Our Trustees
Citizens Advice East End trustees are responsible for the organisation’s governance. They ensure the charity is carrying out its work. They guide strategy, support the Senior Management Team and ensure the objectives of Citizens Advice East End are realised. All Citizens Advice East End trustees are volunteers.
Meena Chavda (co-chair)
Meena has been a trustee at Citizens Advice East End since March 2025. Meena grew up in north west London, and now lives in Wapping, East London. She has 40+ years’ experience in the financial services industry, with extensive expertise in financial accounting and large-scale transformation programmes, holding global leadership roles, working across four continents and supporting regulatory engagement and strategic systems delivery. Meena has held several governance and voluntary roles, including Chair of New City College. She is currently a trustee and treasurer of Bow Foodbank and a student mentor at Queen Mary’s college. She is passionate about education, community support and reducing social inequality.
James Peters (co-chair)
James is a lawyer and a civil servant, working for Ofgem (Great Britain’s energy regulator). He grew up on the South Coast (in Bognor Regis, to be exact), but has lived in Hackney since 2012 and was a local councillor, elected to represent the ward of De Beauvoir, from 2014 until 2022.
Muddassar Ahmed
Muddassar Ahmed is an entrepreneur, philanthropist, and former Independent Advisor to the UK government on Muslim communities. He founded and is the president of The Concordia Forum, a global network of cross-sector Muslim leaders dedicated to building bridges between communities and across cultures. He leads Unitas Communications, a reputation management consultancy specialising in the communications interface between the Islamic and Western worlds. More recently, Muddassar founded ImamConnect, the world’s first online platform and marketplace for Muslim services.
Cllr. Sade Etti
Sade has been a trustee at Citizens Advice East End since September 2025.
She has lived in Hackney since 2004, where she is currently the Cabinet Member for Homelessness and Housing Needs at the London Borough of Hackney.
Denise Halton
Denise worked in Human Resources and Training for over 35 years, mainly in the not-for-profit, charities, education and universities sectors. She is now retired from paid work and ‘gives back’ to her local community by volunteering at various charities.
Nick Smith
Nick has been a trustee at Citizens Advice East End since March 2023. He grew up in South London but has lived in Hackney for the past few years. Outside of East End CAB Nick works for the Clean Air Fund, an international charity focused on reducing air pollution. Nick also volunteers as an Economics tutor with The Access Project.
Sharmin Takin
Sharmin is the Head of Legal at the UK Debt Management Office at HM Treasury. She previously worked at law firms and multinational companies and has first-hand experience as a volunteer adviser at law centres in London and New York. She has served as a trustee since 2016.
Zoë Wilkins
Zoë first got to know the East End through her work in community engagement, social action, and policy research. Currently, she works at People Powered to build capacity between civil society and government to design plans for climate action. Previously, Zoë was a senior researcher at the Centre for Deliberation at the National Centre for Social Research.
Also member of the trustee board: John Bolitho.