Helen Bushell

Helen is currently Senior Head of Funding at the National Lottery Community Fund. Helen has extensive experience working on poverty, inequality and social justice issues. With a background in international development and more recently UK community development, Helen has worked within charity, public and private sector organisations. Helen has a background in disaster management and spent her early career designing drought early warning systems for governments across Africa before returning to the UK as Head of Programme Strategy and Impact for Oxfam and later moving into funding. With a commitment to 'shifting the power' and values-based leadership, Helen is inspired by the power of civil society, collaboration and partnership.

Why I’m involved 

I consider Collaboration Circle to be one of the most exciting initiatives in the sector at the current time. Built as it is on a foundation of trust and tangible action, it has the potential to shape the nature of the relationship between funders and civil society for the long term and have a significant impact on issues that really matter. I am honoured to be sitting amongst such a committed group of fellow Directors charged with the responsibility of bringing this bold ambition to life. Collaboration Circle offers us the opportunity to match the scale of the challenge before us with the scale of response needed.