Mel Toomey
Chair of the NHA steering group and Head of Marketing and Communications, Heylo Housing

Mel joined Hastoe in 2008 to head up a new sales department. She also manages the communications and PR function, and, more recently, the re-sales function. Previously at Peabody, Mel has extensive experience of affordable home ownership and intermediate housing initiatives.

Lisa Shead
Vice-chair of NHA steering group and Head of Acquisitions, Guildmore

Lisa has worked in housing for over 25 years and has experience in both the private and affordable housing sector. Having started her career at a residential estate agency, she focused on affordable housing within the shared ownership sales team at Tower Homes (L&Q), before moving into development in 2003.

Minnie Dando
Head of Marketing and Communications, Hyde New Homes

Minnie Dando is Head of Marketing and Communications at Hyde New Homes. She is a seasoned sales and marketing professional leveraging 13 years of experience in property marketing and sales, within the private sales and affordable sectors. She brings a valuable understanding of project management in the construction sector to the table and is thus able to balance customer focus with internal stakeholder management effectively.

Alex Glenister
Development Director, Dolphin Living

Alex is a Chartered Surveyor with some 15 years’ experience in the residential development sector working in both development consultancy and for affordable housing developers.

Jeanette Grady
Group Head of Sales, Torus

Jeanette joined Torus in 2018 to lead the Sales Team at one of the North West’s largest developing housing providers. She has over 25 years’ experience in affordable home ownership and currently manages a broad portfolio including both shared ownership and rent to buy opportunities. Previously at Riverside Home Ownership, Jeanette has an in-depth knowledge of delivering national sales programmes.

Nick Hart
Marketing Manager, Sovereign Living

Nick currently manages a small team at Sovereign to deliver digital and marketing support for the development, home ownership, market rent and leasehold divisions of the largest housing association in the South and South West of England. He's been at Sovereign for over four years and previously worked at BSS Digital and Ideaolgy.

Deidre Kronk
Marketing and Property Events Manager, L&Q

Deidre joined the Strategic Services division at L&Q in 2017 and manages L&Q’s annual Shared Ownership marketing campaign, PricedIn website, L&Q’s sales social media channels as well as the sales and development awards strategy. Prior to this, she worked in various companies as a social media and brand manager, online account manager and marketing projects manager in her native South Africa.

Emma Maddick
Director, EMC 360

Emma runs her own company EMC 360. Before setting it up, she was Head of Marketing for the commercial division of Notting Hill Housing. With nine years' property marketing experience both in the UK and overseas, Emma has spearheaded strategic marketing campaigns for multiple award-winning developments, across tenures including private sale, shared ownership sales and market rent. Before her career in property marketing, Emma worked for seven years at the BBC in a number of B2B and B2C marketing roles.

Jon McDermott
HOW Contract Service Manager, Homeownership Westminster, Westminster City Council

Prior to this, Jon was at Catalyst Housing from 2006 to 2017, where he worked in a variety of roles, including marketing, event management and as a contract manager of Home Ownership Westminster. After this Jon joined City West Homes.

Jon also freelances in the broadcasting media as an event coordinator, and has worked on many high-profile televised special events and award shows during the last 10 years.

Os Osman
Director of Home Ownership, Optivo

Os has worked in housing for 25 years, throughout which he has been involved with affordable home ownership and the more commercial side of housing associations' work. Os is an expert in his field both in the not-for-profit sector and more generally in the property world.

Andrew Peglau
Assistant Director of Marketing, Peabody

Andrew is a results-oriented and award-winning marketing leader with over 15 years' experience in the marketing and residential property fields. As assistant director of marketing at Peabody, Andrew leads a team of talented marketeers to deliver innovative, through-the-line campaigns for both shared ownership and private sale. Andrew also has extensive experience leading joint venture and partnership projects. Before his career in property marketing, Andrew worked in sports marketing in his native Canada.

Laura Rose
Head of Sales Services, Southern Housing Group

Laura has been in the sector for 13 years. Previously working for Metropolitan Housing before joining Southern Housing Group in 2018. Laura specialises in Home Ownership and currently heads up the Sales Services Department. Specific expertise are After-Sales services portfolio management and Leasehold management. Southern Housing Group is one of England’s largest housing associations, providing more then 27,000 homes for over 72,000 people.

Vicky Savage
London Managing Director, L&Q South

Vicky joined L&Q in 2018 after four highly successful years as Executive Development at Network Homes. She worked the previous seven years at a senior level at Network Homes in development roles. Vicky trained as an Urban Planner, but housing was her main passion and so moved to post graduate Housing Studies at the London School of Economics. Previously Vicky has worked in a range of housing development roles for over 25 years including time at Origin Housing Group and English Churches Housing Association.

At L&Q Vicky has strategic responsible for all development growth activity including JVs/partnering, estate regeneration and sales in London. Vicky is also responsible for L&Q innovative in-house construction function. L&Q have an ambitious growth target of delivering 100,000 homes in the next 10 years. Vicky leads a multi skilled expert team of circa 600 staff. Vicky is L&Q’s lead Director in the innovative Build London Partnership Project. Developing new homes for small and BME Housing Associations.

Vicky is currently Chair of the London G15 Development Directors Group and plays an active role on this influential London forum. Vicky is particularly interested in achieving greater representation of women in the built environment sector and currently mentors several up and coming female development professionals.

Francesca Topazio
Head of Affordable Development, Curo Group

Francesca joined Curo in 2017 to help deliver the organisation’s affordable housing programme. With 10 years’ experience in the sector she specialises in Section 106 opportunities and Design & Build affordable housing schemes. Francesca also works closely with Homes England, Local Authorities and other stakeholders to secure external funding for new affordable homes.

Curo provides great homes and high quality care and support services across the West of England. With over 25,000 customers, Curo owns and manages more than 13,000 properties and are building hundreds of new homes every year.