UK Office
EMERGENCY UK is the British affiliate of EMERGENCY, and is a Registered Charity in England and Wales (no. 1148818).
EMERGENCY UK carries out fundraising, awareness, communication and recruitment activities on behalf of EMERGENCY in the UK.
As a limited company and registered charity, our accounts are independently examined. We also report to the Charity Commission, an independent body that regulates charities in the UK.
Projects in the field are operated by EMERGENCY from their offices in Milan, Rome and Venice.
The only projects that funds donated to EMERGENCY UK will be used to support will be those operated by EMERGENCY.
EMERGENCY and EMERGENCY UK share the same values and work together towards common goals.
EMERGENCY UK staff work with EMERGENCY staff on a daily basis, closely collaborating on a wide array of activities.
Board of Trustees
Rossella Miccio, Trustee and President
Rossella started her career at EMERGENCY in 2000, developing the organisation’s projects in Afghanistan and Sudan within the Field Office Department.
Following this, she went on to work in the External Relations Department before becoming Coordinator of the Field Office, with the mandate of supervising and coordinating all EMERGENCY’s humanitarian projects around the world, and liaising between the organisation, the international community, and governments.
Rossella has led EMERGENCY’s international expansion to seven affiliate countries, and served as a member on the Belgium and UK Executive Boards.
Since 2015, she has been a part of Italy’s National Council for Cooperation and Development, together with 50 representatives from the Italian Development Cooperation System.
Having been a member of EMERGENCY’s Executive Board since 2003, Rossella was elected President of the organisation in July 2017.
Hannah Bryce, Trustee and Chair
Hannah Bryce is a Clerk in the House of Commons. Prior to this she was the assistant head of the International Security Department at Chatham House until January 2018. As the assistant head Hannah managed the delivery of all the projects within the department. She also specifically led a project that considered how states can engage with non-state armed groups (NSAGs) for the delivery of humanitarian aid and participated in a number of expert groups on explosive weapons policy.
She was a Co-Editor for the Journal of Cyber Policy until January 2019 and continues to contribute to the Journal in an advisory capacity. Prior to working at Chatham House Hannah spent several years working overseas in the humanitarian sector, with a particular focus on humanitarian mine action. Hannah managed demining programmes in Sudan, South Sudan and Vietnam.
Her research has included articles and presentations on various aspects of explosive weapons policy, the need for improved gender balance in the military, the role of the UN, the conflict in South Sudan, cybersecurity and AI, and the role and impact of the humanitarian sector.
Hannah holds a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) from the London School of Economics and a Master of Studies in International Relations from the University of Cambridge. Hannah is a Trustee for EMERGENCY UK and a member of the Advisory Committee to Women in International Security (WIIS) UK.
Gianluca Cantalupi, Trustee and Treasurer
Being a strong believer in the necessity of equality and human rights, Gianluca found EMERGENCY to be the best way of translating his efforts into an effective outcome. He started volunteering at a young age for the charity in 2002 while in Milan, Italy. As he finished his engineering studies, he moved to the UK in 2006 where he could not find any charity comparable to EMERGENCY and decided to found a London-based volunteer group, which then evolved into EMERGENCY UK. Gianluca dedicates his time and skills to the cause on a pro-bono basis.
Umar Naeem Ahmad, Trustee
Umar is an NHS doctor, trained in Global Health and Development, Tropical Medicine and Critical Care Medicine. He has worked as a researcher and clinician in Malawi, Myanmar, Columbia, Timor-Leste, France and Switzerland. He first worked with EMERGENCY in the field in Sierra Leone during the 2014 Ebola Outbreak and has been an enthusiastic supporter of our work ever since. He joined EMERGENCY as a trustee in 2020. Umar lives in London and is the CEO of a digital health startup.
Klara Banaszak, Trustee
Klara is a solicitor of England and Wales and a dedicated public servant. She currently works for the UK Civil Aviation Authority, advising on aviation safety law and supporting the CAA to operate in line with its public law duties. She began her legal career at the House of Commons where she spent over a decade, enabling parliamentary scrutiny of domestic legislation and advising on diverse aspects of parliamentary law. She undertook her practical legal training at Senedd Cymru and was Deputy Editor of the 4th and 5th editions of Jowitt’s Dictionary of English Law. Before qualifying as a solicitor, Klara spent several years doing international development work with UNIFEM, UNDP, UNFPA and local NGOs in the MENA region, supporting women’s roles in conflict resolution and peacebuilding and efforts to end violence against women and girls.
Giorgio Bocchi, Trustee
Giorgio joined EMERGENCY UK as a volunteer when the London group was founded in late 2007. The following year, he was appointed Trustee of the newly established charity. Giorgio is also Managing Director at a top tier US investment bank in London. He is married, with a daughter.
Giulia Girardi, Trustee
Giulia has been working in the charity sector for over 18 years, specialising in public and private sector partnerships. She is the Head of Private Foundations at a United Nations agency based in London, where she leads and provides strategic oversight on all high-level private foundation partnerships. Prior to joining the UN in 2019, Giulia worked for the Red Cross Movement and other organisations focused on international development and humanitarian aid, women and children’s rights, and peacebuilding. Giulia is a long time EMERGENCY supporter and is committed to its mission and values. She joined EMERGENCY UK as a Trustee in 2025.
Andy Hall, Trustee
Andy Hall is a highly experienced international crisis management consultant. A career and skillset gained through 15 years of practical experience working in various operational, tactical and strategic roles worldwide to address humanitarian disasters.
Andy first encountered EMERGENCY in Afghanistan in 2010 while serving as a medic with the British Army and was immediately impressed by their work and commitment to quality healthcare delivery despite incredibly difficult circumstances. He again encountered EMERGENCY in Sierra Leone in 2014, where he was able to work even more closely with the organisation to address the escalating need for Ebola treatment facilities during the 2014-16 Ebola Epidemic. Whilst working for several other organisations in Sierra Leone, Andy was responsible for designing, developing and delivering the world’s first dedicated maternity unit for women suspected or confirmed to have Ebola. A facility and team that went on to successfully and safely deliver the world’s first child to survive from an Ebola-positive mother. By the end of the outbreak, Andy established more than 10 Ebola isolation and treatment facilities with over 300 beds, trained over 700 local and international staff to operate and staff these facilities, and personally treated more than 1,000 Ebola-positive patients.
Andy went on to work as a humanitarian healthcare advisor for several well-known international medical organisations and for various private sector organisations running projects in Ethiopia, Somalia, Iraq, and Ukraine. He is one of relatively few clinicians to have treated victims of chemical weapons attacks and has provided training and advice to numerous organisations operating in areas where the threat of Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear weapons exists.
Andy was formally the co-chair of the World Health Organisation Committee for Personal Protective Equipment for the Management of Infectious Diseases and has co-authored several books and peer-reviewed articles on humanitarian healthcare, surgical care in low-resource settings and conflict medicine.
Andy is a registered nurse, with additional qualifications in emergency planning, resilience and emergency response, and is a member of the Royal Society for Public Health.
Samia Khatun, Trustee
Samia is a dedicated INGO, Social Justice and Global Health professional with extensive senior leadership, organisational governance and executive management experience. She currently works as Head of Programmes at King’s Global Health Partnerships (KGHP), an initiative of King’s College London where she is responsible for the overall strategic direction and management of KGHP’s programmes, partnerships and operations.
Samia has wide-ranging experience managing multi-country and multi-million-pound programmes, having led programmes in 40+ countries across Africa, Asia and South and Central America including in humanitarian and fragile and conflict-affected situations, working with the most marginalised communities. She has managed programmes on education, communication for development, livelihoods and women’s economic empowerment, her more recent work has focused on global health programming including sexual reproductive health and family planning, maternal health to end preventable deaths, mental health (anti-stigma campaigns) and health system strengthening. Samia prides herself on her strategic approach to building partnerships and driving sustainable change through an intersectional gender equity, inclusion, and anti-racism lens.
Samia currently serves as a Trustee of the Hilden Charitable Fund where she has played a critical role in developing a strategy for their overseas grants. Samia holds a BSc in Politics and Economics from Brunel University and a MSc in Political Economy of Development from the School of Oriental and Africa Studies (SOAS), University of London.