 2010 and 2014 he was directly involved with the drafting of the Occurrence Reporting regulation EC 376/2014 as the UK specialist supporting the Council of the European Union. This regulation mandates Just Culture as part of safety occurrence reporting processes in aviation. Prior to various roles within the Airworthiness Division of the CAA Sean worked in the UK and Malaysia for Bristow Helicopters and British Airways.
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Jeremy Lewis KC

Jeremy is a leading practitioner in employment litigation, with particular areas of expertise in TUPE, whistleblowing, business protection/ injunctive relief and discrimination.  He was appointed as a KC in 2022, and is a mediator and fee paid employment judge (Watford).  He is co-author of Whistleblowing, Law and Practice (OUP, 2022), now in its fourth edition, and has appeared successfully in various significant whistleblowing cases including Ibrahim v HCA (CA) on the public interest test.
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Paul Caruana Galizia

Paul Caruana Galizia became a reporter at Tortoise after his mother Daphne was assassinated and since then has won some journalism awards and, with his two brothers, a Magnitsky Human Rights Award and an Anderson-Lucas-Norman Award for tax justice.
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Pusetso Morapedi

Pusetso Morapedi is the current Platform to Protect Whistleblowers in Africa (PPLAFF) Southern Africa Director. PPLAAF seeks to defend whistleblowers, as well as strategically litigate and advocate on their behalf where their disclosures speak to the public interest.

She is the co-founding Board Secretary of the Botswana Centre for Public Integrity (BCPI) which seeks to contribute to the achievement of the Vision 2036 Pillar 4 on Governance, Peace and Security and the attainment of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16.

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Suzanne McCarthy

Initially working as a lawyer, with an LL.M. degree from Cambridge, Suzanne left private practice and lectured in law at Manchester University before entering the civil service where she worked first at the Home Office, serving as Private Secretary to two Home Secretaries, and then at HM Treasury. She moved into running Arms-Length Bodies becoming CEO of both the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.

Suzanne has used her background in regulation and standard setting in her non-executive career. Her current positions include as the Independent Chair of the Fire Standards Board, and of two charities, Lepra, an international NGO focused on neglected tropical diseases, and Right to Succeed, a charity concerned with educational inequalities in the UK.

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Guy Dehn

Guy Dehn is the founding director of Public Concern at Work, the charity that was formed in 1993 and became Protect in 2018.  Under his leadership, PCAW developed an advice line and support for employers as well as public policy engagement.  A barrister by training, he was one of the drivers behind the UK’s whistleblowing legislation – helping to draft the Private Members Bills that eventually became the Public Interest Disclosure Act.  He worked in the consumer field before establishing Protect, and went on to work on public engagement with criminal justice.
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Elle Holland

Elle qualified with an LLB in Law from the University of Salford in 2023, where she was president of the university’s Law Society and winner of the 2022 internal mooting competition. Elle went viral on LinkedIn after posting about her assistance in her mother’s unfair dismissal whistleblowing trial, which has since been covered by The Law Society Gazette and Legal Cheek. Elle is interning with Accenture in the summer of 2023.
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Schona Jolly KC

Schona Jolly KC is a leading barrister at Cloisters Chambers, recognised for her work in employment law, and domestic and international human rights and equality law. She has extensive whistleblowing expertise, and represented Protect in its successful Osipov intervention. She leads Cloisters’ Human Rights and International Law Practice Groups and is a Visiting Professor at Goldsmiths University. She was Chair of the Bar Human Committee of England and Wales from 2019 until 2021.
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Elizabeth Gardiner

Elizabeth was appointed as Protect’s Chief Executive in March 2020. She took over as acting chief executive jut before the first UK lockdown and successfully steered the charity through the troubling years of Covid. A fully qualified solicitor, she also has extensive experience in Parliament and policy work. Elizabeth is also a member of the Whistleblowing International Network board of trustees. 
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Caitlín Comins

Caitlín is a Legal Officer at Protect. She has in-depth knowledge of whistleblowing law having advised hundreds of whistleblowers and is jointly responsible for managing Protect’s legal Advice Line. She also delivers training and works with regulators, NHS Trusts, financial services companies, local government, and a range of other organisations on how to improve their whistleblowing arrangements. She has a particular interest in environmental whistleblowing and is leading on Protect’s environment project.
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Sybille Raphael

Sybille is Protect’s legal director. She is a leading specialist whistleblowing lawyer working alongside employers, regulators and whistleblowers. She has in-depth knowledge of the law and the practical realities of whistleblowing and has a key role in Protect’s current legal reform campaign, pushing for innovative and much needed improvement to the UK whistleblowing legal framework. She also has wide-ranging expertise in helping organisations improve their whistleblowing arrangements and ‘speak up’ culture. 
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Andrew Pepper-Parsons

Andy has unparalleled experience of the challenges faced by whistleblowers and the intricacies of the law, having been with Protect since 2007. A policy specialist, he oversees Protect’s lobbying, research and campaign. He spearheaded numerous reports on various aspects of whistleblowing and is a much respected speaker on the subject. 
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