Derek Heath - Chief Executive

Derek started working within Supported Housing over 18 years ago. He began as a trainee Support worker at a large hostel in central London and was soon promoted to a drug and alcohol worker specialist. His first managerial role came after 12 months when he was asked to manage a 10 bed third stage house for clients completing Residential Rehabilitation. After five years at Irish Centre Housing, he became an Operations Manager for English Churches Housing Group, managing two services supporting sex workers and clients with varying alcohol and drug and complex mental health needs. When funding was removed for both services Derek took on a new challenge, developing and managing a new 25 bed hostel for armed forces veterans. After three years building up the service, he recognised that he still had unfinished business with his first love, developing alcohol and drug services, and the opportunity to work for a small and innovative charity like Druglink was too hard to resist. Derek has been at Druglink for seven years, in which time he has developed and overseen the Oxygen Recovery pathway, along with being responsible for the strategic management of all the services we deliver.

Gary Aldridge

Director of Care and Support

garyaldridge@druglink.ltd.uk
01923 967074 

Rachel Busse-Reid - Chair (Trustee since 2020)

Rachel qualified as a diagnostic radiographer in 1989 at St George’s Hospital, London. She obtained a BSc (hons) in Radiography with Diagnostic Practice in 1992 from the University of Kingston. Rachel worked as a radiographer in central London teaching hospitals for five years after qualifying before moving to work in the pharmaceutical industry. During 20 years working in clinical research she oversaw clinical trials across all phases from healthy volunteer to large, late phase multinational patient studies. Rachel returned to the NHS in 2014 to work as a radiographer where she still works. She is a carer for an elderly parent as well as the mother of teenage boys. She has a special interest in mental health and women’s issues and hopes to be able to provide advocacy and focus for these matters at Druglink.  

Ray Knowles - Trustee since 2018

After leaving Liverpool university with a BSc Hons in biology, Ray trained as an Accountant with Arthur Andersen then moved into the pharmaceutical industry with Searle/Monsanto. He worked on the client side in various roles from Product manager to Managing Director. Ray set up a communications and advertising group specialising in the medical and Healthcare sectors which he sold in 1995. He has since worked as a consultant and mentor to the industry as well as setting up a mezzanine investment fund for property developers. More relevantly to Druglink he currently owns and lets a number of properties in the South East.

James Conolly - Trustee since 2020

James graduated from the University of Surrey in 2008 where he studied Business & Finance. After graduating with an honours degree he started his career within the Corporate Real Estate sector and has worked for a number of organisations within the City of London. James is passionate about Druglink and is keen to make a difference, educate people about the devastating effects of substance abuse and help people to get their lives back on track.

Sandy Cutts - Trustee since 2023

Sandy has over 40 years’ experience internationally in a wide variety of working environments, particularly the corporate and commercial sectors in South Africa, Canada and the UK. She has experience in working with people from various backgrounds on a national and international level, building relationships in the public and small business sectors. Sandy has held positions of business ownership, management, leadership and full-time ministry where she acquired essential business skills. She has the ability to empower people to reach their potential, and inspire their development. Her key strengths are in administration, with good business acumen and a high work ethic. Having a keen interest in human potential, she is able to handle people with expertise and gravitas. She has a special interest in empowering women to overcome past and present adverse circumstances through one-to-one counselling and therapy. She is a qualified professional counsellor and hopes to focus her organizational and counselling skills at Druglink to expand the service already offered to greater heights in the future.

Jessica Sharp - Trustee since 2022

Jessica leads the access and inclusion portfolio including team management and oversight for monitoring and supporting health systems to improve access to children and young people’s mental health services (CYPMHS) and reduce waiting times. She works towards supporting optimisation of services, and embedding co-production and participation across the CYPMH team. Jessica has over ten years’ experience working in central Government Department and a major Arm’s Length Body across roles and policy areas. She brings extensive experience in managing and communicating complex programmes. She is an advocate of the role voluntary organisations play in communities and as part of the service landscape she has experience of working with small Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) on research projects on a voluntary basis. Jessica also has direct experience of working as an unpaid carer trying to navigate statutory services

Kevin Cohen - Trustee since 2017

After leaving school at 16 Kevin was determined to experience the ‘real world’. He joined an established firm in the city as an office junior leading to a very successful career as a financial Money broker. His career has been built on strong relationships developed with clients and colleagues over a sustained period of mergers and acquisitions.

Nick Pedrithes - Trustee since 2022

David Gill - Trustee since 2024

With a politics degree from Southampton University and a background in retail, David’s introduction to people-centred work was in acting in a theatre-in-education group in Derbyshire. Following that he spent 5 years in community development in Worcester, followed by 25 years in various local authority management roles in voluntary sector support, recreation, customer services, marketing, strategic planning, partnerships and outsourcing across Hertfordshire.

David has specialist experience and knowledge in community safety, charity governance, fundraising and management from various voluntary roles within local and national organisations. He has taken on roles on school governing boards, national councils, the Labour Party, Relate and others.

Before he retired, David spent 9 years working at Druglink.