(Listed in alphabetical order)
Rehana Ahmed, Central Services Co-ordinator
Rehana joined Headliners at the end of September 2006 and is the Central Services Co-ordinator. She is responsible for the membership process at the newsrooms, monthly monitoring and evaluation, providing admin support for our outreach programmes, as well organising conferences and functions, and co-ordinates staff recruitment.
She is currently in the fourth year of a Psychology degree, which she attends on a part-time evening basis at Birkbeck University. She hopes to go on and do and Post Graduate Diploma in either Youth Work or Counselling.
Prior to Headlinerss she worked in an architectural office as an accounts assistant/receptionist and has also volunteered as a telephone counsellor for Childline and as a panel member with Newham Youth Offending Team.
Katie Baker, Head of Programmes
Katie is responsible for devising and delivering strategies for the training and development of young people, to ensure that we are an organisation that delivers a quality programme. She also supports the training and development of staff. Prior to this Katie was our Youth and Training Officer where she worked with other staff and young people to develop the accredited programme of peer training we use today.
Katie previously worked in the Philippines, China, and the USA with various NGOs, government groups and learning establishments. With these groups Katie developed and delivered curriculums, training packages, risk assessments and evaluations in both development and disaster contexts.
In her free time Katie likes outdoors activities and can often be found flying stunt kites on Hackney Marshes.
John Boyle, Journalist/Producer, Belfast
John is a staff journalist based at our Belfast newsroom. He oversees our editorial content and devises and delivers media training programmes for our membership and outreach projects. John also co-ordinates radio and television projects in partnership with other NGO’s.
John worked for CSV Media for seven years and has extensive broadcasting experience as a producer/director, camera operator, editor and journalist. He was also a founding director of Ireland’s first ever local terrestrial television broadcaster where he was appointed Senior Producer - News, Sport and Current Affairs.
Jacob Brown, Project Worker, West London
Jacob is an outreach journalist working in West London. This means he helps young people learn about journalism, leading them to grow in confidence and become more aware and vocal about their local community.
Prior to Headliners Jacob was living on a tiny Island in the South Pacific called Samoa, working as a journalism lecturer at the National University of Samoa and as a news editor for a national radio station during the XIII South Pacific Games.
He has also worked as a broadcast journalist in Australia and the UK, and before that lived in Japan where he taught English to elementary school children.
Since his return to the UK, Jacob is getting used to not seeing much of the sun but is taking pleasure in the choice of more than one daily newspaper to read.
Tricia Bullen, Project Manager, London
Tricia is the Project Manager for our London newsroom and two outreach programmes in Islington. She is always on the look out for exciting projects for our members to get involved in. In 2006 she took young people to Kenya to do a story about HIV/AIDS and helped them produce TV reports for BBC News 24, Sky and ITN.
Before joining us Tricia worked as a broadcast journalist reading bulletins, running news desks and reporting live for radio stations across the UK. She covered everything from plane crashes to murders, and was one of the few journalists at the Harold Shipman Public Inquiry. Other highlights include producing a half-hour live phone-in show with Prime Minister Tony Blair (with the photo to prove it) and reporting back from Thailand on the aftermath of the Tsunami for over 40 radio stations – while she was meant to be on holiday!
Sam Hepworth, Outreach Journalist, South-East
Sam is the outreach journalist/project worker for the South-East of England. As part of Headliners’ outreach programme, he works with a wide variety of young people, helping develop their skills and increase their participation through print and broadcast journalism projects.
Before joining us, Sam was a youth worker in Calderdale, West Yorkshire, initially delivering hip-hop music workshops at youth centres across the region. He then moved into detached work, offering support and advice to hard-to-reach young people in and around Halifax town centre.
He spent two years as the music editor of Redbrick, the University of Birmingham’s student newspaper, and also hosted a show on the campus radio station, Burn FM.
He is obsessed with old vinyl, and one of the benefits of his outreach work is it gives him chance to scope out second-hand record stores in different parts of the country.
Ciaran McKerr, Project Co-ordinator, Belfast
Ciaran is the project co-ordinator in the Belfast and took over the job after volunteering with the organisation for a year. As well as working with Headliners, Ciaran is a counsellor and volunteer shift supervisor for ChildLine where he supports other volunteers taking calls from young people. He has also been involved with the charity’s schools' outreach project teaching pupils how to be peer mentors and helping implement anti-bullying stratagies.
Ciaran also worked with social services as an outreach worker/mentor for young people coming out of residential care.
Ciaran worked as a journalist for seven years in several weekly, regional and national newspaper titles including the Daily Mirror, People and the Irish News. He also worked as a freelance photographer covering sporting and news events and his work has been published in all the major newspaper titles in Northern Ireland. His other media work has included designing a 48-sheet poster for the Northern Ireland Fire Brigade, scripting radio comericals and designing corporate logos. In his ever-dwindling spare time he likes to go kayaking, camping and mountaineering. Oh, and he’s a new dad as well.
Narinder Purba, Outreach Journalist, North-East
Nindy is the journalist for the North-East of England, where he delivers a unique learning through journalism programme. Working alongside young people, Nindy helps them develop media skills and stories as well as engaging them as citizens who have a right to be heard.
A writer in the traditional sense of the word, Nindy continues to freelance as a writer and sub-editor for a number of online and print publications, working largely in the sphere of arts and culture and lifestyle. He is keen to move into writing more on politics and current affairs.
He is currently working on his first novel.
Maddy Ryle, Loud N’ Clear Journalist, London
Maddy is in charge of the Loud N’ Clear outreach programme for 5-13 year olds in Islington, and also works with newsroom members in this age group.
She has had a pretty erratic career since finishing a history degree in 2004. After spending a year doing youth work in various places in Edinburgh, Maddy decided it would be fun to go and live in Lebanon, where she did various bits of voluntary work with refugees before landing a job as managing editor for two magazines in Beirut.
She left Lebanon just as the war with Israel in July 2006 was breaking out, which shows a pretty poor journalistic impulse but a healthy sense of self preservation. She speaks Arabic (sort of), practises martial arts, and cooks a mean veggie lasagne.
Victor Searle, Training Officer, London
Victor is the London Training Officer, responsible for delivering the Introduction to Journalism and Peer Training programmes. He also helps to develop members story work.
Prior to joining Headliners, Victor was active in the community radio sector, initially undertaking broadcast work which led to a Millennium Volunteers award. He also gained a teaching qualification whilst volunteering at a community radio station in Sheffield. This led to him delivering a presentation on the sector at Nottingham Trent University as well as a brief stint as a media studies teacher in a Pupil Referral Unit.
Vivian Smith, Project Manager, A Louder Voice
Vivian was appointed Project Manager for the national roll-out of our new project initiated by our Big Lottery funding. Vivian looks after project projects and workers in West London, the South-East and the North-East and also responsible for future projects in new areas.
Prior to working at Headliners, Vivian had a varied employment background primarily in substance misuse (not to be confused with her taking drugs!!). She supported those that have to turn their lives around for the better, working with both adults and young people. She was a regional volunteer co-ordinator for eight years, working with people to develop skills, and offer pathways into employment. Recently she consolidated her experience by gaining the Diploma in Management.
Fiona Wyton, Director
Fiona has been the Director of Headliners since 2004. She is responsible for the overall management, funding, direction and policy of the organisation. Previously Fiona worked in national newspapers for 20 years and held various posts including News Editor of Today newspaper, Associate Editor of the Daily Mirror and Deputy Editor of the Sunday Mirror. Before that she was an on the road reporter travelling widely around the UK and Europe. She has also worked as a consultant brokering partnerships between community organisations and commercial companies. Outside of work Fiona serves on the equality and diversity board of LearnDirect.
Ami Yesufu, Project Worker, West London
Ami recently moved roles in Headliners to become our project worker on our new programmes in West London, funded by the Big Lottery. She has been with us since 2003, working on our accredited outreach journalism programme, Project Subway, delivering media skills to under-represented groups across London. Prior to this, she was a journalist working on TV, radio and print. Her career highlights include working on BBC2’s Def II; a flagship youth programme on BBC Radio 4; Radio 1 and a year making a weekly youth magazine for BBC Radio Merseyside. She set-up and ran Elle FM in Liverpool for five years after identifying a lack of communication between women and the media. Away from radio, Ami has also been a panel member for the Youth Offending Team in Merseyside and an ambassador for the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse theatre.
