Board members

The Solon Board is made up of a maximum of 12 volunteers. Below are our Board Member profiles.

CHAIR Graham Oliver	Graham is a Chartered Accountant with over 20 years experience, initially working in practice for KPMG and PwC, and for the last 10 years in commercial roles. He brings experience from a number of different industries, and is currently Assistant Group Finance Director at the Aster Group. His particular interest is in how we can maximise the use of our finances and resources to obtain the best results for our customers. Graham joined the Board in 2011 and became Chair of the Audit and Finance Committee in 2012.
VICE CHAIR Myriam Kniveton	Myriam joined the Board in January 2013. Myriam has over 25 years experience in finance, operations and service development, working with a variety of housing, voluntary and privately owned organisations. She has also co-founded a charity for women and children suffering from domestic violence, chaired several management committees for small supported housing organisations and taken part in several national working groups including FLAP (Financial Legal Advisory Panel). Myriam is currently working as a consultant and chairs the highly successful South West National Housing Federation Supported Housing Regional Interest Group. Myriam is passionate about helping disadvantaged people and sits on Solon's Audit and Finance Committee.
Adam Booth
Stephen Cook	Stephen is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Housing and since 2008 has been Chief Executive of Valleys to Coast, a stock-transfer housing association in South Wales. His housing career started in the early 1980s in local government working in Bristol, Sussex, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire before joining Fosseway Housing Association in 1997. Stephen also has a BA(Hons) degree in German (Warwick University) and a post graduate Diploma in Management Studies (University of the West of England). Born, bred and still living in Bristol, Stephen hopes his skills and experience on the Solon Board will help make a difference to local people’s lives. Married with an adult son, Stephen’s main interests are reading and listening to music. He also admits to being a season ticket holder at Bristol Rovers Football Club: a constant reminder that life is not all about enjoyment or success.
Kay Dovey	Kay has worked at both Senior Management and Board level for over 20 years in the Housing arena and during this time has led on all key Human Resources & Organisational Development (HR/OD) activities from strategy development, through to reward, culture change, and Executive / Board recruitment and development. Kay now works as an independent consultant specialising in HR/OD projects and interim assignments. Kay rejoined the Solon Board in May 2016 as she wanted to continue to be involved with social housing and to play even a small part in ensuring people have the opportunity to acquire and live in good quality affordable homes.
Mike Grist	Mike is currently Regeneration Director at Curo Group with over 25 years’ experience in housing association regeneration, development and asset management. Prior to this Mike worked for ten years in construction and consultancy. He is an incorporated member of the Chartered Institute of Building. Mike passionately believes that a good quality home is one of the key factors for a successful and happy life and is keen to use his skills and experience on the board to help make this happen. Outside of housing Mike is a keen motorcyclist as well as an avid Scotland Rugby supporter.
Tim Jenkinson
Richard Marshall	Richard is a solicitor with over 20 years property litigation experience who works for an international legal practice. He joined Solon's Board as he is committed to the provision of good quality affordable housing, and he wants to help Solon provide that for as many people as possible. Richard is married with two children.
Gill Risdale	Gill joined the board in November 2015, wanting simply to make a difference. She has worked in both private and public services for over twenty five years, holding a variety of roles with Housing and Highways and Transportation. She is currently a Director at WSP, an engineering consultancy, and is based in Bristol. Her experiences include housing management and preventing homelessness as well as being responsible for delivering a variety of services to local communities, developing training and improving employees' health, safety and wellbeing. Now that her children are grown up she wants to devote some time for the good of the community.
Julie Summerhayes	Julie joined our Board in early 2019 and currently works as a Senior HR Lead at the Defence Equipment & Support (DE&S). When she's not listening to rock & heavy metal, Julie enjoys spending time in her kitchen to relax. Her life motto? "Feel the fear and do it anyway - (as from my experience the dread and fear beforehand is usually much worse than actually doing it!)