CILEX Professional Board Members

Yanthé Richardson – CILEX President

Yanthé began her career in law in 2003 and qualified as a Fellow of CILEX in 2010. Having practised family and residential property law in Lincolnshire, London, and the southwest, Yanthé is now a senior leader across Foot Anstey’s Conveyancing Services team with a particular specialism in all new build matters. Her role involves overseeing the management and supervision of teams, with responsibilities including strategic growth, risk management and technical oversight. Yanthé leads on projects developing the operational direction of her team, utilising her 20+ years of legal experience to deliver with a commercial, innovative approach.

Yanthé was a Specialist Reference Group Advisor to CILEX (from February 2019 to September 2021) and during that tenure became CILEX’s representative on the Home Buying and Selling Council. She continues to advise Government on the Land Registry’s Advisory Council and Digital Property Market Steering Group and more recently has been appointed as the Conveyancer representative on the New Homes Quality Board’s Code Review Council. She is known as an expert in her field and is a regular public speaker.

Having started out in law somewhat accidentally, Yanthé attributes her career in part to the opportunities offered to her by the alternative route to qualification CILEX provides. She is passionate about ensuring others have the same opportunities regardless of their background, and strongly believes that we must continue to drive the standards expected of our legal professionals no matter which route to qualification they have taken.

Sara Fowler – CILEX Vice President

Sara is a senior leader in the NHS and a qualified fellow of Cilex, with over a decade of experience in healthcare law. She has a reputation for being resilient, driven, and tenacious in improving performance and efficiency within her portfolios. Sara trained as a fellow at Hill Dickinson LLP in London, specialising in clinical negligence litigation before moving to the NHS to contribute to improving patient safety from learning from legal claims.

She now heads up the Covid-19 Public Inquiry team across Barts Health NHS Trust and Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust (BHRUT), in addition to heading up Legal Services at BHRUT. Her area of expertise is clinical negligence litigation with a secondary interest in inquests and advisory work, as well as strategic change management and performance improvement.

Prior to this, Sara was in a senior leadership role at NHS Resolution, an arm’s length government body, pro-actively investigating high value, emotive and complex brain injuries in maternity on a national level with a focus on learning. Coming from a disadvantaged background herself, Sara is passionate about equal access to justice, social mobility and ensuring that the legal profession is accessible for all, regardless of background.

She mentors care leavers and those who have suffered homelessness pursuing a legal career and is a strong advocate for continuous lifelong learning.

Emma Davies – CILEX Immediate Past President

Originally qualifying with a degree in Tourism Management, and trying various roles, Emma found a home within law and was admitted as a Fellow of CILEX in 2010.

Passionate about this diverse route to qualification she was one of the founding members of the CILEX Devon Branch. She served on the committee for 10 years in various roles, including Chair, watching the branch scoop awards for ‘Most innovative branch’ and ‘Best branch’. Her involvement with the branch has provided a great opportunity to fly the flag for the CILEX route to qualification through events, attending careers fairs and networking with both CILEX members and other parts of the legal profession. She re-joined the branch committee in 2022.

Emma started out in private practise as a Legal Secretary/Trainee Legal Executive specialising in debt recovery and Claimant personal injury. Since 2011 she has worked in-house for the Royal College of Nursing representing nurses subject to fitness to practise proceedings before their regulator. She also represents nurses under investigation by the Disclosure & Barring Service and Social Care Wales.

Emma has served on both the old-style Council and now on the professional board. In her role as Vice President she will be focusing on membership engagement and is looking forward to meeting as many CILEX members as possible.

Matthew Huggett, Past President

Matt is an experienced employment lawyer and also a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD. He is a member of the Employment Lawyers Association and the Industrial Law Society and a former Secretary of the West of England branch of the CIPD.

Matt started his legal career a little later in life, commencing his CILEX qualifications in his early thirties. At this point in his career, he had already started advising on HR and employment law matters but realised, in the increasingly litigious area of employment, that he needed (and wanted) to become a lawyer. Matt discovered the CILEX route to qualification which allowed him to continue to work in his established employment with a large employers organisation – and to raise a young family at the same time.

During his career, Matt became a lead lawyer for global manufacturing and engineering businesses. He now runs his own employment practice with Carbon Law Partners.

He advises on all matters relating to HR and employment with a particular interest in discrimination and diversity matters. Matt is also an experienced advocate, representing clients at Employment Tribunals.

He is also an avid user of LinkedIn as a platform to access and educate the wider population on employment matters having published a series of videos and podcasts on specialist topics.

Pam Sanghera, Non-Executive Director

Pam is an award winning international family lawyer who specialises in parental child abduction and cross border disputes. 

Having qualified as a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives in 2006, she is experienced in respect of all aspects of family law and holds an exceptionally complex caseload representing victims and abandoned spouses within cross border children disputes that often involve serious issues such as terrorism, radicalisation, child trafficking and FGM. In addition, Pam represents victims of forced marriages and honour based killings.

Dedicated to her specialism, Pam is an accredited member of the Law Society’s Advanced Family Law Panel and is a panel member of the International Child Abduction and Contact Unit and ReUnite International. Recognised for her commitment to the legal industry, in 2014 Pam was awarded Legal Executive of the Year by Birmingham Law Society and in 2016 voted Legal Executive of the Year by Jordans Family Law. 

Aside from her role as a lawyer, Pam is a Director of Charles Strachan Solicitors, a specialised law practise based in Birmingham, Solihull and Redditch. Responsible for business development and marketing, Pam leads on various initiatives to progress the success of the practice. 

Pam is an ambassador for CILEX and has sat on the CILEX Law School board since 2018 as well as the Apprenticeships and Safeguarding Committee. In 2020, Pam joined the CILEX professional board. 

Alexis Thomas, Non-Executive Director

Alexis is a Chartered Legal Executive at HPJV Solicitors specialising in Private Client. After completing her Law degree at Swansea University in 2003, years later Alexis went on to complete her Level 6 qualifications and became a Fellow in 2017. Despite being qualified for 3 years Alexis has 13 years experience in her specialist area and is currently looking to add to her specialism as she is in the process of undertaking her Level 6 studies in Conveyancing. 

In 2015 Alexis joined the Cardiff & SE Wales Branch and after just one year of being a committee member she became the Branch Chair, a role which she has retained since. Alexis actively supports Branch members when needed and is part of the Inspiring the Future Programme. 

Alexis was awarded Branch Member of the Year in 2016 at the Presidents Inauguration and went on to win the Joyce Arram Award for Advancing the Legal Profession in the 2019 CILEX Awards. She has also recently been recognised as a finalist in the Rising Star category at the Wales Legal Awards 2020.

Ian Hunt, Non-Executive Director

Ian is immensely proud to be a third generation Legal Executive, having qualified in October 1990 and becoming a Fellow on 31st October 1992. He left mainstream legal employment in 2012 to fulfil his ambition to set up my own specialist Private Client practice and in June 2012. East Devon Law was founded. The firm has grown to become an LLP in 2018 and a CILEX Regulated entity in September 2020. 

Ian won the Private Client – Legal Expert Award in 2018, and the Devon and Somerset Law Society Legal Executive of the Year Award in 2019. He received the highly commended in the Joyce Arram Memorial Award in the CILEX National Awards 2019 as well as being a shortlisted finalist in two other categories. 

As well as being a Full member of STEP and SFE and the Equity Release Council, Ian was invited by Baroness Finlay to become a member of the National Mental Capacity Forum (NMCF) in 2017 and was invited to become a member of the OPG working group to look at creating new easy read guidance notes for LPA’s in July 2019.

Out of the office he enjoys walking, hiking, and is qualified S W Mountain and Moorland leader and NNAS navigation coach. Ian is also a keen Motorsports enthusiast and enjoys competing in Sprints and Hill climbs in his Historic Mini Cooper S with daughter Victoria and wife Adele.