Sports Leaders UK Board of Trustees

Michele Verroken - Chair

Michele has a Masters degree in Education and a post graduate certificate in Law. She is currently completing her LLM in sports law.

Teacher and lecturer for 10 years before going to the Sports Council for England and UK Sport as the Director of Ethics and AntiDoping. Here she has worked with Government officials and Ministers within the sport. She has been running her own sports business consultancy, Sporting Integrity Ltd founded in 2004. In this capacity Michelle works with a number of national and international sport agencies including disability sport with the Paralympics. She continues to specialise in ethics and anti-doping.

She is Vice-Chair of the Hertfordshire Sports Partnership and has been a Board member promoting participation and community sport since 2006. She has continued her involvement in community based sport throughout her career as a coach, umpire, manager, player and proud parent (!) as well as a committee member, Chair and volunteer. She holds a number of coaching and officiating qualifications in sports and is trained in safeguarding children and vulnerable adults.

Martin King MBE - Vice Chair

Martin King has been a trustee of Sports Leaders UK since 2005 and is Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees and the Chair of the Awarding Body Committee.

In 2006, after a full career in the Army, Martin started working for The Duke of Edinburgh's Award (DofE) in Hampshire. He is the Field Officer for the Winchester District, helping all the DofE centres in the area with their awards. Until September 2009 he ran an Open DofE Centre, taking participants from a wide catchment area, including some with special needs. Currently he runs the DofE for a school at Bronze, Silver and Gold level. He is a trained Mountain Leader.

Maria Turnbull-Kemp (FCCA) - Honorary Treasurer

A professional qualified and highly experienced finance director with a comprehensive and successful career in the commercial and public sector. Maria has worked directly with a number of Government bodies including Sport England, Department of Culture, Media and Sport, UK Sport and commercial companies such as Kellogs and British Gas. She also has strong experience of corporate governance and other matters relating to charities through the management of a Community Trust.

Since 2007 Maria has been the British Swimming Finance Director at the Amateur Swimming Association (ASA). She has key responsibilities for managing the finance function of the ASA and British Swimming and their subsidiary companies, ensuring the control of all aspects of lottery and public funding.

Maria is currently studying for her MBA at Nottingham University and a true advocate of lifelong learning.

Mike Reynolds - Trustee

A career in communications, marketing and sponsorship culminated in the position of Public Affairs Director of the Courage Brewing Group where Mike had responsibility for all corporate, brand and internal communications, including the management of what was the largest sponsorship portfolio in UK sport.

Mike was a founder member of the Institute of Sports Sponsorship and in 1998 became its Director and also Chief Executive of Sportsmatch - the UK government's business sponsorship incentive scheme which, between 1992 and 2007, brought more than £100 million into grass roots sport.

Mike retired in March 2007. In the 2008 New Year Honours he was awarded the MBE for services to community sport.

Deke Arlon - Trustee

Deke launched himself onto the music scene with his own band 'Deke Arlon and the Tremors' in the mid-50's. Theatre and television shows followed including 'Crossroads' where he met his future wife, Jill when he had a career move from performing to music publishing. He was quickly head-hunted and was made Managing Director and Senior Vice President of the newly formed April/Blackwood Music in 1968.

In the mid-70's he left April Music and joined Yorkshire Television and two years later he set up his own independent company ,not just as a publisher but as an artist manager too. As a music publisher he has received many BMI and ASCAP Awards over the years and his sales of albums over the world have run into hundreds of millions for which he and his writers and producers have been awarded innumerable gold and platinum discs.

In the mid 90's the music industry invited him to produce the debut of their first major award show now known as the 'The Brit Awards' and he produced and directed the show for the first two years. He received the gold Novello Award for his outstanding contribution to the Music Industry. In 2001 Deke was invited to join a major public music company as Chairman of the Entertainment Division and Chairman of Music Publishing. As a publisher Deke has received one BMI award for over three million plays and four BMI awards for over one million.

Peter William Rowley BSc (Hons), PgC, FCIB, FCMI, FCIM, FIOD, C.Dir., - Trustee

Peter is a senior national, regional and local sports leader and educationalist experienced in working with young people and disadvantaged groups. He is a committed leader of social enterprise and is strongly driven to promote positive social values in his work. With extensive diverse experience on private, public, third and voluntary sector bodies and cross sector partnership agencies including chairmanship, he has held a number of Ministerial Appointments currently including Board membership of Sport England.

In his professional career, Peter has 26 years' service in mutual social enterprise firms and was Chief Executive of the leading local community focused building society for 17 years. He is a vocationally qualified and experienced finance, management and marketing professional and an accomplished, accredited coach and organisational consultant and remains committed to continuous professional development and lifelong learning.

Phil Huggon BA Hons, MBA - Trustee

An experienced executive and non-executive board director for the last ten years, Phil has broad commercial experience in strategy, marketing, finance and sales across retail, FMCG and public sector organisations, having spent most of his executive career with MARS and SHELL. In February 2010 he set up his own company to focus on a portfolio of non-executive/trustee roles. Phil is a languages graduate from Oxford, Oriel College and is now married with three young children. His sporting and community interests include table tennis (as an ex-England junior international), coaching, tennis, running, and football together with support to a range of local charities which involved him raising £30,000 by running the London Marathon whilst singing karaoke!

Duncan Lewis - Trustee

Duncan is an experienced, commercial, Chartered Marketer who has been successful in a variety of blue-chip organisations. His core brand marketing skills are reinforced by experience of corporate strategy and business planning across a breadth of financial, general management and sport organisations.

His work in sport has included a three month secondment working with Sir Clive Woodward and the British Olympic Association senior management team as acting Operations Director for the Olympic Coaching Academy project in 2008-09; from July 2009 he led the Marketing, Commercial and Communications function for Commonwealth Games England in the lead-in to the Delhi 2010 Games.

He also has current charity experience consolidating and building the recently launched Age UK brand since June 2010 as Group Marketing and Development Director. Duncan is a Business Leader member of the Marketing Society and has completed the London Business School strategy programme and the Institute of Management leadership programme as well as several other management CPD programmes. Duncan is a keen sportsman and spectator and is a level 2 RFU coach involved with coaching youth teams at old Albanians RFC. Since 2007 he has been a non-executive Director for the British Volleyball Federation appointed via the partnership between FTSE and the British Olympic Association to help maximise British success at London 2012 and beyond.

David Cove BA Hons - Trustee

David is Chief Executive of the Dacorum Sports Trust and has a long and successful track record of operating in the charitable sport and recreation industry. He is a graduate in Leisure Management and is currently studying an MBA in Sport and Leisure Management.

He has extensive experience of delivering positive sporting, social and educational programmes to a wide community. His Sports Trust is rapidly growing a reputation for innovation and excellent delivery whilst being one of the most profitable and commercially dynamic in the sector.

A wide range of operational experience over the past 20 years, coupled with management of large scale projects has allowed David to pursue his passion about the positive impact that sport can have on the lives of everyone, particularly young people. He held posts of Head of Services for Children and Young People and then Head of Sport for Dacorum Borough Council before taking up the role of CE of Dacorum Sports Trust, so he has valuable experience and understanding of both the public and charitable business sectors.

Richard Norman BSc (Hons) - Trustee

Richard has a first class honours degree in Sports Science from Brunel University, London. On graduating he joined the specialist recreation consultancy Peter Man Partnership (PMP), where he worked on Sport England's Active People programme.

He is a passionate, hard-working and committed strategic thinker in sport and recreation. In 2005 he joined the Central Council for Physical Recreation (CCPR) - now the Sport and Recreation Alliance (SRA) - where he has built more than six years experience working directly with National Governing Bodies of sport and recreation (NGBs), commercial organisations, Non-Departmental Public Bodies, Government departments, civil servants and Members of Parliament on national sports policy, lobbying, strategic programmes, commercial projects and funding opportunities. Sports Leaders UK's close relationship with SRA as our former parent organisation gives Richard a very strong insight into our work and he is also a qualified Community Sports Leader and therefore able to 'walk the talk'.