Pete Gladwell

Group Social Impact & Investment Director
Legal & General

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Matt Jones

Director, Real Estate Finance
Santander Corporate & Commercial

Matt has over 30 years of experience in the banking industry, specialising in real estate finance across the North West for the last 17 years. Previously at RBS and Barclays, Matt joined Santander in 2013 and currently heads up the North West team, covering Manchester, Liverpool, Preston and North Wales. Matt has been involved in some of the region’s largest transactions, and brings unique experience of the challenges facing the senior debt market.

Karen Hirst

Director
Eric Wright Group

Karen was appointed managing director of Maple Grove Developments in 2018, having joined Eric Wright Group in 2016 as a divisional director and is on the Group Board. She brings 29 years’ property and development experience from both public and private sectors.

Karen delivers the development opportunities, including some of the North West’s major commercial projects. Karen and her team are currently underway with a number of town/city centre schemes including; Burnley, Blackburn and Preston and industrial developments at Deeside and Winsford. Karen is also the lead for the Lancashire Regeneration Property Partnership working with a number of public sector partners to enable their projects to happen.

Prior to joining Maple Grove Karen spent 10 years in Salford as Development Director for Salford City Council and Regeneration Company. Karen and her team delivered a number of significant mixed use development projects with the private sector, such as; Salford Central, Greengate and MediaCityUK.

Lorraine Donnelly

Development Director
Your Housing Group

Lorraine has worked in a construction environment for more than 30 years, she is responsible for the delivery of the Group's Growth Strategy which will deliver 5,700 homes over the next 5 years.

Lorraine started her career in a busy estimating department for Balfour Beatty Civil Engineers in 1988. This early experience helped her to develop her love of working in a busy, thriving construction environment; so to land a job in the development team back in 1994, to mix construction and housing, was the start of her dream career for her.  During her 24 years working for the Group she has had a number of roles within the team, before taking up the role of Director of Development in the summer of 2015, with overall responsibility to deliver the growth aspirations and provide quality homes that we can be really proud of.

When she’s not on site … Lorraine spends lots of time with her family and friends, she loves visiting places to tick off her bucket list, but more importantly is a season ticket holder at Everton FC.