Our Directors
Our Board of Directors help guide our work and ensure we are working in line with our vision and values.
Our work is possible due to the wide range of women in our world who support us in creating new resources, workshops and activities on a freelance basis and we’re so grateful for their work!
Vicky Booth
Vicky is the CEO of Inspiring Girls International, a charity which raises the aspirations of young girls around the world by connecting them with female role models. Prior to this role, she spent over a decade working within political parties and organisations, with particular focus on supporting women candidates. Vicky has a Masters in Gender Studies, and has recently completed a coaching qualification in order to expand her work with individual women and girls. She has been involved with Elect Her from the very beginning of the organisation, and has loved seeing it develop and grow over the years! Vicky lives in Sussex with her husband and three children.
Lee Chalmers
Lee founded Elect Her in 2014 and has worked on gender equality for 20 years. She has started a women's network, made a film about the future for women and has been on the boards of The Fawcett Society and Engender Scotland. She has an MSc in Gender and Social Policy from the London School of Economics.
Lee has been active in politics herself, having stood for election to the Scottish Parliament in 2016. She now spends her time focused on leadership through London Business School, Center for Creative Leadership and her programmes for midlife women - Midlife Revolution. She lives in Edinburgh with her whippet Stella.
Aarti Joshi
Aarti is a senior Tax professional and Chartered Accountant who specialises in the taxation of Technology businesses in the City of London.
She is a Board Treasurer and Trustee for a children's charity that safeguards deaf children and young adults in complex humanitarian settings around the world, and a school governor of a state primary school in London.
She is an active member of the Conservative Party, for whom she has stood as a candidate in local elections. She is passionate about getting more women involved in politics at all levels, and particularly women from marginalised and working class backgrounds. She is excited about the plans for growth of Elect Her, and hopes to be able to impact the strategy of the organisation as a Board Director.
Giulia Cornaldi
Giulia has a strong track-record leading teams in some of the most prestigious philanthropic enterprises: Thomson Reuters Foundation, UNESCO, the Kering Foundation and the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, of which she was the CEO. Engaged with former Presidents, First Ladies and High Net-Worth Individuals, and generated programmes to deliver diversity, inclusions and best practices in supply chains in collaboration with corporates such as Google, Apple, Refinitiv, Kering, Bank of America, Facebook, Accenture, DHL, Merck, SNR Denton, Mars, HPE and Baker and McKenzie.
She played a pivotal role in helping the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women grow from a small start-up into a global brand. She was key in involving corporates to develop successful diversity and inclusion programmes through training and mentoring of women entrepreneurs in developing countries. As Director of Inclusive Economies at Thomson Reuters Foundation she founded the ESG Working Group to amplify the importance of the S in ESG and to develop training and convenings for journalists, lawyers, corporates and NGOs to ensure best practices around the S are adopted. Since 2016 she is the Chair of the Board of Value for Women and now on the Board of Elect Her and Inspiring Girls.
In all of her positions, Giulia has worked to develop strategy and overall growth plans, as well as forge strong partnerships among diverse stakeholders. She is passionate about women’s empowerment and leadership, entrepreneurship and ESG with a focus on the S and has built global, high profile, cross-sector partnerships in these spaces. Giulia has now started a new adventure with a small ESG consultancy, Climate Horizons, which specialises in ESG strategy, policy and legislation with a focus on climate and biodiversity. She will be doing some interesting projects on S in ESG, gender in Europe, human rights, stakeholders and facilitation, employee engagement, and mentoring.
Patricia Seabright
Patricia is a businesswoman, a facilitator and coach with her own consultancy. Patricia has been working with Elect Her as a facilitator for a number of years. She has worked with a broad range of clients from global corporations through to SMEs and start-ups. She coaches individuals on skills development particularly influencing and public speaking. She is a passionate advocate of gender balance in politics and the workplace and has worked and volunteered on numerous projects to support women on their political journey. Her book, She Said!, explores the challenges women specifically face speaking to be fully heard and the approaches and skills needed to overcome this. She has been a political candidate and understands the processes and the pressures involved.
Ruth Kelly
Ruth is a lecturer in human rights at the Centre for Applied Human Rights at the University of York. In that role she supports students to think politically about human rights, and works with artists and activists to explore how feminist and human rights activism is framed and how it might be reimagined.
She is also Chair of the Electoral Reform Society, an organisation that works to champion the rights of voters and build a better democracy in the UK. She is Irish, living in the UK since 2011, and passionate about seeing more women involved in politics in both countries and beyond.
Since 2016 we’ve supported 1000s of women through every step of their political journeys.
We produce online workshops and resources, as well as hold in person events to create safe spaces for women to explore their futures as leaders, legislators and champions of political governance.
With your support we can continue to help women at every stage of their political journey.
Support us helps providing workshop sessions to help even more women to get into politics. Can you help?