About Us

Daniel Robinson

Chair of The Board

Daniel is a barrister with a broad practice encompassing crime, road traffic and regulatory work. He is predominantly based in the Crown Courts, where he both prosecutes and defends.

Before coming to the Bar, Daniel worked for NGOs in the UK, Rwanda and Jamaica. His work encompassed genocide and war crimes, crimes against humanity and human rights in which he retains a strong interest. Daniel spent seven months working for the Council for Human Rights based in Kingston, Jamaica, and has advised defendants on Death Row as to their prospects of appeal to the Privy Council. He is experienced in representing defendants with mental health issues, addiction problems and vulnerabilities.

Lisa Jordan

Trustee

Lisa is a senior philanthropic executive with a twenty-year career focused on impact and systemic change. She serves as Managing Director of the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, where she helps emerging organizations develop capacity and achieve impact, while also steering the Foundations overall strategy, thought-leadership, and outreach. Lisa is a senior philanthropic executive with a twenty-year career focused on impact and systemic change. She has worked with numerous foundations and family offices on program and portfolio development.

Abdulkarim Ekzayez

Trustee

Abdulkarim is a medical doctor and an epidemiologist from Syria. In 2013, Abdulkarim was training to be a neurosurgeon when his residency was interrupted by the war. He then worked in field hospitals in Aleppo and Idlib before joining Save The Children, where he led the health response in North West Syria until 2017. He is currently pursuing a PhD in health systems in war settings at King’s College London, in addition to his work as a research associate with the Conflict and Health Research Group at the same university. He is also an Associate fellow at Chatham House and serves on the board of two other organisations, Shafak, and Eyes to the Future.

Afsana Safa

Trustee

Afsana is a London-based General Practitioner (Family Physician) with first-hand experience of the European refugee crisis. Amna first met Afsana in 2016, when she travelled to Greece with the Syrian American Medical Society to set up and run medical clinics in refugee camps in the north of the country. She has also volunteered in Bangladesh with Rohingya refugees. Afsana’s other NHS roles include Clinical Cancer lead for North West London and Governing Body board member for Central London CCG.

Cristina M. Finch

Trustee

Cristina M. Finch currently serves as the head of the Gender and Security Division at DCAF – Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance. Cristina is a human rights lawyer and advocate with more than twenty five years of experience in advancing human rights in the areas of women’s and LGBTI rights, hate crimes, and discrimination. She is the former head of the Tolerance and Non-Discrimination Department at OSCE ODIHR and former managing director for the Identity and Discrimination Unit at Amnesty International USA, where she was at the forefront of successful efforts to expand human rights protections against sexual and gender-based violence. Cristina has also served as legal counsel to the Human Rights Campaign and the Congresses of both the United

Karim Bereksi

Treasurer

Karim is the board’s treasurer and an international development consultant. He advises clients including The World Bank, UN agencies and FCDO on a range of issues, working across a range of geographies; with a continued focus in fragile and (post-)conflict states. With a strong background in audit and finance, Karim focusses on assignments designed to help donors reduce fiduciary risks through improved oversight and governance mechanisms.

Karim holds a BSC in Mathematics and Finance and is a Chartered Accountant.

Zarlasht Halaimzai

Founder and CEO

Zarlasht founded Amna in 2016 after returning from the Syrian border, where she had advised INGOs on education and child wellbeing, to help refugees dealing with the emotional fallout of violence and displacement. She has worked for several aid organisations, including Save the Children. In the UK she has worked for the Young Foundation, the Studio Schools Trust and the Skills Lab – an education consultancy where she was a founding director. In 2018, Zarlasht was selected as a Fellow of the inaugural class of Obama Fellows, a group of 20 global leaders in civic innovation. Zarlasht and her family were forcibly displaced from Kabul when she was eleven years old. She arrived in the UK at age fifteen and was granted asylum.

“When I speak to people about our work I try to help them to understand the experience of displacement. It isn’t just physical displacement from home – it’s also an emotional fracture: you are separated from your family, your friends, and your language. That alone is difficult enough – most of the people have also lost a loved one and seen unimaginable violence. Starting over is only possible if they are supported through the transition.”

Tina Hyder

Executive Director

Tina Hyder was formerly Deputy Director of the Early Childhood Program of the Open Society Foundations, based in London. As Deputy Director, Tina helped forge partnerships to strengthen early childhood policies, research, networks and programs for young children and their families. Prior to joining OSF, Tina was a Global Adviser for Save the Children UK, supporting more than 50 country offices around the world to promote the rights of children affected by discrimination. Earlier work includes programming for children affected by conflict and other emergencies.

Natalia Kyrkopoulou

Head of Operations

As Head of Operations and co-founder of Amna Greece, Natalia is Amna’s chief representative for all dealings with Greek agencies, including local government and non-governmental organisations. She has several years of experience in the field, both at large international NGOs and local grassroots organisations, and is Amna’s leading advocate for developing sustainable programmes within Greece. Natalia also leads Amna’s capacity building arm, which provides consultancy and training to organisations to assist them in implementing practices of service delivery and staff care that are both trauma-informed and identity-informed. She speaks French, Greek and English.

“It is so important now to keep focused on the ongoing humanitarian situation here in Northern Greece. The challenges the refugees still face are enormous and complex. We’ve been focusing on the challenge of integration, and for that we need help from two sides: we need practitioners who can communicate with the refugees in their own language; and we need local people who understand the Greek social services system and who can advocate on behalf of the refugees here in Greece.”

Gabriella Brent

Head of Programmes

Gabriella is Amna’s Head of Programmes and is a transpersonal counsellor and psychotherapist. Gabriella oversees Amna’s training and capacity building programmes; Baytna, Dinami, therapeutic work with men and women and Amna’s humanitarian wellbeing capacity-building work – providing training and wellbeing support to other humanitarian organizations working with refugees.

Before working with Amna, Gabriella spent 15 years working across the UK in the NGO sector piloting and implementing more humane, trauma-informed, systemic models of care.

“I was drawn to work with refugees in part due to my family’s refugee history. I love collaborating and co-creating training and programmes with the communities we work with, aligned with Amna’s ethical values. Working with Amna is a constant exploration and growing process and I feel privileged and proud to be part of a refugee-led team, learning and co-creating safe, community spaces.”

Hajra Daly

Partnerships and Capacity Building Manager

Hajra is the Partnerships and Capacity Building Manager at Amna where her role is to engage with new partners to promote Amna’s values based, trauma and identity informed approach for refugee communities in new countries of operations.

She was formally the lead for Forced Migration at Comic Relief. In her role as the Portfolio Manager, Hajra designed and developed funding programmes including ‘Across Borders’, a programme to support people on the move as they made their migration journey from Middle East, North Africa into Europe. Prior to that, Hajra has managed diverse portfolios on a range of issues including Violence Against Women and Girls, Child Sexual Exploitation and Trafficking and Vulnerable Young People. She is currently a volunteer interpreter for LGBTI people seeking asylum in the UK.

“I am excited to join Amna at a critical stage when it is launching its new 5-year strategy. I love collaborative working and am looking forward to being a central part of Amna’s expansion and building a network of partners in new countries and communities.”

Nsimire Bisimwa

Clinical Lead

Nsimire is a Systemic & Family Psychotherapist and Clinical Lead at Amna. As Clinical Lead Nsimire manages Amna’s team of therapists and is responsible for clinical oversight and safeguarding for Amna’s therapeutic framework. Originally trained as a medical doctor, she has more than twenty years of experience working with refugees and involuntarily displaced people in different organisations and settings.

Originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo, her experiences have shown her the devastating effects that oppression, migration, dislocation, losses and trauma can have on the physical, psychological and emotional wellbeing of individuals and refugee communities.

Nsimire is a social justice and human right activist, and is against any kind of injustice, oppression, discrimination and human right violation. In her practice and teaching, she promotes ethical and anti-oppressive practices because she believes that there is a direct correlation between wellbeing, social inequalities and oppression.