who's who at pride london

It takes an awful lot of people to create the UK's Capital Pride.  In addition to the valuable support from our patrons and from our supporters and sponsors our event simply wouldn't happen without our dedicated team of volunteers.  You can read more about them below.

If you feel inspired to join them, please see the information on our volunteering page.

structure

Pride London is a charitable company registered with Companies House (05061574) and the Charity Commision (1104774).  We are governed by a board of Directors who all play an active role in day-to-day operations.

Responsible for the day-to-day operations of the charity are four committees; Operations, Production, Administration and Stakeholders which are made up of a mix of Directors and other volunteers.  There are a further number of sub-committees that deal with specific areas such as the parade.  We constantly strive to be a lean, mean pride-creating machine and occasionally "tweak" this structure to perfect that!

board

Paul Birrell, Chair
Paul, our Chair, has been part of the organising team of the various London Pride events for more time than just about anyone. His 14 years of dedication belie his youthful looks and boyish charm. Paul took over as Chair in 2006 and has made it his mission to restructure the organisation to better cope with the massive event Pride London now is! He is also the British Isles' Regional Director of InterPride, the international Pride association.

Paul works full-time as a Relationship Manager for a large US bank.

Emma Hands, Vice-Chair
Emma Hands joined the Pride London Women's Committee in 2005, whilst volunteering as a telephone helpline counsellor for London Lesbian & Gay Switchboard. She became a Director in 2006 and then Vice-Chair.

In her 'day' job Emma is the Women's Online Brand Manager for the Millivres Prowler Group where she runs the lesbian home shopping sites Libertas and DIVA Direct.

Mike Chalmers
Mike has been involved with Pride London since 2005 as Production and Stage Manager for the event on Leicester & Trafalgar Square. Over the last ten years he has also been involved on a number of other national pride events as production manager including, Birmingham, Bournemouth, Edinburgh, Bristol, Brighton, Manchester, Nottingham and London Mardi Gras, as well as two years as Chairman for Leeds pride event "Hyde OUT". As a main job Mike also works as a full-time Production Manager for some of Euope's biggest events such as - Glastonbury, Global Gathering, Gatecrasher, Space, Love Parade, Leeds Festival, Love Box, Party in the Park, T in the Park, and the O2 festival.

Colm Howard-Lloyd
Colm has been a part of pride in London, through its various guises for more than a decade. He has an interest in many areas of the charity but particularly in Communications and Marketing, and Operations.

Colm started his career with KPMG and Andersen Consulting, where he worked on the re-branding to Accenture. He was asked to join Purple Radio, at its birth, as Communications Manager and went on to oversee the brands growth becoming the "world's fastest growing radio station" and the launch of a series of music festivals under the Purple In The Park and Fierce Festival brands.  He was also one of the founder members of YouthSpeak, a campaign group setup to push for an equal age of consent, and famous for projecting a pink "16" on the House of Commons.  He is employed in Communications and Engagement for a regional government department.

Farah Kelly
Farah has given many years of services to Pride London.  Initially she got hooked as part of the parade team and hasn't found the time to stop yet! 

After joining the board Farah intially took on the role of Parade Director, before moving over to supervise Pride London's contracts and other governanace.

Farah is a lawyer for a Central Government Department.

Laurie Powell
Laurie has been involved with Pride London from almost it incorporation when he was asked if he would prepare the first financial statements of the Charity. Subsequently, hooked he volunteered to become Pride London's Finance Director.

Professionally, he is self employed as joint partner in a firm of Chartered Accountantsand in his spare time is involved with the preservation of the nations transport heritage in the form of buses run by the former Aldershot & District Traction Company Limited.

Carl Smith
Carl has worked tirelessly on the Pride London Parade for 7 years and joined the board in 2007 where he is currently Parade Director. 

Carl is also involved in many of the negotiations regarding design and sponsor activity.

Away from Pride London Carl is Head of Human Resources for one of London's largest hotels and finds time to enjoy theatre and travelling with his lovely partner.

Patrick Williams
Patrick joined the board in November 2007, having been recommended by the TUC.  He currently is the chair of the stakeholders group, which comprises of representatives from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic caucus, Women's Committee, Trans with Pride, Youth @ Pride and the Older LGBT network. He also chairs the BAME caucus, as well as being the director responsible for human resources and volunteers.

Patrick holds a Doctorate in dance and this year will be organising the opening of the Main Stage in Trafalgar Square with a spectular production.