Mrs Rena Shepherd has extensive senior level experience in the business, voluntary, and public sectors. She has headed up a number of large organisations in the oil, publishing and postal industries, and is described as a “change agent par excellence”.

Rena assumed the role of Chair on Roger Poole’s retirement in June 2009. She joined the Parades Commission in May 2008. She has extensive mediation experience and has been involved in a number of successful international processes.

Rena holds a number of public and private appointments and directorships. In April 2009 she was appointed to the newly formed Patient Client Council. She is also currently Chair of the Kish Foundation.

Rena has a passionate and personal interest in Disability and spends all her spare time volunteering and lobbying on behalf of a number of disability groups and individuals. In 2006 with the assistance of a grant from Atlantic Philanthropies, she set up the Centre on Human Rights for People with Disabilities in Northern Ireland. She takes a particular interest in rights based healthcare and hammers home at every opportunity the social rather than the medical model of disability. Rena has lived with chronic pain since her early twenties. She is currently lobbying to have pain recognised as an illness in its own right and for a strategy for pain relief in Northern Ireland. Rena is a volunteer trainer for Arthritis Care and delivers self management courses for pain and other chronic conditions on their behalf. “Pain is a hidden illness and particularly difficult to understand if you haven’t either had it yourself or known someone who has lived with it” says Rena.

Rena maintains her links with the business community and is currently a director on the board of the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce where she heads up the Policy sub-committee. Rena tells us that Business is her first love and she enjoys the platform that her role with the Chamber allows her for lobbying and working with local ministers and Assembly members to improve the local economy and encourage inward investment. Rena also sits on a number of Audit and Governance Committees in the Health and Voluntary Sectors and delivers training around good corporate governance.

Rena relaxes by listening to classical music and opera and attending concerts and performances. She is a Development Board member of the Ulster Orchestra. Rena is married to Jon and they have two grown up sons, two daughters in law, and two “gorgeous granddaughters”- Abbie is six and her sister Charlotte is one year old.