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Our Trustees
Meet our Trustees at Tenterden Mindfulness
Dr. Neil Pillai
Chairman & Healthcare
Dr Neil Pillai is a GP from Ivy Court Surgery, Tenterden. He has been trained to teach Mindfulness based courses at the Oxford Mindfulness Centre, Oxford University. He is an enthusiastic Mindfulness teacher who is keen to bring the benefits of Mindfulness to the widest possible audience, and as Founder has led Tenterden Mindfulness as the Chairman since its inception.
Jeremy Cooper
Vice Chair & Legal
Jeremy is a retired tribunal judge. Between 2010 annd 2016 he was Director of Training for Tribunals in the Judicial College, London, where he was also Joint Dean of the Faculty. He sat as a Tribunal Judge in both the first-tier Tribunal and the Upper Tribunal and was for several years Southern Regional Chairman of the Mental Health Review Tribunal. Prior to becoming a Tribunal Judge he was Dean of the Law Faculty at Southampton Institute. Jeremy worked for several years as a consultant to the United Nations and the European Union on Judicial Integrity Projects.
Les Etheridge
Treasurer
Les is a retired Actuary who spent his career in the financial side of Life Assurance with the last six years as the Chief Executive of a Kent based Mutual Insurance Company. He also spent 9 years as a non-executive director of a major life assurer.
He was a Governor of his local Primary School for 25 years including 18 years as Chairman of Governors. Les has volunteered for The Inland Waterways Association, a national charity which aims to protect and restore our inland waterways, for over 20 years. He was a Trustee for over 13 years with four years as National Treasurer and six as National Chair.
Anna Hegarty
Operational Management Group Chair
Anna is a qualified Chartered Accountant who spent the first 12 years of her career working for PwC, a global professional services firm. She subsequently joined the HSBC Group where she held several roles; her last being Global Chief Financial Officer of their insurance business.
More recently, Anna has taken a career break to be a stay at home parent to her young son. During this time she has served as Treasurer and Trustee for a small local charity; volunteered at her son’s school; and, in 2020, established a mentoring programme at a local school focusing specifically on supporting female students in their sixth form years – a role which she finds particularly fulfilling.
Anna is a strong believer in the benefits Mindfulness can have on the wellbeing of individuals and is enthusiastic about using her experience to support Tenterden Mindfulness in broadening its reach to the widest possible audience.
Naomi Benson
Children & Young People
Naomi is a trained primary school teacher with over 20 years experience working in both the maintained and private sector in London and locally to Tenterden. She has worked for many years as a volunteer with a range of both local and national charities in her immediate and wider community, supporting children and young people to access a range of services.
She is particularly keen on promoting the practice of Mindfulness amongst children and adolescents in order to empower them to cope with the stresses and strains of their everyday lives, at school, at home and in their relationships with friends.
Philippa Harris
Marketing
Philippa is now retired from a senior business career mostly in travel with well-known companies like Sovereign Luxury Travel, TUI AG, British Airways Holidays and Eurotunnel, and latterly in logistics serving the UK tourism industry. Apart from general business and management skills, Philippa has many years’ marketing experience, strategic and tactical, and holds the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) Post-Grad Diploma.
She is Chair of Trustees to the Family Holiday Charity, giving families the opportunity to experience a break away from difficult home circumstances, and also a Director of Tenterden Schools Trust.
Derek Roger
Free & Assisted Places
Derek spent his professional life in academia, initially in Psychology but then in Neuroscience. He is now retired from academic work but, together with his wife, runs the Work Skills Centre, a training consultancy established to provide a vehicle for the Challenge of Change training programme developed from the research.
They also offer evening meetings in a system of practical philosophy they developed called Enlightened Living, described in a recent book (Enlightened Living: A Book of Being; Austin Macauley 2019).
