Tackle is governed by a board of Trustees who oversee the running of the organisation and offer capacity and advice in their areas of expertise. Trustees are identified based on a specific skill set or need and are interviewed and invited by the existing board members.
The current Tackle trustees, and bios below, are:
UK Board:
John Miller (Chair)
Liz Twyford
Matt Oliver
Kate Iorpenda
Takudzwa Mukiwa
Susannah Hill (Treasurer)
Chris Lavey
Prince Kwakye
Maximina Jokonya
Angela Bonora
Mikhaeel Ogbonna
Zambia Board:
Kelvin Mushimbwa
Chilambwe Mwila
Our CEO is Charlie Gamble. Charlie is an experienced charity Director and football coach with a background in international and UK social development. Joining the Tackle team as a volunteer in 2005, Charlie subsequently spent a year in Africa, predominantly coaching football in Uganda, becoming excited about the possibility of social change through football. With a career that has included Comic Relief, Street League, and election to the Network Board of streetfootballworld in 2010, Charlie has an Honours Degree from the University of Leeds and is a committed advocate for the positive influence of creative, non-traditional education.
John Miller has been Chair of Tackle since 2010. John has extensive experience in Change Management and Business Leadership within the public and private sectors. John currently runs an organisation development consultancy with a focus of their work being to foster the engagement of people in successful change and development processes. His career includes youth work, teaching in secondary and higher education, consultancy and latterly ten years in the executive leadership of a European UK-based FTSE PLC.
Liz Twyford is a Sports Programme Specialist based at Unicef UK. She was involved in supporting International Inspiration, the London 2012 international social legacy programme, the development of Unicef UK’s partnership with the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, and the founding and coordination of the International Safeguarding Children in Sport initiative. She is also a member of FIFA’s Child Safeguarding Expert Working Group. Prior to joining Unicef, Liz spent many years in the development field living and working for more than two years in Bhutan where she supported Save the Children’s community sport work, and for a year in Cameroon supporting sport for development programmes in the Northwest province.
Matt Oliver is the Director of Internal Affairs at non-profit technology company, Simprints. Prior to that he set up and ran the Global TB Caucus, the world’s largest parliamentary network, and campaigned at the G7, G20 and the United Nations for greater investment in infectious diseases and stronger health systems. He has been a trustee of Tackle since 2014.
Kate Iorpenda is and independent consultant specialising in adolescent health, HIV and SRHR. Kate works with a range of organisations globally developing training and learning materials and tools with young people. Formally the senior adviser on children and adolescents at Frontline AIDS, she has supported programmes for children and young people across Africa and Asia and is committed to the promotion of young people’s access to comprehensive sexuality education and to reducing the impacts of HIV on their lives.
Takudzwa (Taku) Mukiwa is an HIV specialist at Terrence Higgins Trust engaging African communities in England for the national HIV prevention programme, HIV Prevention England. He is part of the team leading in the development and delivery of the prevention social marketing campaign ‘It Starts With Me’. Previously he led the development and delivery of one of the most successful programmes that used football as a platform to encourage HIV testing amongst African men in London. Taku is also part of the Diaspora Changemakers programme for Africans in the UK interested in African development through which he has developed a network with other UK based Africans actively involved in supporting initiatives that are meant to bring about social changes in Africa.
Susannah Hill is a qualified accountant with seven years of financial experience and works at M&S as a Finance Manager. She has finance and audit experience in the commercial and charity sector. She was a Senior Finance Business Partner for Save the Children’s UK Programmes department, leading a team to provide financial and strategic support to the leadership team and other budget holders.
Chris Lavey is a solicitor advocate in the sports group of Bird & Bird LLP. He specialises in the resolution of sports disputes, including anti-doping, match-fixing and disciplinary cases, and the drafting of sports rules and regulations. He also advises on commercial contracts, regulatory investigations and eligibility disputes. Chris first became involved with Tackle in 2007 and has served as a football marathon player, fundraiser and volunteer coach in Africa, before joining the Trustee Board in 2018.
Prince Kwakye is a Youth Practitioner with Hackney Council, working alongside social workers and clinicians towards ensuring the safety and wellbeing of at-risk young people and families. He first became involved with Tackle in 2012 on a voluntary basis, and for better or worse, has completed a Football Marathon every year since. Prince is a former Tackle Programme Manager for our FGM programme in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso and following this, joined the Board of Trustees in 2019. Prince has led a variety of community social action projects across London and Bath, and holds an Honours degree in Sport and Social Sciences from the University of Bath.
Maximina Jokonya is a HER Voice Fund Coordinator at Y+ Global based in Zimbabwe. She is well known for advocating for the meaningful involvement of adolescent girls and young women in decision-making processes and spaces at all levels. Maximina draws her experience from being born with HIV. The disease, her family, Africaid and her community have inspired her passion for working with adolescents and young women who are infected and affected by HIV, and encourages the adoption of interventions that eliminate stigma and discrimination. She joined the University of Zimbabwe – University of California San Francisco (UZ-UCSF) Collaborative Research Programme in 2007 as a Community Advisory Board (CAB) member, Community Delegation to the Global Fund, Women Deliver Young Leader, HIV Vaccine Trials Network Protocol community representative, International Partnership for Microbicides Dapivirine Ring Access Committee, Mandela Washington Fellowship 2016 amongst many other representations. She is the holder of BSc Degree in Psychology with Women’s University in Africa.
Kelvin Mushimbwa is a qualified accountant with over twenty years of financial experience gained over the Automobile, Property Development, Retail and Public Benefit Organisations (PBO). He is currently Finance Director and Head of Supply Chain of Marie Stopes Zambia, Part of MSI Reproductive Choices (MSI). His core responsibility is to provide strategic financial management, vision and leadership for the country programme while ensuring compliance with all local accounting, legal, MSI group and donor
reporting requirements.
Chilambwe Mwila is an early-career epidemiologist and investigator working as an implementation scientist at the Centre for Infectious Diseases Research (CIDRZ) in Zambia. She has previously worked in Zambia’s Ministry of Health as a biomedical scientist working in various programs and interventions aimed at improving health care services and treatment outcomes for people living with HIV. She aspires to lead the development and execution of innovative implementation science studies to help elucidate the evolving HIV epidemic among key and general populations in Zambia as well as implement and rigorously evaluate interventions to help improve access and quality of health care services especially for the underserved groups.
Angela Bonora has over 15 years’ experience specialising in research and evaluation in the international development and sport for development sectors. Her expertise is in developing research, monitoring, evaluation and learning systems, processes and tools. Formerly the Global Head of Research, Impact and Learning at the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation, Angela has supported sport for good programmes for children and young people across the globe.
Mikhaeel Ogbonna is a Senior IT Business Analyst with almost a decade centred around IT solutions analysis and implementations. More recently Mikhaeel has been focusing on the Microsoft Azure Power Platform and the benefits Unified Communications (UC) can provide to organisations.