Meet the Team
Victoria Williams
Director
Victoria is co-founder and Director at Food Matters. Her work has always centred on testing ideas, piloting initiatives and supporting programmes so the best of them can take root and flourish. Victoria’s background is in food access, and she is particularly interested in how to ensure marginalised voices are heard in food systems transformation work.
She leads Food Matters’ prison food reform programme, and has been instrumental in the development of the Sustainable Food Places programme, a nationally and internationally recognised programme supporting local, cross-sector food partnerships and food strategies delivering citizen-led, food systems transformation.
Victoria has led on developing local food partnerships for over 20 years, a journey that started in Brighton, where she is Chair of the Brighton & Hove Food Partnership. She is also a trustee at Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming.
Chris Kelly
Team Support Officer
Chris is the Team Support Officer at Food Matters – assisting with the everyday running of the charity as well as supporting team members on their individual projects – including creating the His and Her Wellbeing magazines for those in the prison estate. Growing up and working in a family-run hotel and restaurant instilled a love of food and local produce as well as passion for cooking. Food and community have always been central values to him, having worked for the British Red Cross Independent Living and Emergency Response team prior to joining Food Matters.
He also has a creative background having studied music and guitar at university. When out of the office you might find Chris in the garden learning to grow food or in the kitchen exploring a new recipe or cuisine.
Helen Sandwell
Inside & Out Project Lead and Nutritionist
Helen Sandwell is a nutritionist and the Project Lead for Criminal Justice at Food Matters, with a special interest is mental health. She pioneered work in the UK around good nutrition as part of drug treatment before moving her focus to the importance of healthy food for people in prison. With Food Matters she has developed healthy eating courses which have demonstrated statistically significant improvements to people’s food choices. She edits His Wellbeing and Her Wellbeing publications, which are available to all people in UK prisons and writes a monthly column for Inside Time newspaper.
Callum Etches
Sustainable Food Places Senior Project Officer
Callum is an experienced evaluator, researcher, and strategic facilitator, specialising in impact and evaluation services for food systems change. As Impact and Evaluation Lead for the Sustainable Food Places programme, he supports local partnerships across the UK to understand and demonstrate the difference they make — from improving public health and sustainability to building community resilience.
Callum brings expertise in participatory evaluation, theory of change development, and designing practical tools to support learning and reflection. He regularly works with organisations and local authorities to shape strategy, facilitate collaborative processes, and embed inclusive and equitable practices into food systems work.
He is also finishing off a PhD at the University of Sussex, where his research explores how collaborative food governance can build resilience, strengthen democracy, and support systemic transformation in local food systems.
When not at work, Callum can be found swimming in the sea, playing music with friends, or cooking up a storm in the kitchen.
Ben Messer
Community Engagement & Participation Lead
Ben is the lead on Community Engagement and Participation at Food Matters, covering everything to do with participatory processes, representation, engagement and inclusion.
He is an expert facilitator, with over 30 years’ experience in the UK and the majority world, helping groups, communities and organisations to work together collaboratively and fairly. His role also encompasses capacity building and skills development, supporting people to strengthen their community development practice through adoption of a participatory ethos in their work.
Ben leads the Representation and Justice work in the UK’s Sustainable Food Places programme, including co-development of the REDI for Change anti-racism ethos and the REDI Review Tool – a self-reflection methodology helping organisations view their culture, practice and people through the lens of race, equity, diversity and inclusion.
Meet the Trustees
Tim Marsh
Trustee
Tim is an experienced Public Health policy professional. He is particularly interested in school food and diet related chronic disease. He has worked at a local, national and international level within NGOs, Government and academia.
‘Being a trustee enables me to both develop organisational skills and work with a talented group of individuals, from a variety of backgrounds, on a number of stimulating issues within a friendly and entertaining environment.’
Lindy Sharpe
Trustee
Lindy Sharpe is an academic researcher and former journalist. She has a PhD in sustainable food systems.
‘Being a Trustee of Food Matters brings me into contact with a group of talented and dedicated people who are trying in all sorts of practical ways to help those experiencing hardship to find opportunity and wellbeing. And we usually manage to have a good laugh at board meetings’.
Colin Havard
Trustee
Colin is an experienced community development person, currently focusing on cohesion and poverty. He also has extensive experience of being on organisational strategic management.
‘I really enjoy being part of the FM team as I continue to learn from and be inspired by other board members and staff.’
Kath Dalmeny
Trustee
In her day job, Kath Dalmeny coordinates the Sustain food and farming alliance, supporting action across the food and farming system for health, fairness and sustainability. She is particularly interested in place-based action such as the Sustainable Food Places network, and support for people most marginalised in our food system, so is a long-term supporter of Food Matters and its pioneering work on these important issues.
‘Food Matters is a really great group of people trying to make positive change happen in the food system, in a principled, connected, supportive, human-centred and down-to-earth (down to soil!) sort of way. I really love working with a team who values communities and the role that good policies, planning and decision-making can in creating the spaces and institutions that enable better ways of feeding ourselves and each other.’
Dr Rounaq Nayak
Trustee
Dr Rounaq Nayak is a Senior Lecturer in Sustainable Agri-Food Systems at Bournemouth University and an Economic and Social Research Council Policy Fellow at the Wales Centre for Public Policy. Rounaq’s extensive background in building sustainable agri-food systems involves community co-production, policy advocacy, and integrating lived-experience voices into decision-making. Their current work focuses on engaging marginalised communities in sustainability and resilience-building efforts using a systems approach, bridging the gap between policy and practice.
‘I’m thrilled to join the trustee team at Food Matters and contribute to their mission of creating healthier, sustainable food systems. I look forward to bringing my expertise and experience in meaninguflly involving community voices and lived experience to drive impactful policy changes. Together, we can build a more resilient and equitable food system that serves everyone.’
Sam Dyer
Trustee
Sam was awarded an MBE in 2021 for her work addressing food inequality and championing food justice in Cambridge, where she leads the Cambridge Food Partnership – one of the few food partnerships to have a achieves a SFP gold award. She has 15 years’ experience running her own catering businesses and brings a wealth of experience from the voluntary sector, having worked in housing, social enterprise, sustainability, and event catering.
‘I’m thrilled to be joining the trustee team at Food Matters as the work aligns so closely with my passion for creating fairer, more sustainable food systems. With 20 years of experience in the food industry, including ten years focused on local food systems and community engagement I’m eager to bring my expertise and knowledge to the organisation.’
Dain Robinson
Trustee
Dain currently works at Deloitte UK as their internal Sustainability Manager leading. Her work focuses on decarbonising the building operations involving close collaboration with their caterers to increase environmental and social sustainability. Outside her day job, she focuses her energy on supporting young people, especially people of colour, to enter the sustainability profession through guest lectures and 1-2-1 mentoring. To tackle issues around discrimination and exclusion with her profession, she has started designing and delivering sessions around anti-racism, diversity, equity and inclusion. Finally, she is currently writing as a contributing author for an academic textbook titled: Sustainable Development in Teaching and Education Programmes focusing on making sustainability education inclusive which will be published by Springer in 2025.
‘I am delighted to be joining the Food Matters team as a Trustee after searching for an organisation whose values and purpose as closely aligned with mine. I was impressed with how the team are holistically approaching environmental and social sustainability issues which not as many organisations are doing currently. Therefore I look forward to bringing my experiences in corporate sustainability as well as my personal passion and lived experiences around diversity, equity, inclusion and leadership to serve the charity’
Get In Touch
Reach out to the Food Matters team to find out more about what we do, get involved or to collaborate with us on a future project.
Get In Touch
Get in touch with the Food Matters team to find out more about what we do or get involved. We also want to hear from you if you would like to collaborate with us on a future project.
