Clea joined Sands in July 2016 and is passionate about the importance of peer support and in enabling parents to make the decisions that are right for them. 

Clea’s background in Higher Education and medicine has shaped her belief in the importance of using research to create positive change. With growing public awareness of the issues surrounding stillbirth and neonatal death, and a national commitment to reduce the number of babies dying, Clea is dedicated to fulfilling Sands’ potential to make a real difference for parents.

Dan leads the Fundraising and Communications teams who have a focus on delivering strong, sustainable income and delivering impactful communications to help raise awareness and engage people to take action. One of his key priorities is to work collaboratively across the organisation to develop an engagement model for Sands that seeks to take an insight led, audience centric approach to fundraising and communications, ensuring that all audiences and stakeholders are involved and supported by the charity in the way they want and when they need it.

Dan loves working on a daily basis with passionate, tenacious and talented people and knowing that he’s supporting bereaved parents. He’s also an advanced scuba diver and has been a serial guest on BBC Countryfile.

Jen joined Sands in September 2017 with 25 years’ experience in the health and voluntary sector. She heads up our Bereavement Support Services and Groups teams and holds a wealth of experience in frontline service provision having successfully setup services in hospitals, children’s hospices and the community.

Jen firmly believes that co-creation of services is vital in ensuring those services are effective, supportive and relevant to users. She’s passionate about working with families to support them through the hardest time of their lives and ensuring consistent, high quality services are available to them.

Jen lives in Suffolk, cycles a lot and has a not so secret passion for Strictly and printmaking.

Kate joined Sands in September 2017. She leads three teams to ensure that research translates into practice and the prevention of baby death, that healthcare professionals are supported to offer high quality bereavement care after the death of a baby, and that policy changes are effected nationally to achieve Sands’ vision.
 
Previously Kate was Director of Policy and Campaigns at Action for Children, led the Local Government Association’s Domestic Violence Project and was Policy Manager at Victim Support. She is also Vice Chair of 4All – Building Community in West Dulwich.

Piers’ last major role was with Shooting Star Chase, a Children’s hospice serving West London Surrey, where he was Finance and Resources Director and then Acting CEO. He was also responsible for managing the retail and lottery operations of the charity, plus leading on the redesign of the in-house care system, to enable it for mobile working. After qualifying as an Accountant in the mid-1990s and working in Tanzania for two years shortly thereafter, he has spent over 20 years working in the charitable and not for profit sector, initially as an Auditor and then for the last 14 years as Finance Director.