Our aim is to promote, develop and advance human potential through education and creativity exercises through the arts, including:

• story telling
• creative writing
• facilitated personal development workshops

on My Heroines themes in arts centres, out of school clubs, youth centres, and adult learning centres throughout the UK.

My Heroines is an unincorporated voluntary association with charitable aims. Our constitution is available for review on request.

Project leaders

Laura Wilkinson is a founder of My Heroines and its Director. She writes fiction and non-fiction, as well as leading some of My Heroines' projects. Laura has led workshops with adults and young people and has worked in theatre in education having previously worked as an actor, writer and theatre director. Laura is also a Director of Genderquake Limited and offers a range of creative services, including copywriting, communications and website development work. She is the lead spokesperson for My Heroines and the publishing website, www.hagsharlotsheroines.com and is responsible for its marketing and communications, as well as working as its Executive Editor.

Laura has enjoyed a varied working life so far, with careers in publishing at Reed International, as an actress in theatre, television and film, as a researcher at the think tank Demos, as a copywriter specialising in work for charities and the third sector, and as a journalist on a number of local newspapers. If you have any queries relating to My Heroines work please email: laura@myheroines.com.

Helen Wilkinson is a founder of My Heroines and www.hagsharlotsheroines.com and a Director of Genderquake Limited. Helen's personal website, www.helenwilkinson.com has more information about her work as an ideas entrepreneur. Helen is currently nurturing a few pet projects, one of which is My Heroines. She is currently taking an MA in Creative Writing (Novels pathway) at City University and is also moving into the health and fitness sector.

Working with Laura, Helen is responsible for partnership development and ideas generation for future projects, events, and potential partners, and associates. She is always interested to explore ideas and the potential for funding and collaboration and is particularly interested in exploring sponsorship and cause related marketing projects with companies and organisations interested in My Heroines, and its audiences, and network as well as for the publishing website, www.hagsharlotsheroines.com. Alongside Laura, Helen can also act as a spokesperson for My Heroines and www.hagsharlotsheroines.com

Executive Committee Members

Jaan Madan is 31 and has a successful business as a freelance trainer. Jaan is also a youth worker, working with young people from various communities and backgrounds and he has been involved (that's co written, performed and directed) in various theatre productions. His work enables him to encourage and develop young people's creativity. He has seen first hand the real change that the arts can make to someone's life - in the direction they take in life, and in the way it allows their character and personal beliefs to develop and blossom in ways that they and others often never thought possible. Jaan is honoured to be involved with My Heroines and be part of a team that works to ensure that many more people are given the opportunity to access their creativity. His is a great lover of books and reads whenever he can and he is a closet writer himself!

Elizabeth Donnelly is currently studying technology with the Open University. As well as being a technical wiz, Elizabeth is an active member of Amicus, the largest trade union in the private sector. She is a member of Amicus's National Women's Committee and is responsible for Equalities on the Regional Council. As well as waving the flag for women in the trade union movement, Elizabeth sits on the East Midlands Regional Assembly, and was one of Labour's candidates for the European Parliament in 2004. She is the (volunteer) Webmistress of My Heroines and www.hagsharlotsheroines.com.

Kim Rooney is a graduate of the University of East Anglia with an MA in Life-Writing. She previously worked as an online journalist for the BBC. The pre-writing CV is extensive, from a first job working for a jeweller at £12.50 a week, to senior management in the public sector. Recently elected to the Board of the Women Writers Network, she divides her time between teaching and writing.