Our Trustees & Patrons

FFLAG is very grateful for the support of the following Trustees and Patrons.

Our Trustees

Sarah Furley

Sarah is the parent of a trans young person and became a trustee in 2018. She is a member of a Gender Family Identity support group in Cornwall.

Sorrel Atkinson

Sorrel is a parent of a gay son and has been a Trustee since 2007. She is an adviser for a LGBT+ Youth group in Cornwall and a founder member of Cornwall Pride.

Janet Kent

Janet is a parent of a gay son and became a trustee in 2017. She and her husband Bruce are members of FFLAG Bristol.

Janis Proudfoot

Janis is the parent of a gay son and became a FFLAG Trustee in 2020. She helped to facilitate support meetings for parents of LGBT+ children at Parents Enquiry North East and volunteered on the Helplines for both organisations for 17 years.

Keith Proudfoot

Keith is the proud Dad of a gay son. Together with his wife Janis, their engagement with FFLAG came through involvement with Parents Enquiry North East, at Pride Newcastle and attending FFLAG conferences. Keith has been a Trustee since May 2020.

Des Johnson

Des is a father to 2 gay sons who came out to him at ages 16 and 14. Although Des was fully supportive of his boys he did have many questions and concerns about what it meant to parent gay kids, about how best to support them and some of the challenges they might face at school and into adulthood. Des turned to FFLAG for help in 2018 and he has been an active member and volunteer since then, becoming a trustee in April 2025.

Our Patrons

Member of The House of Lords Michael Cashman CBE

The Lord Cashman CBE, former LGBT Global envoy for the Labour Party and Founding Chair of Stonewall.

Sir Ian McKellen
CH
CBE

Sir Ian is an active member of the movement to change those UK laws which discriminate against lesbians and gay men. He is a co­founder of Stonewall which works for social and legal equality.

As Sir Ian says on his website ‘I have been reluctant to lobby on other issues I most care about – nuclear weapons (against), religion (atheist), capital punishment (anti), AIDS (fund­raiser) because I never want to be forever spouting, diluting the impact of addressing my most urgent concern; legal and social equality for gay people worldwide.’
As well as his scores of awards for acting, Sir Ian has honours from Nottingham, Leeds, Oxford and Aberdeen Universities, plus gay organisations in UK, USA and SouthAfrica.
He was named “Commander of the British Empire” (CBE) in 1979, followed by his Knighthood of the British Empire (KBE) for services to the performing arts in the Queen’s New Year Honours of 1990.
He is one of the very few openly­gay knights. In 2007 Queen Elizabeth named him to the Order of Companions of Honour (CH).

Ian Rivers

PhD

Ian is an award winning psychologist and Professor of Education for Social Change at the University of Strathclyde. For 30 years he has been researching bullying behaviour in the U.K. and U.S.

He is best known for his work on homophobic bullying. Ian currently serves as an Associate Principal of the University of Strathclyde where he is also Executive Dean for the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.

In addition to researching bullying behaviour, he is also interested in community regeneration and is a trustee of various sector agencies working with at risk and minority youth.

Peter Tatchell

Peter has been campaigning for human rights, democracy, LGBT+ freedom and global justice since 1967.

Through the Peter Tatchell Foundation, he campaigns for human rights in Britain and internationally. He supports LGBT+ activists in many of the nearly 70 countries that still criminalise same-sex relationships, and which punish LGBT+ people with maximum penalties including flogging, life imprisonment and execution.

He is the author of over 3,000 published articles and six books.

“He never stops.  Peter has probably done more for gay and human rights than anyone in Britain over the last 20 years” (Marcelle D’Argy Smith, feminist writer and ex-editor of Cosmopolitan).

Bobbi Pickard

Bobbi Pickard is a Diversity Equity and Inclusion professional with many years senior operational and programme management experience in the banking, trading, technology and energy sectors.

As the first openly transgender person in bp she transformed transgender awareness globally within the company. She is CEO of Trans in the City an organisation she founded in response to seeing a lack of co-operative working between global corporates to help the trans and non-binary community and has transformed it into a global organisation with over 350 major organisations collaborating on furthering trans awareness across the world.

Extremely active in all areas of diversity Bobbi speaks at many events around the world on LGBTQIA+ inclusion in business, trans issues and diversity and inclusion in industry. She is in demand on radio, TV and other online mediums.

She is the first trans person ever to close the London Stock Exchange, was voted #1 in the Yahoo Finance OUTstanding 50 LGBT+ Future Leaders’ List 2019, #4 in 2020, included in the PWC Stonewall 50 Inspirational Role Models 2019, was winner of the Rainbow Honours LGBTQ Champion Award 2019, the Nestle Diversity Champion Award at the 2020 British LGBT awards, placed #14 in the Pride Power List 2020, #12 in 2021, was a business nominee in the 2021 Diva Awards, winner of the Diversity Hero Award at the European Diversity Awards 2021 and was awarded Changemaker of the Year 2022 by Stonewall. She has raised over £250K for LGBTIQA charities in the last 4 years.

After very many years when she struggled to stay alive she now finds such joy in life. That joy does not extend to tomatoes, aniseed or sultanas.

She plays guitar, bass and sings, enjoys painting, has two grown up children and lives in Bristol, UK

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Together, we can support families and allies, encouraging love, acceptance, and pride for all LGBT+ individuals.

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