Chair - Stephen Trusler Expand Stephen, who brings over 40 years of experience in housing, development and regeneration, is a leading figure in UK housing & construction sector, having held senior positions at Lovell, Alfred McAlpine, Wates and Laing O’Rourke, where he was Residential Sector Leader. He is currently Senior Director at planning and development consultancy Turley. Stephen has over 12 years’ experience as a Non-Executive Director, including roles with Sage Housing and the Chartered Institute of Housing. He is currently a Non-Executive Director at Cavanna Group, the South West’s largest independent housebuilder. A long-standing ambassador for the housing sector, Stephen has regularly participated in industry think tanks and conferences. He is a fellow of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors and a chartered member of the Chartered Institute of Housing. Stephen, who took over as Chair from November 2023, previously served on the Group’s Board between 2014 and 2019, during which time he chaired its Remunerations and Nominations Committee.
Group CEO - Bjorn Howard Expand Bjorn became Aster’s Group CEO in 2009 having previously been the chief executive of a smaller housing association and worked in several other senior roles. Since then, Aster’s housing business has doubled to nearly 38,000 homes and has expanded its geographical footprint across southern England and London. He has worked in the independent housing, care and support sectors for more than 35 years and has extensive board-level experience in both executive and non-executive roles. He has served as a non-executive director for an NHS Trust, educational organisations, regeneration boards and as a government appointee to a housing association. Bjorn is a passionate advocate for Customer Voice, inclusive organisational cultures and the not-for-dividend business model. Bjorn holds a Master’s degree in management and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Housing and Chartered Management Institute. He is also a member of the Institute of Directors.
Trustee - Chris Benn Expand Chris joined Aster in 2014, bringing with him extensive experience from the commercial sector. Chris has executive responsibility for Finance, Treasury, Finance and Business Planning, the Group’s Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and the Group’s insurance and pension arrangements. Before Aster, Chris held senior finance positions at Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC and Regus PLC. At Euromoney he ensured the finance team were able to support the five-fold profit increase of the Group from both organic growth, and through acquisitions, including the acquisition of a fellow FTSE-250 listed Group. At Regus Chris was involved in the IPO and floatation of Regus’ shares on both the FTSE and NASDAQ indices. Chris qualified as a chartered accountant at Coopers & Lybrand (now PwC) in 1994.
Trustee - Richard Hughes Expand Richard was born in Salisbury and had a 30-year career in banking. The last 25 years of which were spent providing funding in the UK social housing sector. Richard has served for many years as a non-executive director with a variety of social housing providers. For the last seven he has been a board member of the Regulator of Social Housing. Richard is also trustee of a small local almshouses and welfare charity. He lives in Buckinghamshire and is married with two grown up children.
Trustee - Mehul Desai Expand Mehul is a senior financial services executive with 30 years of experience spanning capital deployment, enterprise risk management, and large-scale business transformation.He spent the majority of his career at HSBC, most recently as Managing Director and Global Head of Business Resilience. In this role he led the development and execution of the Bank's resilience strategy, with a focus on protecting customers, maintaining market stability, and embedding resilience into day-to-day operations. He oversaw regulatory engagement on resilience matters and led related Board communications.Earlier HSBC roles included interim Chief Operating Officer (SMF24) for HSBC UK, Chief of Staff to the UK Chief Operating Officer, and Head of Transformation for the US business. Collectively these positions gave him an enterprise-wide perspective across strategy, operations, technology, and risk, including accountability for technology strategy, investment prioritisation, and Board engagement.Before HSBC, Mehul was in management consulting, advising COOs and CIOs on digital transformation programmes aimed at improving customer experience, automating processes, and delivering sustainable cost savings.Mehul holds a Bachelor's degree from the State University of New York at Albany and an MBA from the University of Cambridge. He lives in London with his wife and son.
Trustee - Mike McCullen Expand Mike is an accomplished CEO, Chairman and technology entrepreneur with over 30-years’ leadership experience in private, public and venture backed businesses specialising in technology for the built environment. Mike was a co-founder and Managing Director of the UK’s most successful project management software business for the construction industry, which he grew and led to exit in 2006. He is a former Group Board Director of an AIM listed technology business and was CEO of its international construction software and services business for over eight years and he was EVP of the UK’s biggest independent construction software business for over 2 years. He has extensive overseas experience having led construction technology businesses in Sweden and Germany and established international distribution in Australia, Europe and the USA. He has completed a number of international acquisitions. Mike started his own consultancy practice in 2015 working as an independent director and consultant advising businesses and private equity firms on investment in technology. He holds a Computer Science degree (Manchester) and an MBA (Warwick).
Trustee - Nicola Frayne Expand After graduating from Manchester University with a BSc Hons in Chemistry, Nicola's early executive career was in Hospitality where she held a number of senior Operations and HR roles at both Allied Domecq plc and Yum! Brands. After completing a master’s degree, in Human Resources Management, she spent the next decade in transformational Chief People Officer roles, predominantly in customer-focused organisations within the private sector. From 2011-2013 she served as Group HR Director at The UNITE Group plc, a FTSE 100 Property management and development company and took on her first Non-Exec Director role in 2017. Nicola runs her own Consultancy Practice focused on Executive Coaching and Leadership Team Effectiveness. She is a Non-Exec Director, SID and Chair of the Strategy, People & Culture Committee at Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust and is a Member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.
Trustee - Mat Cooling Expand Mat qualified as a CIPFA accountant in 2012 whilst working with a Top 10 accounting firm providing Governance, Risk and Assurance services to a wide variety of public and private organisations. Since then Mat has taken on management and leadership roles across a wide variety of large FTSE, Government bodies and financial services, organisations within internal audit, risk and assurance. He is currently the Director of Risk and Assurance for a leading University in the South East. In his spare time Mat is a trainer for CIPFA and the IIA. In 2022 Mat was appointed as a trustee to the Aster Foundation charity.
Trustee - Amanda Williams Expand Amanda has over 30 years’ experience in development, marketing and asset management for registered social landlords, joining Aster Group in 2012. She was previously director of business development at Synergy, prior to the merger with Aster and drove the strategic direction of the association’s new-build development activity, including becoming an independent preferred investment partner. Before Aster, Amanda was head of development for Sanctuary Housing Group for London and the South East, and an associate director of Adams Integra, a consultancy specialising in housing development and planning. She was also director of development services for Apex Housing (now A2Dominion) for nine years where she was responsible for growing a mixed development programme from scratch to over 1,000 units per year. Amanda is the executive lead for Development, Asset Management, Property Investment and Delivery. Aster’s Development programme delivers homes for social rent, affordable rent, and shared ownership. The Group plans to invest £1.6 billion to achieve its long-term target of delivering 7,000 homes over the next seven years.