what guides us

Executive Director

Michael is the Executive Director of The Rowan Trust. He leads the development of the organisation’s strategy and guides its work as an independent foundation fighting for social justice using a trust-based philanthropy approach. He is committed to realising the catalytic role that independent philanthropy can play when it joins forces with others.

Michael has been a social justice advocate since the 1990s. During this time he has worked with communities pushed to the margins, including his own LGBT+ community, as a front line youth and community worker, an executive director, an educator, a researcher, and a grant maker. Michael has focused much of his work on building cross-community coalitions for social justice and has advised international human rights bodies, national governments and civil society. Throughout his work he has been committed to making significant tangible social change happen, and he has a deep appreciation of the long term sustained commitment, imagination and risk taking it requires to overcome deeply embedded oppressions.

Community Engagement Manager

Amel is The Rowan Trust Community Engagement Manager. She leads the work to build and nurture relationships with potential and existing civil society partners across The Rowan Trust’s strategic areas of focus.

Amel Yacef, an Algerian who made Ireland her home for over 20 years, describes her practice as transformative and compassionate justice. She has extensive experience in organising and mobilising young people, women and grass roots community leaders coming from communities marginalised by systems and institutions that were never built for them. Amel has managed and coordinated projects with a focus on social justice, racial justice, gender justice, equality and human rights.

She is passionate about facilitating processes that enable those voices in the margins to sit in their power, and impact political discourse, believing in the importance of creating and holding spaces of radical transformation and healing justice for the individuals and communities harmed by oppressive systems.

Cultural Engagement Manager

Jaime is the Cultural Engagement Manager of The Rowan Trust. He leads the work to build and nurture relationships with potential and existing cultural activism partners. These relationships are a critical component of The Rowan Trust’s work in changing the public narrative around equality issues affecting marginalised communities.

Jaime is an Irish Queer Artist and Activist who has been involved in grassroots and national campaigning for many years. His lifetime of living and working as an out queer artist has provided great insight into the cultural inequalities he addresses in both his creative practice and his activism. Jaime has worked with many communities pushed to the margins by combining art and activism to address the issues facing those living and working within communities that have been marginalised. Jaime has nurtured his passions for partnerships, risk taking and social justice to collaboratively develop The Rowan Trust’s Cultural Activism focus.