Welcome to WISH East.

A dynamic energetic and enthusiastic professional who achieves excellent results. Sandra is a conscientious and driven senior housing professional with a passionate sense of purpose, and a tremendous appetite for customer excellence and continuous improvement.  
As a CIH Fellow, she is a trusted professional with extensive housing experience and a commitment to ethical standards.
She has a combination of sound commercial acumen with core social values that have allowed her to lead and navigate successfully through some of the most challenging strategic environments, whilst keeping customer-centric values at heart.  
 There is an increasing awareness of the housing crisis, with a need to grow talent who can respond to the rapidly changing social, financial and political landscape.
Sandra is keen to raise the profile on how a career in housing is not only rewarding but also one that can make a real difference in people’s lives. She’s keen to highlight that each and every day is different, where you can go from grappling with significant societal issues, to sharing the first moment someone walks into their new home.

Kelly has worked in Social Housing for 10 years in a variety of roles spanning customer experience, repairs and maintenance, customer safety and asset management. She joined Accent Group as Building Information Manager covering all aspects of Asset data management and building safety.

Kelly has completed CIOB Level 6 Diplomas in Fire Safety Management and Building Safety Management, being one of the first cohorts to complete this qualification. She has a drive for ensuring good quality data is shared with colleagues and customers to ensure that homes are safe and fit for purpose.

Being a board member for Wish East helps Kelly in her ambition to bring more women into the property sector; she enjoys mentoring and championing others.

Marie is currently a Building Safety Manager for London Borough of Camden and has worked in Fire and Building Safety for nearly 6 years.

She has recently completed the Chartered Institute of Building, Fire Safety Certificate and Building Safety diploma (level 6).

Marie is also a volunteer with UNIFY Network who are a cross organisational racial equality group for the G15, as diversity and equality, especially in the working environment, is something she is very passionate about.

Suzanna has spent the last 19 years working in the housing sector in a variety of roles. Her experience has been gained mostly in Local Authorities across Essex and East London managing teams of staff across a wide range of areas. This has included strategic housing, affordable housing development, planning policy, housing policy, homelessness, provision of specialist supported housing and finding innovative solutions to meet housing need.

Suzanna now works at Harlow Council in the Regeneration team delivering affordable housing and town centre regeneration projects.

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Estelle is a specialist social housing solicitor who advises registered providers/housing associations, their subsidiaries, local authorities and developers on all aspects of affordable housing acquisition, development and disposal.  She has gained broad experience in commercial property over 20 years of practice, acting for institutional landlords, real estate funds, Transport for London, NHS trusts, and national retailers before specialising more recently in social housing. Estelle heads up Howes Percival’s social housing team and acts on land led and S106 acquisitions advises on planning agreements and variations, easements, shared ownership site site-up and sales.  Estelle is ranked as a Leading Individual in the Legal 500 and delivers training on topical issues in social housing.  Estelle is based in Norwich.

Anna is an Assistant Manager at Beever and Struthers, a professional services firm who specialise in audit, tax, consulting and service charge examinations within the social housing sector. Anna works within the Risk Assurance and Advisory team and manages a range of clients nationally ranging from small providers of 1,000 units up to G15 providers with over 60,000 units. Anna leads on specialist internal audit work including building and fire safety, development and property compliance and is passionate about working to help providers keep their residents safe.

Rebecca has experience of leading a wide range of maintenance, planned investment and compliance areas both in Housing Associations and Local Authority environments.

Rebecca has led on sector leading procurement for large scale 20 year partnering contracts. She is committed to driving forward collaborative procurement and collaborative partnerships to ensure that outputs for residents remains focused on quality.

Rebecca looks to increase the housing sector’s understanding in this area by sharing the knowledge of how these dynamic partnerships deliver in an ever challenging environment and the innovation that can be gained from long term arrangements.

Sasha has worked in construction for over 20 years, and has worked for some of the largest construction & electrical engineering companies within the industry.

As Regional Partnerships Director at Lovell, and working with sister company Morgan Sindall Construction, Sasha introduced Women into Construction to Norfolk, organising an exciting pilot project during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown. This pilot saw a positive action programme deployed in the region to support a group of approximately 15 women with pre-employment training and work-placements. The programme comprised a series of mentoring circles, work-ready training, work placements, site tours and training for taking the CSCS card test, as well as extensive one-to-one mentoring.

Sasha is very much focused on creating and nurturing long term partnerships and relationships in both business and the community, and whilst a lot of businesses are talking about there needing to be more roles for women in construction, Sasha is taking action to promote and educate women from school age about the benefits and opportunities of a career in the industry. She is particularly passionate about showcasing the wide variety of roles available to women from surveying, and technical roles, to the more operational roles which often lack diversity. She is also leading the way in engaging with students in schools from an earlier age, with a strong belief that engagement doesn’t start young enough to introduce construction as a fantastic career choice for women.

Eloise works as a professional quantity surveyor for a world-trusted consultancy firm helping to deliver affordable and future proofed homes for those who need them. As someone who took a career change to enter the housing sector, Eloise is keen to expand awareness of the multitude of career opportunities available and promote how rewarding working in the sector can be. Eloise is early in her career, currently working towards Assessment of Professional Competence with the RICS, however is an ambitious individual who is enthusiastic to raise the voices of women as we continue to strive for equality.’