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, a variety of commercial roles and as Assistant Group Finance Director at Aster Group. He has subsequently worked as a financial consultant and interim FD for a number of housing associations. Graham joined the Board in 2011 and became Chair of the Audit and Finance Committee in 2012. He will be retiring in 2020.
VICE CHAIR Myriam Kniveton	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 now a housing consultalt, specialising in supported housing. Myriam is passionate about helping disadvantaged people. She joined the Board in January 2013.
VICE CHAIR Richard Marshall	Richard is a solicitor with over 20 years' property litigation experience. He is a senior associate at DAC Beachcroft in Bristol specialising in real estate disputes resolution. He joined Solon's Board as he is committed to the provision of good quality affordable housing, and wants to help Solon provide that for as many people as possible. Richard lives and works in Bristol. He joined the Board in 2014.
Adam Booth	Adam is a Chartered Surveyor with over 15 years of experience initially working for a number of the national multi-disciplinary surveying firms before becoming one of the founding Directors of 3SIXTY Real Estate. He has a wealth of experience across the full complement of Building Surveying & Property Management disciplines but specializes in Project Management and Estate & Asset Management advice to commercial investors, occupiers and the third sector. Adam joined the Board in 2014 and sits on the Customer Services Improvement Committee. His particular interests are the mechanics of different businesses and obviously property as a whole.
Stephen Cook	Stephen joined the Board in 2016. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Housing. He was the CEO of Valleys to Coast, a stock-transfer housing association in South Wales from 2008-2018. He is now a housing consultant with a wide range caseload. 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.
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. Kay will be retiring in 2020.
Michelle Harper	Michelle joined the Board in 2019. She works as a casework consultant at the MOD. She also has a Solon tenancy in South Bristol and thus has a lot of experience of living in a property managed by Solon. She wanted to become involved to amplify the residents' voice at Board level.
Mike Grist	Mike is Regeneration Director at Curo Group with over 25 years’ experience in housing association regeneration, development and asset management. Prior to this he 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. Mike joined the Board in 2018.
Tim Jenkinson	Tim joined the Solon Board and Audit and Finance Committee (AFC) in early 2018 becoming Chair of the AFC in September 2018. He is a chartered account and having qualified at KPMG has over 25 years' experience across a range of industries including 7 years as Finance Director in housing associations with focus on finance and business assurance functions. He is Head of Finance at the Office For Students. As part of the AFC, Tim is a key player in ensuring that Solon is well managed and remains financially viable.
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 Business Growth 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. She has a wealth of HR experience including 8 years as Head of HR and OD at Livewest Housing. She is now 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!)"