Trustees

David Bennett, Convenor EVOC

Mike Gilbert, Treasurer

Sandra Blake, Trustee

Geoffrey Lord, Trustee

Madeleine Allen, Secretary

David Bennett, Convenor EVOC

David Bennett is a Consultant in the Corporate Department of Gillespie MacAndrew. His core work area is Company Law, Partnership & Insolvency.  He is an Accredited Insolvency Law Specialist with over 40 years experience.
 
He is a visiting Professor of Company Law at the University of Edinburgh.  David is the Scottish editor for Palmers Company Law, Gore-Browne on Companies and Hunter on receivers and Administrators.  He has also been the author of several law publications.

Mr Bennett gained an MA in 1959, LLB 1961, and NP/Solicitor/WS 1962.

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Mike Gilbert, Treasurer

Mike J Gilbert trained as a Chartered Accountant qualifying in 1967, and becoming a partner in 1973 in what was to become the largest independent C.A. firm in Scotland – Scott Oswald C.A.

Mike retired from full time practice in 2007 specialising over the years in corporate work, business services and litigation support with particular interests in charities having chaired our Institutes Working Party on Charities and having given evidence to Holyrood.  Mike was also a member of the Institutes Working Party on Pensions and its Audit Regulation Committee and a lay member of the Law Society Scotland’s Company Law Committee, this latter appointment continues.

Appointed a Governor of George Heriot’s in 1968 and becoming Chairman of the Governors in 1996 again a continuing position.  Became a Trustee on its foundation of the Leukaemia research Trust for Scotland and actively involved in the highly successful fund raising Carreras Concert in 2000 which raised several hundreds thousands of pounds for Leukaemia Research.

Mike acted as treasurer for many years for both the Scottish Basketball Assoc and its British counterpart.

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Sandra Blake, Trustee

Sandra Blake is the National Co-ordinator for a Scottish Government funded initiative to promote financial advice to kinship carers across Scotland by way of the CAB Network as part of Government’s strategy for Kinship Carers & Getting it Right for Every Child (GIRFEC).

For the previous 15 years, Sandra was the Manager of Edinburgh Central CAB, developing the service to a multi sited quality assured agency with a wide range of partners. She is also a member of Portobello Community Council.

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Geoffrey Lord, Trustee

Geoffrey Lord, OBE, commenced his career with 14 years in Banking, qualifying A.I.B.  After a further 16 years in the Probation & After Care Service, where he was Deputy Chief Probation Officer in Greater Manchester, he was appointed Secretary & Treasurer of the Carnegie UK Trust in 1977, retiring in 1993.

He established the Selcare Trust in 1975, of which  was Vice President, and the Centre for Environmental Interpretation in Manchester, and the Unemployed Voluntary Action Fund in Scotland of which he was Chairman 1991-95.  He is Founder of Artlink, Edinburgh & the Lothians and of the Voluntary Arts Network, and The ADAPT Trust in the U.K. of which he was Vice President.  He is a former Trustee & Chairman of Home-Start UK. the Pollock Memorial Trust and Age Concern Scotland Spiritual Care Committee.

Geoffrey is currently a Trustee of the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland, and of Faith in Older People Trust, and the Murrayfield Dementia Project, and is a Hon. Fellow of Manchester Metropolitan University.

Geoffrey has been an EVOT Trustee since March 1995.

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Madeleine Allen, Secretary

Madeleine Allen is the Managing Director of Allen Training Associates, which she founded in 2004 to deliver change management, executive facilitation and leadership training.  Prior to that Madeleine was Operations Director at dns Ltd. Scotland’s fastest growing technology company, and market leader in internet security.  
Madeleine joined dns Ltd. from PricewaterhouseCoopers where she was a Director responsible for the management of large scale systems and change management programmes, including a number of high profile mergers in the Financial Services industry, such as the merger of Axa Equity & Law with Sun Life.