Welcome to WISH South East

Melissa Woodall is the Chair of the South East WISH network. She has worked within Social Housing for over 14 years and brings strength and depth to the role, building on her commercial expertise gained working in numerous sales and business development roles across the sector.

She currently heads up the Business Development department at PiLON, a refurbishment specialist for social housing. She leads a team of five and has overall responsibility for driving company revenue, supporting the company’s ambitious growth plans for 2019 and beyond.

Melissa’s enthusiasm and passion for social housing is infectious and she is a firm believer in creating a plentiful supply of quality social housing to enable communities to flourish.

Her ambition through WISH is to enable other women in the sector to benefit from her extensive experience and to help lead and inspire others to excel in their roles. Melissa is supported in her role as Chair of WISH South East by seven other influential leaders across the sector.

Shirley is an Associate Director at GL Hearn within the Development Consultancy & Agency Team.

In her role, Shirley provides housing and development consultancy to local authority, housing association, public bodies and private sector clients.

She also advises on opportunities for specialist housing – partnership and delivery structures, funding models and requirements, for provider and investor clients, plus liaison and negotiation with local authority and commissioning bodies.

She joined GL Hearn in 2018 from Rentplus UK, where she was Partnerships Manager for London and Southeast. Previously, Shirley has held senior roles in affordable housing and development across public and private sectors, with a number of Housing Associations, Local Authority and building contractor.

Shirley says;

"The WISH organization has long been recognized as a positive presence in the sector, providing a forum and support for women in housing, whatever stage in their careers. I’m thrilled to be part of it, and looking forward to our launch of the Southeast branch of WISH."

Ali is the Development Director at Raven Housing Trust. Raven are committed to Building Homes and Changing Lives and the role that new build housing plays in tackling the housing crisis. Her career has focused on Development and Sales where she has held a number of roles.

Ali is a Board member of Sutton Housing Society. She is a Chartered Member of the Chartered Institute of Housing, a Full member of the Association of Project Managers and a MSP foundation Programme Manager.

Sarah is a CIMA qualified Treasury Analyst and has worked for over ten years in the manufacturing industry before she joined Golding Homes, a profit for purpose housing association which provides homes for more than 20,000 people across Kent. As well as being a full time working Mum, juggling family life with work and other commitments Sarah is a member of a school PTA, Captain of a netball team and enjoys caravanning weekends with her family.

Felicity is currently a Bid Manager for ENGIE Regeneration, part of ENGIE’s Places and Communities division. However, she has worked at a variety of large and small contractors in bidding and procurement roles, starting her career in Housing as a Trainee Subcontract & Materials Buyer over 15 years ago. Her main career focus has been in and around social housing, and she brings with her a keen market understanding of the south east region. A passionate team player, she is also a strong believer in collaboration, partnering and supporting each other – and is delighted to bring her enthusiasm to WISH, to help support women at whatever stage in their career to shine and develop.

Lauren is a Business Development Manager at Ecolution Group, a company that provides renewable energy and maintenance services and solutions to the social, residential and commercial sectors.

As an ambitious professional with a strong determination, her sales experience enabled her to become familiar with working in a pressured and competitive environment. Lauren previously worked for PiLON a main contractor within the housing industry. During her time there she quickly learnt that accumulating a high success rate is led by working collaboratively both internally and externally and champions working as a team in every aspect of her role. This is where she realised she has a passion for the social housing sector and really feels she has an opportunity to make a difference.

Lauren’s enthusiasm for not only the housing industry, but for championing women in the sector is contagious. Someone with this passion and respect of her fellow colleagues shows her ambition to further support likeminded professionals and is using WISH as a platform to help them achieve their goals.