Team

At the heart of all we do is the desire to help empower victims, local communities, vulnerable people and their families.
Gary Pettengell
Gary Pettengell
Founder & CEO
Gary is CEO of Empowering-Communities and has worked on several award winning national and international crime reduction and community engagement projects.  He works with organisations and authorities with the aim of them not to pigeonhole individuals. People are complex and cannot be reduced to binary absolutes – we are not A, B, or C, but a bit of each. This can mean that an offender can also be a victim of domestic abuse. He works to facilitate the avoidance of reductive labelling, working to wrap support around an individual who will have complex requirements, be they victim, offender, or both.
Sarah Pettengell
Sarah Pettengell
Project Manager & Service Delivery Lead

Sarah joined Empowering Communities in 2014 following a successful career that included leading Safeguarding Teams. This included managing high-risk domestic abuse teams, sexual violence and safeguarding children and adults teams. She has also had experience of chairing domestic abuse MARACs.

Despina Sergiou
Despina Sergiou
Customer Support

Despina heads up the Support Team and is the first port of call for customers seeking support on any of our products or solutions. She has been part of the Empowering-Communities team since the very beginning and has a wealth of experience gained from a background in customer service and relationship management.

Heather Ette
Heather Ette
Customer Liaison and Marketing

Heather has over 25 years experience of working in marketing gained in local government and the private sector. She’s built up a portfolio of work using traditional, digital and online marketing methods such as brand development, event planning, database management and segmentation, web design and online/offline promotional campaigns.

Thomas Pettengell MSc
Thomas Pettengell MSc
Systems Analyst

Thomas has a Masters degree in advanced mathematics. He specialised in statistical analysis as well as fluid dynamics. This experience in high level analytical problem solving is a valuable asset to the Empowering Communities Solutions Team. As the organisation’s System and Data Analyst it is Thomas’s responsibility to develop and deliver cutting edge reporting technology to all our customers.

Paul Dunn MBE
Paul Dunn MBE
Programme Manager

Paul has been responsible for delivering national approaches that reduce crime and manage safeguarding through partnership problem-solving approaches. He has won a number of awards including Public Servant of the year for Innovation and has been instrumental in tackling anti-social behaviour (ASB) across the country. Paul assisted in designing the Australian ASB legislation and is the partnership Ambassador for the Charlton Athletic Community Trust.