Trustees & Advisors

Dr. Jennifer Ginger is the founder and director of The Adoption Collaborative. She completed her DPhil at the Rees Centre, University of Oxford in 2025, researching adoptive families with birth children. Prior to this, she was Head of Service, Peer Support at PAC-UK/Adoption UK, supporting over 200 families - experience that directly informed and inspired her doctoral research. Jennifer also served as Board Member of Coram BAAF from 2016 to 2024 and as an independent board member of an independent fostering agency. An adoptive parent as well as a researcher, she is passionate about improving adoption experiences. 

Jennifer holds an MBA from the University of Warwick, and an MSc in Poverty Reduction: Policy and Practice from SOAS, where she specialised in NGO management. Her early career was in marketing and management consultancy in
private and public sector organisations.

Dr Andrew Brown is a Postdoctoral Researcher on the Digital Lives of Care-experienced Children Project, at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford. Previously Research Officer at The Rees Centre at Oxford, Andrew also has a professional background as a teacher, senior leader, and teacher trainer, with a focus on inclusive education. At the Rees Centre, Andrew was involved in evaluation of a pilot programme to increase adoptive placements for children with disabilities, and a Hadley Trust–funded project aimed at enhancing stability for children and young people in the care system. His research interests include adoption, care and the influence of young people’s adoptive identity on educational experiences and outcomes.
 

Andrew is an adoptive parent.​​

​​​​​

​

​

​

Margaret McCullough is a social worker with over 15 years’ experience of working in adoption and prior to that in CAMHS and other children and family services.

Currently working in the pre-adoption order areas of preparation and other adopter training, assessment, matching and early placement support at Birmingham Children’s Trust/Adopt Birmingham, Margaret has previously worked at Adoption UK
and Wolverhampton Council in post adoption support services.

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

Richard Gilbert has held many senior positions in a variety of organisations.

Most recently Richard was Finance Director at Walk the Walk a charity that focuses on funding research into breast cancer, also offering assistance to those affected by it.   Prior to that Richard had a career in the publishing sector, including at the Financial Times, gaining considerable experience in financial management and planning, mergers and acquisitions and the commercial issues around the
management and monetisation of copyright material. 

 

Richard is a Chartered Accountant and has more recently served as a Trustee of a heritage charity focused on the preservation of an historic house and museum

​​​

 

​

Special Advisor

 

Dr. John Simmonds OBE, was Director of Policy, Research and Development at CoramBAAF where he was responsible for CoramBAAF’s contribution to the development of policy and practice in social work, health, the law and research.

 

In his early career, John was a social worker in Hampshire and London, working in child protection, family placement and residential care settings. He was then appointed Lecturer in social work, progressing to Head of Social Work Programmes at Goldsmith’s College, University of London, before joining BAAF in 2000. He was a member of the Department of Education’s Adoption and Special Guardianship Leadership Board

​​

John is an adoptive parent of two (now adult) children and a grandfather.

Chris Munday was Director of Children’s Services in London for 10 years.

 

He recently moved into consultancy with the Local Government Association, NHS and local councils. He is also a doctoral student at the Department of Education, University of Oxford, studying the impact of inspection on children’s services leadership.