Board of Trustees
Christian Aid Ireland is a company in the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland, and is governed by the boards of these two companies. The two boards operate as one board and include 8 directors who are nominated by our sponsoring churches.
Up to two directors may also serve on the Board of Christian Aid Britain and Ireland.
Rev Dr Liz Hughes (Chair)
Rev Dr Liz Hughes has recently retired as Minister of Whitehouse Presbyterian Church in Belfast, where she has served since December 2000. Liz qualified in Edinburgh as a registered general nurse and became a deaconess before taking up the ordained ministry. Liz and her husband served as missionary ministers with the United Church in Jamaica from 1987-95, fuelling her special interest in Global Mission and the learnings from the developing church context. On her return to Northern Ireland, Rev Hughes served as Associate Minister in 1st Bangor Presbyterian Church. In 2016 the Rev Hughes was awarded an honorary Doctorate in Divinity for her outstanding service, becoming only the second female Presbyterian minister to be recognised in this way. She served as Convener and Chair of the PCI Council for Global Mission from 2015 - 2022.
Maeve Marnell (Vice Chair)
Maeve has been a member of the Christian Aid Ireland IFRA Committee for some years. She is a trained solicitor with experience in defence litigation. Maeve founded the charity Food For Thought Africa in 2007 and remains an Executive Trustee. From April 2017 to September 2019 Maeve was a trust of the Mission Aviation Fellowship UK. Maeve has been involved in the Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education since 2016 and is currently the Chair. She is also an independent assessor for the Commissioner for Public Appointments NI.
Susan Webb
Susan is a treasury professional with many years of experience in financial services and banking. She is a former managing director of Pfizer’s international treasury centre, based in Dublin having worked there for over 20 years before retiring in 2015. Prior to joining Pfizer, Susan worked for several years in KPMG in their audit and professional standards departments and also worked for a number of years with Kenmare Resources plc. Susan is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin with a BA in Natural Sciences and is a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland. She has a keen interest in technology. Since retiring from executive life she has taken up a number of independent non-executive director roles with various financial services entities. She is also a member of the National Treasury Management Agency. Susan lives in Dublin with her husband Ian. She is a member of the Religious Society of Friends in Ireland and has been nominated as their representative.
Very Rev Paul Draper
Dean Paul Draper was born in 1964 and attended Belmont Primary, Strandtown Primary and Sullivan Upper schools, followed by a MA Hons in English at Glasgow university before completing his studies in Theology at Trinity College Dublin. Paul became a Deacon in 1990 and Priest in 1991. His Curacy was in Omagh (Derry & Raphoe) from 1990-94, an Incumbency at Ballydehob Union (Cork, Cloyne & Ross) between 1994 and 2009, and currently Paul is Dean Of Saint Carthage’s Cathedral, Lismore and Rector of Lismore Union of Parishes. Paul is the Diocesan Director of Ordinands for Cork, Cloyne and Ross. He is also a member of the Commission on Ministry and is a Benedictine Oblate of Glenstal Abbey. He is married to Kathryn who is a music teacher, and has two daughters, Chloe and Rachael. Passions include poetry, football, art & spirituality, coffee, running, and Nordic Drama. They have been involved with Christian Aid in many different places, and Paul went with a team to Angola in 2008. The experience was very formative and a challenge to understand a “disconnect” between churches and humanitarian needs, how those needs might come into the centre of who we are, and how we evolve.
Jane Adrain
Until her retirement in 2024, Jane Adrain was an independent Business Planning and Marketing Consultant with almost 40 years’ experience. Her qualifications include a Bachelor of Agriculture and an MBA from Queen’s University, Belfast and a Chartered Institute of Marketing Diploma in Professional Marketing. A Member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (MCIM) Jane was awarded Chartered Marketer Status in July 2014.
Jane spent the first 16 years of her career in the marketing departments of blue-chip companies in the Financial Services, Pharmaceutical and Agriculture sectors. From 2007 Jane worked as an independent marketing consultant and trainer, working with various SMEs and start-up businesses helping them to identify their business needs and formulate business/marketing plans to take advantage of opportunities available to them. She has worked on numerous mentoring programmes for several local Councils and for the Countryside Agri-Rural Partnership. Jane was also a distance learning tutor for the Oxford College of Marketing for 10 years, teaching a number of online marketing modules. Jane has worked with a number of Non-Profit organisations and was latterly Chairperson of Action Cancer, Northern Ireland’s leading local Cancer Charity. She is also on the Board of Governors of Wellington College Belfast.
Jane is active in her local church, Second Saintfield Presbyterian, where she is on the church committee and is a member of the PW.
Rev Dr Livingstone Thompson
Livingstone Thompson, PhD, is theologian and an experienced diversity and inclusion trainer with specialisms in cross-cultural interactions, anti-racism training, religions and interfaith dialogue. He is a member of the Racial and Equality Sub-Group of the Northern Ireland Executive Office and Chairman of the African and Caribbean Support Organisation NI. He has worked with a variety of international companies delivering training in cultural competence and leading global virtual teams. In his over twenty years of involvement in education and training at local and international levels, Livingstone has travelled to over 50 countries. From this extensive experience, gained in cross-cultural contexts, he brings both common sense and critical learning to the areas of intercultural communication, cultural competence training and diversity management. Livingstone is minister in charge of Moravian churches in Belfast and Hillsborough, NI and serves as treasurer on the executive Board of Moravian Church, British Province
Rev Dr Karen Campbell
After graduating from Trinity College Dublin, Karen became a music minister in Nairobi Kenya for three years teaching music and worship at Daystar University. Alongside teaching, she also studied for a masters in Christian ministry and researched the hymns of the Dinka people in Southern Sudan.
On returning to Ireland, Karen undertook training for ministry within the Presbyterian Church in Ireland and served in parishes in Country Antrim.
In 2018, she moved with her family to Grand Rapids Michigan where she pastored a large city church that was diverse culturally and welcomed refugees and asylum seekers from a range of countries. Whilst there, she completed her Doctor of Ministry and researched the value of intellectual humility in multicultural worshipping congregations.
The family returned to Ireland in 2023 and Karen began work for the Irish Council of Churches. She currently serves as the General Secretary and enjoys connecting a wide ranges of churches through Christ. Alongside this, she enjoys teaching at Belfast School of Theology enlivening young people in the study of theology and equipping the next generation to think theologically about all the challenges faced today.
Roy Kingston
Roy describes his life mission thus: " to encourage and enable". He is married to Jennifer and we have 4 adult children and 3 grandchildren.
Roy has been a farmer for over 40 years, having taken over from his own parents his son now runs the farm and Roy describes his revised role as ‘a farm labourer’! The farm is principally beef and crops, plus a grass based dairy enterprise. In the past Roy also had an interest in a seed oil producing company.
Educated at Wesley College, Roy continued his farming education at Darrarra College. Roy is a qualified and practising Methodist Local Preacher and is skilled in working out mission, strategy and enabling others, using his good listening skills and empathy. He frequently leads Sunday worship and chairs working committees. Roy has held the roles of society steward, and circuit steward locally in the Methodist Church.
Roy has travelled to Thailand, Laos and Vietnam to learn, encourage and enable the local churches and travelled with CAI to Zimbabwe last July to learn from, encourage and enable CAI partners. In addition he travelled to Sri Lanka one year after the Tsunami for the same purpose.
He has worked on the Board of Governors of Gurteen college and Chaired the board for the term of 3 years finishing Sept 24 and remains on the Board of Trustees of the College.
Continuous personal development includes various short courses undertaken in Health and Safety, Board Governance, leadership, Facilitating difficult conversations and Mediation, plus courses in farm machinery maintenance.
During his farming career he has helped start and lead a Tillage Farmer discussion group and a Beef Farmer discussion group to discuss technical issues also create a social forum as farmers can be isolated. Roy is a stakeholder attached to the Agriculture Faculty of UCD and is helping to develop a learning module for farm advisors on approached to poor mental health in the farming community. He recently joined a worldwide support group of farm succession facilitators, focusing on the increasing age profile of Ireland’s farmers and the decrease in potential young farmers.
Pauline Conway
Pauline is a retired diplomat with 19 years’ experience of development cooperation programme management and policy development, including 13.5 years working in three African Counties (Ethiopia, Tanzania and Lesotho). She has an in- depth understanding of global development issues, including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and a strong personal interest in climate change issues. Pauline worked for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for 11 years at Head of Mission level in two African countries (Ethiopia and Tanzania). She also has 6 years’ experience as Board Member of an important Irish faith based international development NGO. Pauline’s skills include practical experience in the implementation of change management, team development and the strengthening of personnel management systems; she has very good interpersonal and organisational skills and good financial ability and understanding. Pauline brings a results-oriented, practical, pro-active approach to work and networking gained during 30 years’ service with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Geoffrey Corry
Geoffrey is an independent facilitator/mediator, trainer and specialist in conflict resolution for over thirty years. He has mediated many interpersonal workplace disputes and was a family mediator for the state-run Family Mediation Service for over twenty years (1992-2015), now retired from that role. He started the first community mediation scheme in Ireland in Tallaght in 1991 and was on the founding committee of Mediation Northern Ireland. He has trained hundreds of mediators in the Republic of Ireland and indirectly has contributed to the growth of the profession in the domains of family, workplace, community, commercial and school mediation. A former Chairperson of the Mediators Institute Ireland (MII) from 1999-2002 and a founder of Facing Forward, a restorative justice group for serious crime.
Rev Colin Darling
Colin has supported Christian Aid (and other Christian Charities) for many years. Personally he has always been attracted to causes and charities which work amongst some of the worlds’ poorest communities. He remembesr many years ago being impacted by the phrase ‘people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care’. That has informed his approach to parish ministry and evangelism. If we don’t show to people in need we genuinely care, we cannot effectively spread the message of the gospel. Core Christian Aid objectives of poverty eradication, equality and social justice are high up his list of priorities. Having travelled to Sierra Leone in January 2020 with Rosamond Bennett, Rev Dr Liz Hughes and Paul Donohoe, he saw first hand how effective Christian Aid can be, how committed and talented its staff are, how rigorous are its procedures and the impact of its work in areas of genuine need. Throughout his life he has been involved with charitable work, from running marathons and cycling maracycles for fund-raising, to serving on the Ulster Bank staff charity committee, where he worked in various positions for 20 years to 2009, prior to being ordained as a Church of Ireland clergyman. He has one University aged son, love being outdoors, playing golf, cycling, skiing, walking. Donegal is one of his favourite places, along with Selhurst Park, where Crystal Palace, his team of 50 years, play its home games.
Rev Paul Maxwell
Paul Maxwell was born in Newtownards and grew up in Bangor, Co. Down. After serving as a Lay Pastoral Assistant on the Cork South and Kerry Circuit of the Methodist Church in Ireland, Paul candidated for the Methodist ministry and was Ordained in 2011. Paul’s ministry has taken him to Cavan, Longford, Carlow, and Kilkenny and he is currently stationed in Dundonald on the Belfast Circuit. He is also the Convenor of the Methodist Church in Ireland’s World Development and Relief Committee and a member of the Irish Methodist World Mission Partnership Committee, Irish Methodist Safeguarding Board and the European Commission on Mission, a committee on World Development and Mission for the European Methodist Church. Paul is married to Nicola and they have two children and a lively Cocker Spaniel.
Rev Uel Marrs
Uel was born, brought up and educated in Belfast. He has a BSc (Hons) in Economics and Accounts. It was whilst training to be an accountant that he sensed God's call to the ordained ministry. After gaining a BD in Aberdeen and a period of further study at Union Theological College in Belfast, he was ordained as Assistant Minister in Wellington Presbyterian Church, Ballymena. A year later, in 1989, he and his wife, Gill, were appointed by PCI to serve in mission with the Presbyterian Church of East Africa (PCEA), a partner church in Kenya.
In nine years in Kenya, Uel was involved in developing a Theological Education by Extension (TEE) programme for the PCEA. After coming home from Kenya in 1998, Uel returned to assist in ministry in Ballymena for one year. This was followed by a move to Greenwell Street Presbyterian Church in Newtownards, where he helped cover a period of vacancy. Uel was appointed Secretary-Designate of the Board of Mission Overseas (BMO) in June 2001 and joined the Mission Overseas staff team in August that year.
After a year shadowing Rev Dr Terry McMullan, he was appointed Overseas Secretary in June 2002, officially taking over from Dr McMullan on 1st September 2002. In 2015 his role was reshaped and he became Council for Global Mission Secretary.
Finance Finance and Audit Committee
Maeve Marnell (Chair)
Hazel Baird
Susan Webb
Robert Dowey
Rosamond Bennett (CEO)
Scott Smith (Head of CAI Finance and Governance)
Nominations & Procedures Committee
Rev Dr Liz Hughes
Gillian Kingston
Uel Marrs
Rev Dr Karen Campbell
Rosamond Bennett
International Programme Committee
Ed O’Donovan
Geoffrey Corry
Pauline Conway (Chair)
Paul Quinn
Fundraising and Communications Committee
Adrian Adams
Jane Adrain
Colin Skehan
Nick Miller
Ruth Cooke
Paul Donohoe