Our Trustees
Fiona Mactaggart MP - Chair
Fiona Mactaggart is Member of Parliament for Slough, and a former parliamentary undersecretary at the Home Office. She has been a trustee of many charities in the field of social welfare. She is presently a member of the Children Schools and Families Parliamentary Select Committee.
She has formerly been public relations officer for the National Council for Voluntary organisations, director of the joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, a primary teacher and a university lecturer. She was member of Wandsworth Council, and leader of its Labour Group. She helped to raise funds for the purpose built Foyer providing housing for young people in Slough.
Sir John A. Mactaggart Bt
Sir John has worked in the commercial and residential property development and management business - London, Glasgow and New York - for 36 years. He chairs the Mactaggart Family Office and is actively involved with a number of public and private charities. A founder Trustee, he is personally responsible for liaison between Grove End Housing Association, a not for profit organisation, which is the principal funder of Commonweal. He also advises on strategic property issues.
Jane Slowey C.B.E
Jane brings knowledge and expertise from both the voluntary sector and local government. As Chief Executive of the Foyer Federation, Jane is interested in developing new approaches that support young people for whom the transition to adulthood is particularly challenging. She ran Birmingham Voluntary Service Council for 6 years and is currently Vice Chair of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations. Jane spent 8 years as an elected member of Birmingham City Council where she focused on Housing, Learning and Economic Development and Chaired the Community Affairs Committee.
Laurence Newman
Laurence has extensive charity and trustee experience as well as having spent 20 years at KPMG, where he worked as a partner for 13 years. Laurence has been a trustee of Comic Relief since 1997 and is also a trustee of Creativity, Culture and Education, a large Arts Council funded charity that delivers the Creative Partnerships programme into 2000 schools. He currently runs Big Picture Consulting, a specialised consulting and project management practice and, most recently, has been appointed as a Non-Executive Director at Epsom & St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust.
Robert Nadler
Robert qualified as a chartered surveyor in 1977 and has over 35 years experience in commercial and residential property, both in private practice and as the Chief Executive of an LSE listed company. He worked with Charity Project in the 1980s and helped launch a number of charity initiatives including The Great Investment Race and Comic Relief. Robert is currently a Director of Western Heritable Investment Company Limited, a private property investment company with offices in London and New York. He is also co- founder and Chief Executive of base2stay, a new hotel concept, which opened its first hotel property in Kensington in April 2006. Robert has been an advisor to the Board of Commonweal Housing for a number of years before joining the Board formally as a Trustee again in June 2010.
Gary Medazoumian FCA
A Chartered Accountant withover 20 years professional experience in all aspects of auditing, finance, tax and treasury for the not-for-profit and the wider public sectors. Additionally, his various Board positions mean that Gary has significant knowledge and exposure to the typical challenges faced by commercial organisations.
Gary has been a Trustee and part time ,voluntary Finance Director of Commonweal since its formation. He is responsible for its compliance and systems and works on evaluating and structuring the terms and conditions that make Commonweal projects fulfil their role model objectives. He also works on the finance and systems of individual operating projects.