Sands’ Board of Trustees is responsible for the governance of the charity - making sure that Sands is effectively and properly run - and setting our long-term aims.
Susanna Speirs has been our Vice-Chair since 2018 and knows first-hand the huge difference the charity can make, having been supported by Sands after the stillbirth of her daughter Ava in 2012. Susanna is also an active member of her local group Surrey Sands.
We asked Susanna about her personal journey with Sands, why she wanted to become a Sands Trustee, and her hopes for the future.
Hello Susanna, please tell us a bit more about yourself.
My name is Susanna, and I’m very happily married to Nick. After we lost our eldest (Ava), we were lucky enough to have another girl and then two boys. Our house is consequently normally complete chaos, but we love it!
In my day job, I work as a lawyer. I consult both for Unilever, and for Reviewed & Cleared, a media law firm, which has allowed me to structure my work around the children’s school hours. Prior to this, I helped manage the in-house legal team at Arsenal Football Club, which was a very special experience as I am also a life-long Arsenal fan! My legal expertise consequently covers a wide range of areas including commercial, charity and intellectual property law.
Outside of my job and my family, I love doing sport, particularly running, swimming, cycling and skiing. It gives me calm time when I can rebalance away from the chaos of the family! I regularly take part in triathlons of varying distances, having just completed my first half-ironman. I have taken part in a number of major events in aid of Sands, including the London Marathon and RideLondon100. For my 40th birthday, my whole family (15 of us) completed RideLondon 19 miles to raise money for Sands, including my middle son who was only 5 at the time!
How did you first find out about Sands?
I first found out about Sands when we lost our eldest daughter, Ava, in 2012. Our midwife (who had had Sands bereavement care training) was generally amazing at helping us during and after her birth, including dressing our daughter, taking photos and hand and footprints, helping us make a decision about having an autopsy, and putting us in contact with funeral services. She also told us about Sands and suggested that we might find it helpful to get in touch with our local support group.
When I got home, I looked at the stories on the Sands website and it really helped me feel less alone. A few months later, I joined our local group and having people who could really understand what I was going through, from personal experience, really helped me come to terms with her loss and get me through my next pregnancy.
When did you begin to get involved in supporting our work?
I began to get involved in supporting Sands’ work initially through my local support group – helping at fundraising events and looking after the Sands remembrance garden that had been created in the cemetery in which my daughter was buried. Being involved with Sands helped me feel that I was doing something for Ava.
Why did you want to become a Trustee?
I decided to become a trustee when I reached the point in my career at which I wanted to do more to help others. I looked at retraining as a midwife but, although I would have found it personally very rewarding, the loss of my salary and move to shift-work would have been too difficult to manage as a family. At that point, I saw that Sands were recruiting for a new trustee, looking particularly for someone with legal experience. It seemed the perfect opportunity to use my existing skillset to make a difference in the world, and for a cause that meant so much to me.
What do you find most inspiring about being on the Board?
The ability to make a difference to so many people – to help Sands grow as a charity and be able to impact more and more people, both in terms of bereavement care and support, but also in terms of bringing down the number of baby deaths in the UK. I also find it incredibly inspiring to see how many people want to help others – both in our amazing staff team, and our huge body of volunteers.
How do you feel your experience, knowledge and skills make a difference to the work of the Board?
Although my core legal skills allow me to spot potential legal issues for Sands, I have found that my wider skills (including risk analysis, negotiation, strategy planning and drafting) are equally useful in helping the work that the Board does. As Vice-Chair I also act as a sounding board for the Chair, where necessary, and help ensure the Board operates as one cohesive unit, working for the best of the charity.
What do you think makes Sands special and unique as a charity?
The Sands staff, trustees and volunteers come from such a wide range of society. We have so many people who are personally bereaved and wanting to do what they can to help stop others experiencing the same loss or, if they do, help them through that loss. This makes for an incredibly dedicated team who are also very knowledgeable.
Sands has also developed, under Clea’s leadership, into a charity that is always looking for opportunities to learn and improve, so works really collaboratively with it’s volunteers as well as healthcare professionals and other stakeholders, such as the parliamentary committees in which we are involved. Our ability to connect that body of personally bereaved to those that can make a big difference to our aims – such as key researchers, decision-makers in Parliament and those leading NHS trusts – is very unusual.
If you had to describe Sands in three words what would they be?
Compassionate, growing, achieving.
Is there a particular aspect of Sands’ work that most interests you?
Although Sands’ work with improving bereavement care and bereavement support is incredibly important and has a real lasting impact on those we help, the most critical area, for me, is our work in reducing the number of babies lost in the UK each year. What can be more important than that?
If you had one wish for the future of Sands what would that be?
That it continues to develop into a stable organisation which can make long-term plans for how to reduce baby-loss in the UK, and therefore have a long-term impact on those numbers.