Since 2018 Katharine has served as a committee member on the Crown Prosecution Service’s External Consultative Group on Hate Crime (ECG), giving advice on how hate crimes should be dealt with in the criminal justice system, as well as challenging poor practices on a highly confidential basis. She was an advisory board member for the consulting company, Fideres LLP, which exposes and pursues corporate wrong-doing until 2022. She has also served as a director of the Society of Authors, sitting on its management committee from 2018-2021. She sat on the finance sub-committee, the membership sub-committee and its editorial advisory board. This follows successful committee experience in a number of advisory roles, including serving as an expert advisor to the EHRC from 2010-2011 on its report and manifesto on disability hate crime, Hidden In Plain Sight (2011). She then advised the Association of Chief Police Officers and the National Policing Improvement Agency on their response to the EHRC’s report. She then joined the National Police Chiefs Council’s Deaf and Disability Forum in 2016.
My experience, both as a board member and as an editor, has given me a solid understanding of financial oversight, risk management, membership, equality and diversity and stakeholder engagement.
My work at the Society of Authors has in particular given me the following experiences:
-As management committee member, worked on risk management for administering industry wide emergency grants during the pandemic
– As finance sub-committee member, involved with advising on the strategy around setting a five year budget in a time of extreme uncertainty around both Covid-19 and Brexit
– As editorial advisory committee member, working currently on remit and redesign of the magazine, whilst safeguarding editorial independence
– As membership committee member, provides ongoing advice on membership engagement and updating systems to serve the membership more efficiently, including rolling out a new CRM as well as advice on fees and accountability structure
I was also hugely proud to have co-created and managed an active network challenging disability hate crime.
Stephen Brookes, Anne Novis and I co-founded the Disability Hate Crime Network on Facebook well over a decade ago (with Robin van de Hende forming an original email list in 2007, particularly around supporting people with learning difficulties). When Robin moved posts, Stephen helmed a lot of the work pulling the network onto Facebook around a year later, and we were proud to be given a hate crime award from Radar (as was) in 2010. The network is nothing without its members – and in December 2020 I decided to step back from my 13 years of serving as a co-ordinator, as I am aware of the risks of founder syndrome. I’m still a member and remain very enthusiastic about the work the network does.
I have completed governance, chair, diversity and inclusion and information and security and risk management training.
Katharine Quarmby 