Meet our Team


  • Founding Director

    Emily founded Bookbanks in 2022. She leads the charity’s strategic development, expansion, partnerships and fundraising while also currently heading up Bookbanks' central team and volunteers.

    Based in London and with a background in bookselling, Emily is passionate about building communities around books and also runs Emily’s Walking Book Club, a 4,000-strong community which meets for monthly book walks on Hampstead Heath. 

  • Director

    Hattie heads up Bookbanks’ internal and external communications as well as its safeguarding while overseeing the charity’s strategic development with Emily. She lives in Norfolk and is also a journalist and author.

  • North-West Regional Lead

    Louis grew up in Yorkshire and was inspired to read and write by his mum. Now living in Manchester, he is a published writer with a background in content marketing. An advocate for working class voices, he runs regular workshops as well as his Coffee and Poems Club which visits different cafes in the city and is all about simplifying reading and writing poetry.

  • Regional Lead - London

    Emma grew up on the east coast of Ireland and now lives in London. Her background is in impact initiatives, bookselling, and organising for grassroots and political campaigns. Outside of her work with Bookbanks, she is perpetually working on her first novel.

  • Regional Lead - East Anglia

    Tessa is the Regional Lead for East Anglia & lives in Norwich. She is a writer & theatre-maker and runs a theatre company called Puffling Productions. She is passionate about children’s theatre & literature, is an avid reader and loves what Bookbanks stands for.

Our Ambassadors

  • Andrew was born in Glasgow. He has been nominated for the Booker Prize, was voted one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2003, and won the E. M. Forster Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is Editor-at-Large of the London Review of Books and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

  • Born to an Irish mother and Caribbean father, Kit was brought up in Birmingham. Her debut novel My Name Is Leon was an international bestseller, shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award for 2017. It is now on the GCSE curriculum for schools. Her new novel The Best of Everything was released in April 2025.

    Photo credit Henry J Allen

Our Board of Trustees

  • Chair

    Carla is a strategic leader with over 20 years in the charity sector, driving growth, impact, and inclusion. As CEO of a national charity with over 2,000 volunteers, she has led the expansion of free, one-to-one adult reading coaching across the UK and co-created an ambitious strategy to double the number of beneficiaries by 2029. Carla is deeply passionate about literacy, equality, and access to opportunity - values that align perfectly with Bookbanks' mission. 

  • Treasurer

    Claire is a Chartered Management Accountant, and the business manager for a London State primary school, where she sees the positive impact of books on a daily basis. She is also a keen reader.

  • Annabelle spent many years working for Age UK Camden. She is passionate about books, whether that is reading to her children, sharing recommendations with friends or overseeing Age Uk Camden‘s book club for older people. 

  • For her day job Sheryl is Global Head of Sales at Titanbay, a fintech firm. Prior to that she spent 21 years at Blackrock in various sales leadership roles across Europe and the United States. 

    Sheryl’s non-profit experience spans trustee roles at 100 Women in Finance and Sarabande (the foundation of the late Lee Alexander McQueen) and development board roles at the National Theatre and the Design Museum. 

    Outside of work Sheryl is passionate about the arts, culture and design. 

  • Lead Safeguarding Trustee

    Asma is a child and adolescent psychotherapist.  She started her career as an English teacher in an inner London comprehensive and then spent 8 years as a civil servant in central government.  She is an avid reader and believes in the power of books to support the mental health of individuals and communities.

  • Pete is a lawyer in the technology sector. He has a keen interest in books, community and the outdoors.

  • Tom Campbell has spent many years working in cultural policy, focusing on how culture can be used to generate enterprise and employment opportunities.

  • Claire Shanahan is Executive Director of The Women’s Prize Trust, the charity building a better future by championing women’s writing. Claire was responsible for overseeing the Women’s Prize Trust’s transformation as a registered charity. She leads the Trust’s strategy, business planning, partnerships, and delivery of its flagship prizes and writer development programmes.

    Claire began her career as an Editor before moving to the charity sector as Head of Arts at BookTrust. She has consulted for a range of publishing, culture and media clients including the Guardian, Penguin Random House, BBC and Oxford University Press.

    Claire is a passionate advocate of the transformative power of reading and writing, and the ongoing need to invest in, develop and champion women’s voices. She often appears as a keynote speaker on equality and creativity at international events, as well as regularly
    interviewing writers and chairing events.

Bookbanks champions

Bookbanks is supported and informed by a community of our service users. These champions meet quarterly with trustees to feed back on the charity’s performance. They tell us what we are doing right, how we can improve and develop, and what the people who use our services need from us. Their input is vitally important in shaping the decisions made and direction set by our Board.