Our Team

Below you can find information on Only Connect’s team. This includes the charity’s leadership team and its trustees.

Leadership

Only Connect is run by an experienced and passionate leadership team.

Mat Ilic
Executive Director

Mat leads Only Connect. He has extensive experience working for the public, private and third sectors. He has worked as an auditor at PricewaterhouseCoopers and a consultant at Tribal Group. At the Mayor’s Office he designed and implemented Project Oracle to improve the standards of evidence and programme delivery across youth services.

Mat is also Strategy Director, Justice at Catch22. Mat is Chairman of Khulisa UK and a voluntary advisor to the Ministry of Justice Data Lab. Mat holds an M.Sc. in International Relations from the LSE and an MA in Modern History from Oxford University. He is a Churchill fellow and a Fellow of the RSA.

Tim Colman
Head of Development

Tim is our Head of Development. He manages our Development Team, corporate partnerships and our social enterprise arm.

Prior to Only Connect, Tim oversaw developmental growth at crime prevention charity Switchback. In this role, Tim worked across all fundraising areas, and managed the organisations marketing. He entered the charity sector as a Corporate Development Manager at national health charity the Stroke Association. Tim’s business development career started in the private sector. He studied English and Philosophy at Oxford Brookes University.

Trustees

Only Connect has a high profile and knowledgeable board of Trustees.

Danny Kruger
Chairman

Danny is Chief Executive of the West London Zone. Danny was Chief Executive of Only Connect from 2005 - 2015. He set up the charity with his wife Emma in 2006 and came on board full time in 2008. Danny read History at Edinburgh University and received a DPhil in History from Oxford University in 2000.

Before working at Only Connect Danny was Director of Studies at the Centre for Policy Studies, Chief Leader-Writer at the Daily Telegraph, and Special Adviser to David Cameron MP as Leader of the Opposition.

Jane Fellowes
Trustee

Jane Fellowes has been involved as a supporter and volunteer since 2008 and has been a trustee since January 2012. She works with the trustee board to oversee the governance decisions and broad strategy of Only Connect.

Jane says about the work of the crime prevention charity: “I have seen at first hand the inspiring and life-changing work of Only Connect, and know how important its role is in our world today.”

 

Chris Wright

Chris Wright is Chief Executive of Catch22, the social business.

He has spent his career within the criminal justice and children’s social care world in a variety of roles. He is an advocate for the social enterprise sector playing a key role in the delivery of public services. His belief in social justice extends to his commitment to Nottingham Forest one day returning to the Clough glory years.

Emma Kruger

Emma co-founded Only Connect with Danny Kruger in 2006, having taught students in mainstream schools, Pupil Referral Units and Emotional and Behavioural Difficulty Units for 10 years. The charity was inspired by Emma’s time at Manchester University studying English and Drama, which included delivering workshops to prisoners at HMPs Strangeways and Styal, and by her voluntary work in London prisons.

From 2004-05 Emma was the London manager of the BBC’s literacy campaign Read And Write (RAW), which involved drama-based workshops in community and institutional settings across London.