Brent O’Halloran, Dawn Smithson and Richard Walker join Sharon Collins, Richard Beevers and Arturo Dell to deliver best practice, latest thinking and unique networking opportunities.

Housemark has welcomed three new sector experts to their Specialist Club manager line-up. Brent O’Halloran, Dawn Smithson and Richard Walker join Sharon Collins, Richard Beevers and Arturo Dell to deliver best practice, latest thinking and unique networking opportunities across a range of topics relevant for housing professionals today in their UK-wide Specialist Clubs programme.

Our Specialist Clubs inspire, excite and let housing professionals innovate in their organisations. Each Club meeting includes a fantastic line-up of in and out of sector experts. New speakers are selected for every Club meeting to introduce new and emerging topics, so every meeting feels different.

About our Club managers:

Brent O’Halloran – Repairs and Asset Management Club Manager

Brent has over 20 years senior executive experience in the housing sector and is a high profile advocate for improving the sector’s approach to asset management and compliance. He was formally Director of Asset Management at Hyde Group and is the architect behind the introduction of several successful big ideas, including; same-day repairs, applying ‘nudge’ tactics, demand-led replacement, and increasing tenants’ choice in decent homes works. He set up a building safety taskforce and is currently working on setting up a building safety case programme for Clarion.

Dawn Smithson – Estate Services Club Manager

Dawn has over 13 years’ experience working in housing and estate services and is currently Head of Building Support Services at Thirteen Group, managing a team of 90 colleagues in the facilities management team. With a wealth of experience in the retail, hospitality and development sectors, she is committed to delivering high quality services and providing exceptional customer experience.

Richard Walker – Voids Club Manager

Richard is a highly skilled and experienced senior executive having worked for organisations including Metropolitan, Unity, Havebury and the Housing Ombudsman. He has extensive expertise in both delivery of housing services and providing service improvement consultancy. He is passionate about the housing sector, driving improvements in performance, efficiency and service experience.

His key areas of expertise include service transformation, voids and customer experience.

Richard Beevers – Customer Experience Club Manager

Richard is a leading consultant and speaker on customer experience, marketing and leadership. He has worked extensively in the social housing sector, executing a wide range of projects around customer service excellence. Richard was formerly Marketing and HR Director of Capita Symonds and a board member of Gentoo Group. Richard is the author of the Investors in People Handbook, a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, and has recently been named a Top 10 Star Influencer 2021 by Customer Experience Magazine.

Sharon Collins – Welfare Reform Club Manager

Sharon has over 30 years’ senior executive experience of the social housing, care and latterly, health sectors and is highly skilled at enabling collaborative transformation. More recently she has supported the development of the ‘Keep Well Collaborative’, providing thought leadership and facilitation of multi-agency collaborative action which supports community health and wellbeing. Sharon retains a relentless passion to ensure community voices are heard and remain at the very heart of service design and improvement.

Arturo Dell – Digital Futures Club Manager

Arturo is the Director of Technology and Innovation at HouseMark, leading on business intelligence, data innovation and product development. Known in the sector as a thought leader and practitioner in this space, Arturo was previously the Head of Business Intelligence at the London Borough of Camden, and has delivered information management strategy and data governance support to a range of large housing providers, including Notting Hill Genesis, Aster Group, Forviva, Cluid Housing (largest HA in the Republic of Ireland), London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham and Stonewater.

Specialist Clubs are open to Housemark members and non-members. Explore our 2021 programme here to find out more and contact our events team to secure your place at one of our Clubs by emailing tina.reid@housemark.co.uk.