DIRECTORS

Abigail Melville has 20 years experience in politics, public affairs and public sector management. She has a Masters in Public Policy and Organisation Theory and trained in research methods during two years study for a PHd at the LondonSchool of Economics. She was the Labour Party’s Head of Local Government from 1994-1998 where she managed political relations and campaigns, and helped developed policies for local government modernisation. She helped found and served on the board of the New Local Government Network (NLGN), and for a time was Director of NLGN’s Innovation Forum. She has been an elected local councillor, has worked in Parliament and has public affairs experience with LLM communications. From 1999, she was Assistant Director for knowledge and innovation at the Improvement and Development Agency for Local Government (IDeA) where she led the development of the IDeA knowledge website and communities of practice. She spent a year as a Programme Manager at Lambeth Council working on community engagement projects. She has recently developed a methodology and carried out evaluations for a large scale preventing extremism funded project - the Radical Middle Way

 

Farzana Hakim is a diversity consultant and leadership coach. Her clients include Channel 4, the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council and the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Previously she was Director of the Commissioner’s Office at the Commission for Equalities and Human Rights and Director for Corporate and Government Relations at the Commission for Racial Equality. She handled CRE’s relations with Government and Parliament in the aftermath of the 9/11 and 7 July attacks, was a member of the Defeating Extremism Together Task Group and advised Government on relations with Muslim communities. From 1997-2000 she was Assistant Political Secretary to the Prime Minister responsible for race relations, religion, European political work and relations with the Labour Party. In 2000 she joined JP Morgan as Vice President for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In 2001 she set up Black and Red Ltd, focusing on media, campaigning and political consultancy and worked with a number of Muslim Organisations including the Muslim Council of Britain. Farzana is currently a member of the Board of Trustees at the Runnymede Trust and on the board of the Cedar Network.

Ed Owen spent eight years as senior strategic policy and communications adviser to Rt Hon Jack Straw MP, working in the Home Office (1997 to  2001) and Foreign & Commonwealth Office (2001 to 2005) with responsibility for Islamic engagement issues at both national and international levels. He has extensive international contacts and expertise, and has worked closely with stakeholder groups within the preventing extremism and community cohesion fields. He has experience of working with No.10, other government departments, think tanks, NGOs and the media. He is a local councillor in an inner London borough and, as a consultant, he has provided strategic communications advice to a range of local authorities.

 

Dilwar Hussain is Head of the Policy Research Centre at the Islamic Foundation. He is an Associate Lecturer on the Open University “Islam in the West” course and a Fellow of the Faiths and Civil Society Unit at Goldsmiths College. Dilwar was a Commissioner at the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) from 2006 to 2007. He worked on the Preventing Extremism Together workgroups set up by the Home Office after July 7th 2005 and has delivered research and training contracts on Preventing Violent Extremism. He recently helped the Local Government Association produce a handbook to show how local authorities can develop effective partnerships at the community level and share good practice in PVE work. He has published widely on British Muslim communities and Muslim identity, including co-authoring “British Muslims: Between Assimilation and Segregation” (Leicester: Islamic Foundation, 2004). He is a Founding member, the European Muslim Network, Founding Director of the Community Relations Initiative and a Member of the Leicester Faith Leaders Forum.