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Staff & trustees

Meet the teams working to unite the UK against suicide

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  • Simon Gunning Headshot

    Simon Gunning, CEO

    Simon Gunning is CEO of suicide prevention charity Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM). Since joining CALM in 2017, Simon has overseen rapid transformation of its brand and operations, more than doubling its helpline service provision to reach more people before the point of crisis. Award winning campaigns, like Missed Birthdays, Project 84 and the Last Photo, and partnerships with brands and agencies has driven huge growth in CALM’s profile and revenue, helping to drive awareness and challenge the stigma surrounding mental health and suicide.

  • Wendy Robinson headshot

    Wendy Robinson, Services Director

    Wendy Robinson is the Director of Services for suicide prevention charity Campaign Against Living Miserably, where she is responsible for service development and the delivery of CALM’S lifesaving helpline & digital support services. A qualified therapist with a Masters in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy and qualifications in play therapy and systemic practice, Wendy has worked in frontline, strategic and leadership roles for a range of charities including the NSPCC, and Childline, where she led a 24/7 helpline operation with a 12-site national workforce of over 400 professional staff & 2000 volunteers.

  • Alicia Robinson headshot

    Alicia Robinson, Marketing Director

    Alicia Robinson is the Marketing Director for suicide prevention charity Campaign Against Living Miserably, where she is responsible for CALM’s award-winning brand, marketing and communications. Alicia started her career in the media, with breakfast television show GMTV. Since then, she has worked in strategic and leadership roles for a range of charities including Save the Children and WaterAid.

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    Emily Clayton, Senior Fundraising Director

    Emily Clayton is the Senior Fundraising Director at Campaign Against Living Miserably, where she is responsible for raising the income needed to fund CALM's lifesaving services and campaigns. With over a decade in the sector, Emily has previously worked in leadership roles across fundraising, marketing and innovation at charities including Cancer Research UK and Shelter.


Our trustees

To date, James has been playing a 25 year career of snakes and ladders. From a start in advertising then marketing at MTV, since 2007 James has shaped ventures in music, enterprise software, mobile and latterly fashion, as co-founder of British workwear brand M.C.Overalls.

James is now in the midst of launching a Pattern, a next-gen wellbeing practice founded upon 33 years of enquiry into quantum science, and New Working Class, a radical education venture placing FE/HE colleges on the high street.

James joined CALM as a patron in 2006 and is now Chair of Trustees. He is also a long-standing trustee of youth information & support service The Mix and Chair of change network One Question.


Aimée is Managing Director at The Liberty Guild - a new-model global creative agency.

Having worked with CALM since 2000, Aimée is proud to have encouraged the creation of thecharity in 2006, from which point she became a founding Trustee. Aimée is also on the Board of Trustees for the Langa Township Pre-School Trust in South Africa, which works to help Mums pull themselves out of poverty and Words Matter, the only charity in the world set up to eradicate childhood verbal abuse.

Aimée is also an Honorary Teaching Fellow and Marketeer in Residence at Lancaster University Management School.



Catherine is a change management and HR specialist who helps organisations develop and implement strategies to deliver lasting and successful change.

After 20 years in senior HR and commercial roles at Marks and Spencer plc, culminating in Head of Change for the International Division, she left to set up her own business.

She now consults with a number of organisations, as well as providing individual leadership and executive coaching. She is a Chartered Member of the Institute of Personnel and Development and sits on the Governing Body of two local schools.

Catherine believes that young people must be supported through education to develop into resilient young adults, equipped with the skills to take care of their mental health.

As Head of Music for BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra, Chris Price is the creative and editorial lead for the world’s most influential radio playlists, as well as for the BBC ‘Sound Of …’ poll and iconic live music brands such as Live Lounge and Radio 1’s Big Weekend.

A music media strategist of more than twenty years’ experience, Chris has a global reputation as a champion for new music. As Music Producer for BBC Radio 1 from 2000 to 2006, he helped break UK acts such as Coldplay, Snow Patrol and The Streets, as well as international artists including The Killers, Rihanna and Scissor Sisters.

In 2006 Chris joined MTV as Director of Music Programming, running music policy for the network’s nine UK channels. At MTV he and his team gave artists such as Adele, Calvin Harris, Florence + The Machine and Mumford & Sons their first TV exposure.

Re-joining the BBC in 2016, Chris has helped break artists including Stormzy, Dua Lipa, Lewis Capaldi, Billie Eilish, Wet Leg and Little Simz. During lockdown in 2020 he was executive producer for Radio 1’s first multi-artist charity song, a cover of Foo Fighters’ ‘Times Like These’, which reached no. 1 in the singles chart and raised over £1m for Comic Relief and Children In Need.

Emma established the European office of m2m in 2011. Emma leads m2m’s global development and strategic engagement strategy and holds day-to-day responsibility for m2m’s European and North American operations.

Emma began her career as a project finance lawyer at Allen & Overy. She has served in various board roles in national and local charities, including as Vice-Chair of Amnesty International UK and as a trustee of the Amnesty International UK Charitable Trust.

She currently also sits on the Advisory Board for Gucci’s Chime for Change. She has also served as a Visiting Fellow at Cass Business School.

In her spare time Emma corrals her three small boys and loves cake and beaches.

As a result of personal experiences, Emma is a passionate believer in the need for systemic seismic change in the way we approach the prevention of suicide.

Following a career as a professional snowboarder during his twenties Marcus transitioned into magazine and online editing, and more recently fitness and sports coaching.

He was lucky to work alongside incredible coaches and train some of the best in UK snow sports, the highlight working with Olympic athlete Jenny Jones in the run up to the Sochi games in 2014. Jenny won bronze at the games making her the UK’s first ever Olympic medalist on snow.

Marcus became involved with CALM in 2012 after his best friend Nelson Pratt took his life. Nelson was an exceptionally talented professional snowboarder and freestyle coach to olympic bronze medalist Jenny Jones. Following Nelson’s death, his brother and Marcus set up a cycle sportive in his honour called Nelson’s Tour de Test Valley.

They wanted to create something positive from such a tragic story, help raise awareness of the issue and reduce stigma surrounding mental health. The event is now in its 8th year with over 1000 riders every year and has raised over half a million pounds for CALM.

Matt started the first CALMtown in the UK, a project putting everyone’s wellbeing at the heart of his home town St Ives. It has used community to reduce stigmas around mental health, empowered people to care for themselves and be there for loved ones who are struggling. This simple idea inspiring other towns to do the same has featured in national and international media.

Matt has been community organising for many years, connecting and bringing out the best of diverse groups of volunteers around a common cause. He regularly teaches and advises in a variety of contexts about the power of community to bring change, from universities to keynote addresses, BBC Radio Two to volunteer meetings in cold village halls.

When he started, Matt was the youngest Methodist minister in the country and now has two decades experience of the place spirituality and mindfulness play in wellbeing. His work takes him into the complexity of people’s lives where he sees, given support, how ordinary people have an amazing capacity to find hope in the toughest of places.

He currently has a national role for the church, heading up recruitment and training of pioneers and shaping their innovation strategy.

Philip’s experience in the voluntary sector includes being on the Court of a leading City Livery company and previously on their grants committee, as well as some years with the Samaritans based in Liverpool.

His business career spans four decades in management, mainly in the finance sector. Philip is currently Managing Director of ISGAM AG, a Swiss independent asset management company.

He takes a keen interest in CALM’s fundraising activities, specifically supporting the key area of Trusts and Foundations.

Philip is a non-Executive with VIOOH, an AdTech start up, which operates a supply side and programmatic trading platform for the global outdoor advertising market, based in London. He was part of the team that set up the business on behalf of JCDecaux SA in 2017, acting as Interim CEO until the role was filled permanently.

He is a qualified accountant with a degree in Business Studies and has worked in a variety of industries including outdoor advertising with JCDecaux initially as CFO and then as the UK’s CEO. Prior to that he was part of the management team that set up Tchibo Coffee in the UK as Finance Director and latterly as Managing Director.

Earlier roles were in the IT industry with Burroughs (now Unisys), a start up with a motor group working with ASDA, and a management trainee with British Steel Corporation.

Will’s a planning director at adam&eveDDB – the creative agency behind those famous John Lewis Christmas ads.

He’s worked closely with CALM since 2018, first in helping to create Project 84 and more recently as a Trustee.

When he’s not working you can either find him in the boxing ring or walking Winnie – his beloved brown Boston Terrier.