
Debra is a founding Partner at SAY, a consultancy business she started with her business partner Charles Seifert in 2010. SAY focuses on advising developers and investors on how to make better places happen by improving how they feel and function. SAY is a growing team of eighteen with an enviable client base. Debra was previously Head of Asset and Property Management at Grainger, having previously learnt her trade from the bottom up, starting as a trainee property manager – after leaving school at sixteen, a short career in retail and living in America and Australia while traveling around the world.
Debra has several non-executive roles including the M&G Shared Ownership Fund and Accumulate, the Art School for the Homeless. She spent nine years as a non-exec at Notting Hill Housing, where latterly she was Deputy Chair. In response to the rise of COVID and the MIPIM cancellation in 2020, Debra set up Do Some Good a platform to match volunteers and pro bono support with charities.
Debra is passionate about delivering great places through great design and an equality of service, finding ways to support those affected by homelessness and encouraging the sector to work harder to deliver more innovative housing solutions. Debra has a busy family life in West London with Andrew her husband and their 13-year-old daughter Lyla. Debra also has a grown-up daughter and son and a six-year-old granddaughter. She loves doing all the things that have been recently curtailed such as traveling, eating out, shopping, being with her friends, galleries, cinema and parties!