MEET OUR TEAM
Our Founders
Lucy Barnes
(Co-Founder & CEO)
Future Pupil Barrister | TEDx Speaker | Keynote Speaker
Lucy Barnes is a care-experienced Future Pupil Barrister at East Anglian Chambers (commencing October 2024). She is also a TEDx speaker, keynote speaker and advocate for care-experienced people, particularly about becoming a more diverse and inclusive profession. She is passionate about bringing trauma-informed law to England and Wales, having passed a Scottish accreditation course in 2023. She most recently spoke on BBC4 Women's Hour on CEP in higher education.
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Lucy wrote on care experience for the Bar Council in June 2024 titled 'Raising the Bar: Care-experienced people belong here.'
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Fun fact: Lucy's favourite music is hip hop and used to write her own lyrics
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For more information on Lucy, visit her website: lucykatebarnes.co.uk
Kate Aubrey-Johnson
(Co-Founder)
Leading Barrister
Kate Aubrey-Johnson is a leading barrister and mediator at Garden Court Chambers. She is a youth justice and children's rights expert, author and trainer. She regularly advises on issues affecting children in the criminal justice system and has an extensive mediation practice. She works to ensure lawyers have the specialist skills and expertise to represent children. Kate chairs the Youth Justice Quality of Advocacy Working Group (QAWG) and is the Executive Director of Child Rights and Youth Justice CIC. Kate is co-author of the leading textbook Youth Justice Law and Practice (LAG, 2019) and consultant editor for Halsbury’s Laws of England, Vol 27, Criminal Procedure (5th Edition). She is co-author and creator of the 2023 #DaretoCare Guide​
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Fun fact: Both of Kate's childhood heroes are shorter than her...Kylie Minogue and Baroness Brenda Hale
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For more on Kate, visit her page on Garden Court Chambers' website: https://www.gardencourtchambers.co.uk/barristers/kate-aubrey-johnson
It’s important to empower young people and make them believe in themselves because there is a skill-set and unique strength in every single care-experienced person that’s waiting to be found. So why couldn’t it be found by lawyers? Why couldn’t it be us that supports them, makes them feel safe and makes them feel seen.
Lucy Barnes, Our CEP Co-Founder
Our Governance
Lucy Barnes
(Co-Founder & CEO)
Pupil Barrister | TEDx Speaker | Keynote Speaker
Lucy Barnes is a care-experienced Pupil Barrister at East Anglian Chambers (commencing October 2024). She is also a TEDx speaker, keynote speaker and advocate for care experienced people, particularly in relation to being a part of a more diverse and inclusive profession. She is passionate about bringing trauma-informed law to England and Wales, having passed a Scottish accreditation course in 2023. She most recently spoke on BBC4 Women's Hour on CEP in higher education.
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Fun fact: Lucy's favourite music is hip hop and used to write her own lyrics.
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For more information on Lucy, visit her website: lucykatebarnes.co.uk
Gemma Creamer
(Chief Operations Officer)
Bar Student | Keynote Speaker
Gemma Creamer is a care-experienced Bar Student currently studying with the Inns of Court College of Advocacy (ICCA) to later qualify as a family barrister. After moving up to London from her hometown of Brighton back in 2020, Gemma completed her LLB at The University of Greenwich and was awarded the John Bowater Memorial Award for her outstanding voluntary contributions to Law outside of education, including her commitment to improving the prospects of Children in Care coming into the legal profession.
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For more on Gemma, visit her LinkedIn page.
Our Advisory Board
We are grateful to our Advisory Board, consisting of senior members of the legal profession and senior individuals within care-experienced organisations. Our board meets once every three months and provides support to the steering committee. As LWC grows, the Advisory Board remains the same: supporting and championing care-experienced aspiring lawyers.
Meeta Rughani
Advisory Board Member
In-House Counsel at Barclays
Meeta Rughani is an employed barrister at Barclays and is the Head of Financial Crime Legal. She leads a team of lawyers who advise on financial crime issues including anti-money laundering, counter-terrorist financing, anti-bribery and corruption, and economic sanctions. She started her career at the independent Bar where she specialised in criminal defence before working at the National Crime Agency in the in-house legal team. Meeta joined the advisory board of LWC having been inspired by the journeys of both the CEO and COO. She very much hopes to draw upon her experiences in both the public and private sector to help create opportunities and break down barriers for care-experienced people wanting to pursue a career in law.
Fraser Campbell
Advisory Board Member
Barrister at Blackstone Chambers
Fraser Campbell is a barrister at Blackstone Chambers in London, specialising in commercial disputes. He also represents the Government, on the Attorney General’s A Panel of counsel. As a law student he was President of the Oxford Union, and on graduating was elected a Fellow of All Souls College. He went to Oxford after attending his local state school in Scotland, and has benefited from the advice of mentors throughout his career. He sees Lawyers Who Care as an opportunity to give back, by guiding those with great potential into a legal world that can offer fantastic careers, but that can still too often seem mysterious and intimidating.
Jonny Hoyle
Advisory Board Member
Development Officer at
North Yorkshire Council
Jonny is a Care Leaver from North Yorkshire. He is a registered Social Worker (with experience in Children’s Safeguarding, Children in Care, Young People Leaving Care), Fostering Panel Chair and Social Work Manager in addition to being a trustee of the advocacy charity Coram Voice, a trustee (designated safeguarding lead) of the Scarborough Athletic Community Trust and an ambassador for the charity Comfort Cases UK who aim to ensure no child in care moves with their belongings in bin bags. Jonny also created the Moving On Up Network which highlights and promotes apprenticeships as being beneficial, but underutilised opportunities for young people leaving care.
Jonny was involved in the independent review of children’s social care and was a member of the social work reform board. More recently, Jonny leads a multi-disciplinary team developing ethically informed AI tools for Social Workers alongside his other work of championing reform in the wider Children’s Social Care sector.
Selena Teji
Advisory Board Member
Lawyer | Youth Justice Policy Specialist
Selena Teji is a lawyer and youth justice policy specialist from California, USA. She uses data-driven research to promote cost-effective government investments in our most harmed but least helped communities. In California, Selena has worked on the responsible closure of prisons, effective community-based interventions to reduce violence, and the development of trauma recovery centers for survivors of crime. She now lives in Yorkshire with her young family and is thrilled to be able to support the next generation of innovative legal professionals with Lawyers Who Care.
Ms Ruth Justice Henke
Advisory Board Member
High Court Judge
Ruth grew up in Wales and was the first member of her family to attend university, studying jurisprudence at Oxford. She was called to the Bar in 1987 and appointed as King’s Counsel in 2006. In 2018 she was appointed as a S9(4) Deputy High Court Judge.
Ruth specialises in the law relating to the protection of vulnerable people and children. She is the author of the Welsh Materials in the Family Court Practice and the chapter on Welsh Family law in Butterworths family law. She was chair of the South East Wales Family Law Bar Association (FLBA), the silk representative on the Family Justice Council and chair of the Welsh Committee for the Five Jurisdictions conference.
Our CEP-Led Steering Committee
We are led by a group of care-experienced aspiring lawyers, who all have unique gifts and strengths to evolve with LWC. Whilst we keep our CEP committee anonymised, we are proud to be led by the voices of lived experience in furtherance of our mission and goals.
We strongly believe in listening to care-experienced voices and prioritising them.
Our Team
Annie Bell (Communications Co-Lead)
Aspiring Public Children Law Solicitor | Care-Experienced
Annie Jin Lei Bell is a care-experienced aspiring solicitor and SQE Candidate. An international adoptee and former ward of the state, she plans to specialise in public children law. Annie graduated with a BA Economics and BA Psychology from Smith College, studied the GDL at the University of Law and completed the MSc Criminal Justice Policy at The London School of Economics and Political Science. She is an experienced paralegal, having assisted on criminal, public inquiry, and family law matters.
For more information about Annie, please visit her LinkedIn.
Shimron Walters (Communications Co-Lead)
Project Manager | Care Experienced
Shimron is a care-experienced project manager, bringing a range of professional and project management expertise to help LWC manage the growing interests of our CIC. He joined Lawyers Who Care because he is passionate about helping care-experienced people into law and increasing the representation of care-experienced legal professionals.
He has worked with the Drive Forward Foundation for over 5 years with a focus on addressing the criminalisation of children in care, helping to deliver both the London wide protocol for reducing criminalisation of looked after children and care leavers, and the 2023 #DaretoCare guidance for barristers and legal professionals, written by our Kate Aubrey-Johnson (Co-Founder).
For more on Shimron, visit his LinkedIn.
Our Community Outreach and Events Team
Chloe Pomfret (Community Outreach Lead)
Human Sciences Student | Care-Experienced
Chloe is a Human Sciences student at the University of Oxford. She spent much of her childhood in foster care and she's now one of a small handful of care-experienced and estranged students at Oxford university, campaigning for greater awareness and support whilst here. She's incredibly excited to support LWC as the Community Outreach Lead, building our connections, and supporting our mentees and mentors. From her university experience so far, she's noticed the lack of representation and support for care-experienced people and is now providing this during her time with LWC!
Fun fact: A fun fact about Chloe is she loves calligraphy and used to have a social media account to share her work.
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For more information about Chloe, please visit her LinkedIn.
Louisa Foyle
LLB Undergraduate | Care-Experienced | @LOUNUH
Louisa is our absolute outreach powerhouse. Working for the Care Leaver Council in London, Louisa has many years' experience both in law and in working with care-experineced young people. We are very proud to have Louisa on our team at LWC. You will see her leading events, chairing our webinars and working alongside us to provide the most value to our mentees.
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Fun fact: Louisa is also an incredibly talented musician as her stage name LOUNUH. Check out her music: https://www.youtube.com/@LoulouDeRose
More information about Louisa can be found on her LinkedIn page.
Leah Jayne
Psychology Masters Graduate | Care-Experienced | @leahjaynedesigns
Leah is 24 and care-experiened. She entered the system at 13 years old. She graduated with a master's degree in psychology and is now training to become a teacher. She's passionate about social mobility, connecting young people with opportunities they once thought out of reach and elevating the voices of our care-experienced community.
Fun fact: Leah has started a business which is focused on art, website design, branding, social media management and content creation, please do give it a cheeky follow! @leahjaynedesigns
Lisa-Maria Elliot
Global Law Student Queen Mary University | Care-Experienced
Lisa-Maria is studying Global Law at Queen Mary University. She lives in New Zealand but comes from Brighton. She loves learning languages and travelling. She speaks German, English, French, Spanish and Italian along with some basic Japanese. In her free time, she loves ice-skating. She is a care-leaver and loves to help make positive changes and therefore LWC is the perfect fit for her!
Fun fact: She is obsessed with tiramisu ice cream!!
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More on Lisa-Maria can be found on her LinkedIn page.
Maleekah Burden- Kaizra
LLB (Hons) Graduate | Aspiring Barrister | BPC LLM Student | Care-experienced
Maleekah is an LLB (Hons) Law graduate and aspiring barrister, dedicated to advancing representation within the legal profession and advocating for neurodiversity and social mobility. As she embarks on her Bar course and LLM, she actively contributes to Lawyers Who Care, driven by a belief that diversity, mentorship, and representation are essential to meaningful change.
She serves as a director of Child Rights and Youth Justice CIC and has collaborated with the Drive Forward Foundation for over five years through their policy forum, focusing on decriminalising care-experienced youth and addressing the barriers they face.
A respected public speaker and trainer, Maleekah has delivered professional training to organisations such as the Judicial College and played a pivotal role in launching the *Dare to Care* manual in partnership with Kate Aubrey-Johnson.
For more on Maleekah’s journey, visit her LinkedIn.
Amber Knowles
Personal Advisor @UASC | BSc Psychology | Postgraduate in Education & Youth Work
Amber is care-experienced and has over 10 years of professional experience working with children and young people. She holds a BSc in Psychology and qualifications in education and youth work, with a background in projects focused on youth participation, social care, and mental health. Currently working as a Personal Advisor, Amber is passionate about supporting young people as they transition out of care, reducing stigma, and building strong networks of support.
Amber is eager to contribute to Lawyers Who Care, having witnessed firsthand the challenges care-experienced individuals face without connections or representation.
Fun fact: she loves traveling, cooking, watching scary movies, roller skating, and now reads more psychology books than she ever did at university!
Our voices are at the table. Now it's time to be HEARD.