Board of Directors
Julie Plumley
Julie established the social enterprise, Future Roots in 2008 and is the organisation’s Managing Director.
She has been a qualified and registered Social Worker for over twenty years. Julie also holds a Level 7 qualification in Leadership & Management and is the voluntary sector representative on the Dorset Children’s Safeguarding Board.
Born and raised into a Dorset farming family, one of Julie’s passions is her Dreamcatcher herd, a herd of pedigree Simmental cattle, which she keeps on her Dorset farm, Rylands. Julie refused to comment on whether her appreciation of David Essex made any worthwhile contribution to her areas of work.
James O’Brien
James is our Company Secretary. Having served his apprenticeship as an electrician he is now Electrical Contracts Manager at Wessex Group having previously worked at Lorne Stewart plc as a Senior Project Manager in their Building Services team. James works behind the scenes on Future Roots’ finance and sites management. James also leads on our annual fundraiser – the Holnest Country Fayre.
Jerry Brady
Jerry is a qualified Social Worker who has over 30 years operational and management experience of mental health and children and family work in local authority settings.
He has led implementation of a range of service and policy development issues in areas in children’s social care, including work with looked after children, service user participation, child protection and safeguarding. His work has centred on partnership approaches with health, police and the voluntary sector, including information sharing, common assessment, and parenting support. He is currently involved in the joint commissioning of services with Children’s Services. Jerry is on our Board of Directors.
Liz Rose
Liz is a registered mental health nurse and has been Team Leader of a Community Mental Health team working with older people for the past 20 plus years. She has a BSc in Dementia studies and is particularly passionate about ensuring that older people with dementia live as well as they can with fulfilled lives. She has worked with the Alzheimer’s Society on several projects in North Dorset and is a member of the Dementia Alliance in Dorchester. In 2012 Liz carried the Olympic torch in Dorset for her work with people with dementia. Liz in on our Board of Directors.
Tobin Sykes
Tobin has a background in business, mainly in operational, supply chain and strategic planning roles. He came into contact with Future Roots through his wife who works in the voluntary sector and has been collaborating with Julie and Future Roots for nearly 10 years. Having seen the extraordinary work that Future Roots is doing and the impact that it can have he is keen to be a part of it. He joined the Board of Directors in 2015 and is hoping to support behind the scenes and to bring a complementary perspective and skill set to the team.
Alison Johns
I was brought up in Uganda and was sent to boarding school in the UK. I started my working life training to become a Legal Executive but, after marrying, this training was interrupted by the birth of my children. I continued to work in the legal profession until my husband and I bought a business in Poole. We sold that after many years of success and after a brief couple of years working in the engineering business I was appointed as a School Bursar in 1991. I remained in education until I took early retirement in 2007. I moved to France with my husband to renovate and rebuild our 200 year old property, which we then ran as gites. We moved back to Dorset in 2013 just before the birth of our first grandchild. My first contact with Julie was while she was working for the LEA in 1991. It was purely by chance that we met again when I volunteered at Rylands Farm and realised that I shared Future Roots ethos. I became a director in 2015 and a member of the finance committee.
Tina Barton
Tina is a non-executive director specialising in strategic business and change management, education and training. With over 30 years as a drug development specialist within the pharmaceutical sector, Tina has held Senior Management roles with global blue chip and start-up organisations. With over 50 academic publications, Tina holds a BSc, PhD (in cancer causation) and an MBA. She is past Chair of The Institute of Clinical Research where her focus was developing professionals and raising standards for the membership.
Sue Spencer
Sue has a background in operational improvement and HR working for PLCs, small businesses and charities. She has specialised in helping start-ups grow and building their teams to do this successfully. Sue initially came into contact with Future Roots as a volunteer with the Countrymen’s Club when it had just been launched in 2012 and gradually taken on more work with the Board until officially joining the Board as Chair in 2017.
Mentor – Terence Rosslyn Smith MBE
Terence’s background and experience is broad ranging – having started in banking in the UK and Portugal, considered ordination, been part of setting up and establishing a regional office of a social education organisation which led to a role as the first manager on the National Board which has schemes to employ over 6,500 young people and over 800 adults. This scheme of social education informed and influenced many of the social enterprises in which Terence subsequently played a role, both in Portugal and Spain as well as in the UK. In 2002 Terence was awarded his MBE for “Services to Disadvantaged People”. Terence is a mentor to Julie Plumley.
