Agency structure

Gordon has extensive business experience including human resources and employee relations spanning over 30 years.   Before joining Translink his previous experience included senior positions in large Global organisations including Bombardier Aerospace, Nortel and Dunbia. 

Gordon is Chair of the Institute of Directors (IoD) in Northern Ireland and is a visiting professor at the Ulster University Business School. He also serves as a member of the Northern Ireland Employment Relations roundtable and the Northern Ireland engagement forum. 

He has an MBA, is a Fellow of Institute of Directors (IoD) and a Chartered Fellow of Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development (CIPD). 

Clare is currently the Assistant Chief Officer for People and Organisational Development at PSNI and previously held the position of Director of Human Resources and Corporate Services at the Education Authority.  Clare has worked across both the public and private sectors and other previous roles include Director of HR & Organisational Development in the Northern Health and Social Care Trust and Head of Divisional Retail HR at B&Q plc.  Clare’s experience extends beyond HR and Organisational Development having led strategic change programmes with a focus on the continuous improvement of services, corporate governance, business transformation and corporate communications. Clare is a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD with a passion for leadership development, employee engagement, industrial relations and customer service.  She is a Board Member of the Labour Relations Agency and with an interest in sport is an Independent Board Member of Athletics NI.

Geraldine Alexander has over 35 years’ experience as a senior trade union official with the Northern Ireland Public Service Alliance representing the interests of members employed in the civil and public services, including the voluntary and community sector.  She was the strategic lead on policy in the key specialist areas of equality, human rights, social affairs, health and safety, LGB&T and youth matters.  A former Board Member and Deputy Chairperson of the Health and Safety Executive for Northern Ireland.  She holds a first class honours degree in Management and Business Studies.   

Geraldine is currently a Member (Employee) of the Industrial Court.

Mr McCabe is a Trade Union Official and activist with over 35 years’ experience and knowledge of working in the Public Sector.  An Assistant Secretary working for the Northern Ireland Public Service Alliance he served 18 years in the Health and Social Care sector and was a lead Trade Union Side Secretary who oversaw the Review of Public Administration, the implementation of the Agenda For Change Job Evaluation Scheme and significant Organisational Change and Reviews.  He also had responsibility for the Voluntary and Community Sector and the Northern Ireland Housing Executive.  He previously and now has responsibility for some Northern Ireland Civil Service Departments and his present remit covers Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA), Department for Economy (DFE), Department of Education (DE) Department of Health (DOH).  Mr McCabe was a former Commissioner on the Fair Employment Commission and served on the Health and Social Care (HSC) Pension Advisory Board and the Health and Social Care (HSC) Trustee Pension Board. 

Lee brings over 20 years’ experience in Health Service Finance to the role, and was previously a Board and Audit committee Member of the consumer Council for Northern Ireland.

He is currently a Board and Audit Committee Member of the NI Medical and Dental Training Agency, NI Social Care Council and NI Guardian ad Litem Agency. He also Chairs the Governance and Risk Committee in NIMDTA.

Academically Lee has completed a BA Hons in Business Studies, an MA in Administration and Law and a PG Diploma in Social and Community Development. 

John has had a varied career dealing with workplace, employment, economic development and education matters both within the UK and overseas. He led three different organisations as Chief Executive and has worked extensively as a Non-Executive Director for many organisations in the private, public and not-for profit-sectors.

He is well versed in employment relations. As Acas’s first CEO he oversaw a major modernisation of its services, increased digitalisation and the introduction of early conciliation over a period of 12 years. He has served, as an independent member, on the boards of the TUC’s UnionLearn, the NHS Partnership Board for England and the Electro Technical Joint Industry as well as being a member of several Government task forces dealing with various reviews of employment law and how the workplace operates in practice.

He currently is Chair of Cardiff Metropolitan University and a Governor of Cardiff and the Vale College.  A former German Marshall Scholar to the USA, he received an Honorary Doctor of Literature Award from the University of West London and is a Chartered Manager and Companion of the Chartered Management Institute.

Sarah Havlin is the current Chairman of the Industrial Court of Northern Ireland. She is a solicitor by profession with an extensive background in employment law and relations, particularly in collective disputes and trade union affairs, and 15 years of experience in both regulation and in judicial and quasi-judicial roles. For ten years she was the Certification Officer of Northern Ireland, the statutory regulator of trade unions and employer associations with judicial functions. She is also a former Chairman of the Agricultural Wages Board, a statutory collective bargaining authority setting terms and conditions of pay for agricultural workers.

Sarah has also acted in a variety of other roles at senior level of government including as Independent Advisor to the Minister on the setting of terms and conditions of remuneration and schemes of allowance for elected local government representatives. Since 2019, Sarah has been the Deputy Chairman of the Central Arbitration Committee in London (The Industrial Court of Great Britain). She also sits as a Tribunal Chairman in several other formal inquisitorial processes including the Exceptional Circumstances Tribunal (Education) the Independent Review of Decisions Panel (Agriculture) and previously she sat as a Parades Commissioner for Northern Ireland for seven years.

Sarah also has specialist expertise in electoral law and policy in Northern Ireland and has served both as Local Government Boundary Commissioner for Northern Ireland and as Parliamentary Boundary Commissioner for Northern Ireland, and she has led and delivered several complex Inquiries and Reviews in the context of electoral boundaries to both the Stormont Assembly and the Westminster Parliament between 2008 and 2023.

In 2022, Sarah was commissioned by the Scottish Government in its preparation of the Tied Pubs (Scotland) Bill, as Shadow Scottish Pubs Code Adjudicator; a policy initiative to bring regulation, fairness and transparency to the commercial working relationship between pub owning companies and tied tenants in Scotland. As well as her professional legal career, Sarah has spent several years as an associate lecturer in Law with the Open University and as a visiting tutor at the Institute of Professional Legal Studies at Queens University, Belfast. She is accredited in advanced advocacy by the Law Society of Northern Ireland and the National Institute of Trial Advocates, an Associate of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and a Fellow of the Irish Institute of Boston College, Massachusetts.

Mark Spence is the Chief Executive of the Construction Employers Federation (CEF) and is the NI representative at both the Construction Leadership Council and Build UK.

In his role with CEF, he is the Employer Representative to the Joint Council for the Building and Civil Engineering Industry (Northern Ireland).

He is Managing Director of Construction Industry Futures Limited, a company owned and operated jointly by CEF and the GMB and Unite Trades Unions with the purpose of addressing industry challenges.

He is also Managing Director of Construction Federation Services Limited, a company delivering safety and environmental accreditations specific to the construction industry.

Prior to joining the CEF, Mark had senior level experience in the local construction industry and 20 years' senior experience in two global consultancy firms advising on infrastructure procurement.

Mark was appointed by the Finance Minister to the Procurement Board in 2020.

He is Vice-Chair of Mallusk Enterprise Park and is a former Board Member of Arbour Housing Association.

He is a fellow of the Institute of Directors (IoD), a Fellow of Chartered Accountants Ireland, a graduate of QUB and holds an MBA from Ulster University.

Mark is a trustee of his local scout group.

Orla is a Solicitor qualified to practice in the jurisdictions of both Northern Ireland and England & Wales. Her legal career has involved her working in private practice, for the Employment Tribunal Service, a Trade Union and public inquiries.

Specialising in employment law, she brings over 20 years’ experience advising various trade union and private clients to the role.  She has issued high profile, high value, and complex cases before the Central Arbitration Committee, Employment Tribunals, Employment Appeal Tribunal, High Court and Court of Appeal. A significant number of these have been multi-claimant proceedings involving large sums of compensation awarded to her clients.

Providing strategic direction and guidance regarding good governance to trade unions, Orla advises upon the requirements for industrial action, the balloting process, acquiring Independent Trade Union status and collective bargaining rights. Having presented at trade union conferences and published various educational articles concerning employment law, she also has responsibility for training trade union officials enabling them to effectively represent members in grievance and disciplinary hearings and during pay negotiations.

Orla is a member of the Employment Lawyers Association, the Association of Regulatory & Disciplinary Lawyers and the Employment Lawyers Group NI.

Libby has extensive human resources experience in multi union global and cross border organisations and previously held the positions of Director of Compensation and Benefits in Bombardier and Head of Human Resources in Waterways Ireland.  She has worked across both the private and public sectors in senior HR leadership roles involving strategic and operational responsibilities and led employment relations in challenging jurisdictional operating environments. Libby is an advocate for fairness and people with disabilities.

She has served on the NI Branch of the CIPD and has worked as an Independent Assessor with the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments.  She holds an MA in Human Resource Management and is a Chartered Member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (MCIPD).

Libby currently serves as a Panel Member of the Industrial and Fair Employment Tribunals Northern Ireland and is a Board member of the Governing Body of South West College.

Mark has been with the Labour Relations Agency for 20 years working in all frontline services as well as the corporate services side of the organisation.  Mark was appointed Director of Employment Relations Services in May 2019 and became Chief Executive on 1 September 2024.

Prior to joining the Agency Mark was a legal academic and a regional trade union negotiator in the further and higher education sector from 1995 – 2000.  He is an experienced mediator, author and contributor to employment law publications and a regular speaker on the employment law circuit in Northern Ireland.

Mark has worked in a variety of voluntary capacities such as community mediation and is a former Chair of Community Restorative Justice Ireland.  In addition, Mark has held the post of Northern Ireland Convenor of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and the Chair of the Governance Institute (NI) Branch.

Mark has a variety of formal academic qualifications including a Master’s Degree in Law and Public Administration.  He is a member of CiARB and a Fellow of the Governance Institute (ICSA) as well as holding memberships in the Employment Lawyers Group (NI) and the Industrial Law Society.

Mark is a member of the GAA and his beloved club Kilclief Ben Dearg (the most visually spectacular club in Ireland on the coast of Strangford Lough) and he is a keen Irish rugby fan.  He is steeped in industrial and employment relations and has retained his passion for making work better for all since he started employment many years ago.

Paul Lowe took up post as the Labour Relations Agency’s Director of Corporate Services on 1 December 2020, having joined the Agency in 2018 as a senior manager.

Paul is an accomplished management professional who is highly experienced in Corporate Services, Human Resources, Organisational Development, Talent Management and Learning & Development.  He is a Chartered Member of the Institute of Personnel and Development and maintains a strong commitment to his Continuous Professional Development.

In 2017 he led his team to success in being recognised as the CIPD NI HR team of the Year and delivering the Best Talent Management Programme.

He is highly experienced in leading, inspiring and motivating teams through change programmes and in pursuit of objectives.  He possesses substantial people and communication skills with an eye for business improvement, as well as being performance and outcomes-focussed, with a strong public service ethos.

Outside of the Agency Paul enjoys long walks, reading, following sport particularly his beloved Manchester United, and is a keen amateur musician.