The STAA Committee are volunteers elected by the membership at the AGM held during our Autumn Conference. The committee is small and we work mainly via video calls, Dropbox and other online collaboration tools.
The current Committee comprises:
Lisa Paul (Chair), Ali Moir (Treasurer), Deborah McGill (Secretary), Dawn McFarlane, Ellie Douglas, Lilian Kelly, Vicki McLellan, David Harford.
Lisa is currently undertaking her CTA written exam in the education field. Lisa has worked as an occupational therapist in health and social care and for the past five years has held lecturing posts in Scotland and, now, England- returning to her home shire regularly to see family and connect with the Scottish TA community. Out of work Lisa has a passion for painting, reading, exploring new places and spending time with old and new friends.
David is a UKCP-registered, BACP-accredited counsellor, psychotherapist and supervisor living and practicing in Musselburgh and specialises in working with armed forces veterans. When not working with clients, or helping the STAA with IT support, he can usually be found climbing munros, attending gigs, listening to music, growing veg in the allotment, or sampling real ales.
What’s involved in being on the committee?
We run three events – a Spring Event (March), a Summer Event (August) and the Autumn Conference (November). During the recent pandemic these were held online, but we are now moving back towards face-to-face events. We also keep a list of members; some of whose details are shared with EATA (European Association for Transactional Analysis) if they pay their EATA contributions through the STAA, rather than UKATA (UK Association for Transactional Analysis).
We hold around 6-8 committee meetings a year, which are intended primarily to plan for our calendar of events and decide how best we can represent our members’ collective interests. They are short meetings (usually around 1.5 hours) and are held on Zoom at a convenient time agreed among the Committee members.
New Committee members receive a brief induction process which covers our governance, IT systems, organisational aims and current opportunities. We are always open to questions- and we always aim to be an inclusive and mutually supportive group.
We are set up as a company limited by guarantee. Some Committee members are appointed as company directors, which involves registering at Companies House and carries some legal responsibilities, such as reporting to the members and filing annual accounts. Committee members do not have to commit for a set length of time, but have typically served for 2-4 years.
The main requirement for joining the Committee is lots of enthusiasm about TA. Some basic IT, communication and admin skills are useful too, but no specialised knowledge is necessary as we will provide support. We welcome any suggestions for new events, speakers and topics. We also welcome volunteers to help out at individual events- which is a good way of exploring what is involved as a Committee member.
If you would like to join, or volunteer your time, then please get in touch by email: