Trustees

Rick started volunteering with Waterway Recovery Group in 1998 shortly after university, and following family boating holidays. He has been a member of the Association since 2001 and in that time has been a member of the former IWA Festivals Committee, Finance Committee and was a Deputy National Chairman until early 2022. Rick remains active in the restoration movement and is a member of the WRG board.  He has owned a share in a boat since 2016, was first appointed an IWA trustee in 2016 and commenced a new term in 2022.

Professionally, Rick is a Programme Manager and Chartered Engineer with over 25 years’ experience in the delivery of complex engineering projects and strategic infrastructure programmes across a range of sectors.

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Stuart is a narrowboat owner and has just turned 66.  He is married with two dependants: both furry and of the barking kind.

By mid September 2023 he will have retired as the CEO of a small charity, so if selected as a trustee he will have a little more time on his hands to serve IWA.

His career began in housing and homelessness for a decade and a half, until he got the travel bug.  In 1991 he found himself volunteering as a fundraiser for a hospice project in the tiny kingdom of Swaziland (now called Eswatini) in southern Africa.  Two years later he got the chance to work in South Africa, which has been the focus of several development sector jobs since.  Possibly his favourite job ever was seven years at Comic Relief (2008-15) managing a portfolio of grants to organisations working on poor housing conditions, in 14 different African countries.

He has become very familiar with how boards work in the charity sector, as many of the organisations he has worked with have been of a similar size to IWA.  In particular he has a strong understanding of good governance; he has a good grasp of the respective remits of a staff team and a Board of Trustees; and he is very familiar with budgeting, management accounts, strategy development etc.  As a recent charity CEO he was responsible for programme delivery, financial control, HR, fundraising, communications and all day to day functions of the charity. He would like to think this comprehensive set of responsibilities could be of value to the Board.

Peter has a lifelong interest in canals, particularly from a walker’s and nature-lover’s perspective.  This dates from when he was taken to see Sapperton Tunnel when researching a school project.  He is a member of Cotswold Canals Trust and Herefordshire & Gloucestershire Canal Trust, his local restoration projects.

Peter has experience as a charity trustee, having served 6 years (two terms) with PM4NGOs, a US-based NGO which develops free guides in project management for the international development sector and provides on-line certifications.  He was also a trustee of the Kambia Appeal a UK-based charity that aims to improve the medical conditions in the Kambia district of Sierra Leone.

Peter is a Chartered Engineer, a member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology and a member of the Association for Project Management.

Peter’s career started out in electronic hardware design, moved into software development, and then into technical project management. Peter is Director of Project Managers Against Poverty (PMAP) which provides assistance to project managers seeking to volunteer their unique skills and experience to help reduce poverty in the UK and worldwide.

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Colin became a member of IWA shortly after becoming a narrow-boat owner in 1996. He is a retired railway signal engineer, who has always had an interest in financial matters. He has been the treasurer of two engineering professional institutions as well as a number of canal based societies over the years. He is (still) a chartered engineer but most of his engineering these days is carried out on his boat keeping it working. He has attended two WRG Canal Camps and is a strong believer of the benefits of the waterways in the UK to society. He also likes sailing, but generally in the warmer waters of the Mediterranean. He is married to Claire and has two children and four grandchildren.

He joined the finance committee in early 2024 and was co-opted as a trustee and deputy chair (finance) in August 2024.

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Ian Sesnan has been interested in inland waterways since campaigning in the 1970s to stop the Union Canal outside Edinburgh from being severed by the City Bypass. He has worked in central and local government as well as for Civic Regeneration Limited. Much of his experience has been in regeneration work in Lambeth and the South Bank area of London. Since the Millennium he has been working as a consultant mainly with charities, social enterprises, and church organisations on heritage; community, and governance projects and tasks.

He is a qualified Town and Country Planner and has a Master’s Degree in Urban Regeneration (Evaluation) and his PhD is based on research into learning between UK regeneration programmes.

He currently is a funding consultant for the Chesterfield Canal Trust in Derbyshire, one of the leading restoration trusts.

He also serves on the IWA’s Heritage Advisory Panel and Planning Advisory Panel; is a member of the IWA South London Branch; represents the IWA at the Bedford and Milton Keynes Waterways Trust and supports the South West Branch in their campaign to restore Bridgwater Docks.

As one of his Trustee duties he is tasked with taking a special interest in restoration.

In addition to waterways his interests include travel, his allotment, athletics, and badminton”

Mike Wills has been fascinated by the inland waterways since his teens. Studying economic history helped develop the passion, and early experiences included digging out a disused lock and helping to raise a sunken wooden narrowboat which was subsequently converted into a houseboat. Regular towpath walks and dozens of narrowboat holidays helped him to introduce lots of his family and friends to the waterways. In 2019 he purchased part of a worsted mill and wharf on the Leeds & Liverpool Canal and subsequently has restored it to create a four storey house.

He is a Chartered Accountant and has worked as a senior civil servant, a tax partner in a medium sized practice and has been engaged as a non-executive director or consultant in a number of varied companies ranging from gold refining, electronic product recycling, pet food manufacture and insurance services. Most recent experience has been in setting up, running and subsequently selling a specialised school and as a non-executive director and trustee of a Housing Association.  Mike has also previously spent some years as Chair of Governors of both a primary school and a secondary school.  He was appointed an IWA trustee and a member of Finance Committee in 2022.

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