Our team and advisory board

Biography: Caroline has spent her entire career working in the NHS. She has worked in secondary care in operational and strategic management, most recently as an Executive Director at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. She has a passion for service transformation and in the 1990s she led the operational development of the UK's first treatment centre and moved to set up NHS Elect in 2003 in order to provide high quality, in-house support to healthcare organisations across the country, enabling them to work together to deliver improved services.

Recent Accomplishments: The NHS Elect team has grown from an initial membership of just four sites to a membership of over 50 sites, providing a diverse range of support across the NHS.

How she can help you: Caroline works extensively with members on service improvement, development of clinical services strategies, training and development, and change

Email: caroline@nhselect.org.uk

Biography: Coming from a background as a Chartered Physiotherapist and having been the first non-medical Clinical Director at UCLH, Eilis made the transition to General Management and held posts at UCLH and Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and NWL Strategic Health Authority. She joined NHS Elect in 2004 and has been qualified as a coach since 2012 and enjoys the opportunity to work with individuals and teams to help them improve their performance. She is a qualified MBTI and Strengthscope Practitioner. Eilis also lead the Personal Development Faculty at NHS Elect. 

Eilis also has a keen interest in team and team working and the importance of leaders being able to adopt a coaching style, where suitable, to get the best out of their teams.

Recent Accomplishments: Completing ACAS Workplace Mediation training.

How she can help you: She works extensively with members on a 1:1 and group/team basis with coaching and personal development.

Email: eilisparker@nhs.net

Biography: I’m Jim Timpson and I lead our Organisational Development Faculty. On a day to day basis that sees me dividing my team between designing and delivering leadership development programmes across the NHS and facilitating groups who want to work on issues like team building, culture change, debriefing, strategic planning, and conflict. A nice part of the job is that I get to work with pretty much every level of colleague who’s involved in leadership from team leaders to Board members.

Like many OD practitioners, I came to the job via a circuitous path which included spells as a nursing auxiliary, building site labourer and IT salesman before joining the NHS Management Training Scheme in the mid ‘90s and embarking on a series of management jobs spanning operations, transformation, performance management and capital projects. I joined NHS Elect in 2004 for what was intended to be 18 months getting an understanding of how the Department of Health interacted with the NHS but quickly found that the work was purposeful and enjoyable with the added bonus that my colleagues became friends.

After completing the MSc in Organisational Development at Roffey Park Institute I developed a career focusing on leadership development with a particular emphasis on behavioural and cultural factors like resilience, conflict management, influencing and creativity. I live in Twickenham and the things that make life worth living for me are my wife, my daughters and a small collection of guitars.

Recent Accomplishments: Analysing the structure and culture of a community services organisation; designing & delivering resilience workshops; designing and delivering a strengths based programme at Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust to enable a senior manager to implement appraisal based incremental progression; consulting with NHS England and a number of members on culture change; developing departmental strategies through Strategy Mapping workshops at Whittington Health NHS Trust; “Polarity Management” work with CCGs chairs to understand how to get the benefits of both large scale primary care centres and small GP practices.

How he can help you: Organisational Development: Leadership Development: Team Building; Having Difficult Conversations; Psychological Resilience.

Email: jim@nhselect.org.uk

Biography: Sue Kong joined NHS Elect in April 2005 as their Director, leading on the marketing of NHS Services and assisting the Department of Health with the Gastroenterology 18 weeks commissioning pathways. Prior to joining NHS Elect, Sue was Executive Director for Strategy and Planning at North West London Strategic Health Authority and has operational and planning experience in acute hospitals in London and the East Midlands.

Sue has an MBA (distinction) specialising in marketing and is a CIM Chartered Marketer. Sue has chaired the Health Service Journal NHS marketing conferences and has published in the Journal of Management and Marketing in Healthcare, regularly sharing good examples of healthcare marketing and patient experience from around the world. Sue is a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Patient Experience (SAGE). She loves learning from different sectors and has presented as a Business Insight Leader for Warwick Business School, the Institute of Directors, National Housing Federation & 2020 Arab Health Congress.

Recent Accomplishments: Sue has developed a customer care / 'Improving the Patient Experience' training programme for its members covering administrative staff to multi-disciplinary clinical teams. She has personally delivered her training programme to over 2,500 NHS front-line staff and trained over 60 patient experience and leadership development colleagues across the country to implement this programme in their own Trusts.

How she can help you: Sue helps members with marketing, branding and customer service.

Email: sue.kong@nhs.net

Biography: Nicola Chandler is a director at NHS Elect and is an experienced QI practitioner and senior improvement coach who has supported multi-disciplinary teams to deliver national initiatives, such as 18 weeks and Enhanced Recovery, and supported teams participating in the Ambulatory Emergency Care collaborative.

Since joining the NHS in 1993, Nicola has worked in several senior operational management roles in the community, acute and commissioning sectors.

Her role at NHS Elect is primarily in the service improvement and change management space where she applies her practical and theoretical knowledge of operational challenges, underpinned with the theory of service transformation, to support multi-disciplinary teams and service users to drive service improvements for both staff and patients. She is also responsible for delivering our Human Factors and Ergonomics in Healthcare workshops.

She is an experienced facilitator, having worked with several organisations reviewing their services, including outpatients and theatres.

Recent Accomplishments: working with members to improve services for patients through a variety of service improvement initiatives and service reviews; working with teams to improve their outpatient services through the Productive Outpatients Programme.

How she can help you: service reviews, designing and delivering service improvement and lean training workshops.

Email: nicola.chandler1@nhs.net

Biography: Having worked in various senior NHS management roles, Robin combines a realistic outlook with the latest change management thinking to achieve results. He has a good understanding of the competing demands of operational health care management and the challenge of meaningfully engaging clinicians in projects. He is an accomplished facilitator and enjoys the challenge of working with clinical teams to bring about improvements for patients. Graduated from the NHS management training scheme in 2002, and he has an MSc in Health Care Policy and Management.

Recent Accomplishments: Robin direct supports several NHS organisations to deliver key operational targets and improve patient services. Working closely with both executive and clinical teams on service improvement, capacity planning and performance management issues advising on priority areas and developing improvement strategies.

How he can help you: Robin is an expert facilitator with passion for service improvement, service redesign, and coaching

Email: robin.davis3@nhs.net

Biography: Prior to joining the NHS, Gareth worked in the commercial sector and has a strong marketing background. Gareth has worked at a senior level in acute, community and primary care settings and was previously Executive Director of Strategy at Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and at West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust. He has a strong track record of successfully leading complex initiatives and has led on a number of significant strategic and commercial projects including corporate and clinical strategy development. Gareth’s expertise ranges across leadership development, strategic planning, system-thinking, project management, the impact of mindset and commercial skills. His passion is to help create an environment where leadership is inspired by kindness and compassion, where individuals and teams hold themselves accountable for their impact on others and where leaders see their role as being to create leaders not followers.

Recent accomplishments include: recent assignments for Gareth have included, the facilitation of board development sessions, designing and delivering various leadership programmes, assisting organisational strategic reviews, and supporting transformation programmes.

How he can help you: Gareth is experienced in working with members on tender responses, patient & commercial strategies, approaches to mergers and acquisitions, fundraising strategies, community service benchmarking.

Email: gareth@nhselect.org.uk

Biography: Mike Davidge retired from the UK National Health Service in August 2017 which he originally joined in 1979 from the manufacturing industry. In the early 1980's he was jointly responsible for creating the first national performance indicators in England and between 1986 and 1992 pioneered reduced waiting times in England and Wales. He became the Analysis Director for the NHS Modernisation Agency in 2001 and left the MA in February 2005 to take up a role as Director of Analysis & Modelling within the Leeds health economy. He became Head of Measurement at the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement in 2009 until its closure in March 2013 when he obtained a post of Director with NHS Elect. He was also Senior Improvement Advisor for the 1000 Lives team in NHS Wales from 2008-2013 and then Head of Improvement Methodology in its successor, 1000 Lives Improvement until August 2015. He set up his own private company, M and L Partnership Ltd, in September 2012 to pursue invitations for work that were outside the scope of his NHS employment. He currently has clients in England, Wales, Scandinavia and Australasia.

Recent Accomplishments: Mike has created some new half day and day long sessions on using data effectively including how to create and use SPC charts. He has also expanded capacity and demand management material to include a half day on capacity planning.

How he can help you: Mike can guide you toward making better decisions by selecting the right things to measure. Mike can show you how to make sense of the data you’ve got. He can advise you on ways to improve the flow of work and also reduce access times.

Email: miked@nhselect.org.uk

Biography: Darren heads up the Coaching Faculty at NHS Elect. He is a qualified, experienced coach and has helped many clinicians, managers and executives. He also facilitates team coaching and has worked on the delivery of a number of key leadership development programmes. Darren's professional background was in pharmacy. He then worked in general management and, for over a decade, at board level at three different acute hospital trusts. Working on personal and team development, Darren retains an active academic interest too - regularly publishing work related to leadership development and coaching. His other areas of work at NHS Elect include helping members with - ambulatory care, planned care (RTT) and quality improvement for clinical services. Darren is currently studying for a post-grad certificate in Psychology.

Recent Accomplishments: Darren retains an active interest in academic research, education and the development of people. Completing a PhD in 2013 at Lord Ashcroft International Business School, Cambridge, his research and a number of subsequent publications focused on the impact of competition in the NHS on leaders and leadership in the acute hospital sector. In 2014 Darren completed an executive coaching accreditation and since then, he has regularly practiced as a coach and has published work in this field.  

How he can help you: Operational and clinical services are Darren’s key areas of focus. In terms of planned care, support areas include Referral to Treatment (RTT) and Cancer standards, along with surgical and clinical support service improvement and efficiency work (including the marketing of new clinical services). Darren provides active support and insight to members who are developing ambulatory (AEC) and other innovative emergency care initiatives. As a qualified member of the NHS Elect coaching faculty, Darren's other key portfolio area includes helping personal, team and board development through a range of coaching interventions.

Email: darren.leech@nhs.net

Biography: Joe is a multi-award winning marketing and communications specialist with over 15 years of experience across a range of industries. He has worked for the NHS for the past 10 years, including marketing, communications and engagement roles in both acute and community settings.

He is a compulsive learner and recently completed an MBA (Distinction), having gained a Professional Diploma in Marketing from the Chartered Institute of Marketing, a Diploma in Managing Digital Media and a degree in business.

Joe directed the successful campaign to get the NHS Choir to Christmas number one in 2015, raising over £300k for charity in the process. He also led NHS Voices in 2018, bringing together 30 celebrity singers to record a song for the NHS, which was made into a documentary by ITV.

Joe specialises in strategy development and digital communication and has extensive experience in PR, stakeholder engagement and campaign development.

Email: joe.blunden@nhs.net

Biography: Jess is the newest addition to the NHS Elect team, having come from a background of Producing film, digital and stills campaigns across the world. After leaving the advertising industry, Jess created a range of content to include websites, brochures and videos, and wrote copy for charities and small businesses.

Recent Accomplishments: Jess completed her MSc in Psychology at UCL last year, which she studied whilst freelancing.

How she can help you: Jess is the go-to NHS Elect member for anything content creation related!

Email: jessica.ormrod1@nhs.net

Biography: Linda joined NHS Elect in 2014, she brings considerable organisation and leadership development experience gained in the health, charity, and housing sectors. Prior to joining NHS Elect, Linda ran her own organisation development consultancy for 12 years, working predominantly in the charity sector with organizations such as Medecins Sans Frontieres and the British Heart Foundation. Linda has an MSc in Organisation Development from Roffey Park (University of Sussex) and an accredited advanced action learning facilitator (ILM) and facilitator trainer, advising members on how best to introduce action learning alongside leadership development and to support culture change initiatives. An experienced and accredited workplace mediator, Linda trained with the internationally respected Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR).


Recent accomplishments: Linda has been a key member of the design and delivery team for an innovative top 100 leader programme in a Midlands based Trust. Linda has had a leading role, working in partnership with the Organisation Development Team, to develop and deliver a bespoke leadership programme that reflects and responds to the leadership challenges and issues facing the hospital. This included designing and delivering a 3 day in house action learning facilitator programme.
For the last 12 months Linda has established and facilitated action learning sets in a Surrey based CCG, aimed at supporting the development of clinical leaders.


How can she help you? Developing and delivering leadership development programmes including setting up action learning sets: Organisation development and change: Using MBTI for either personal, team or leadership development: managing and responding to conflict in the workplace through team facilitation or workplace mediation.

Biography: An experienced commercial practitioner, Mark initially started his career in the Automotive industry within Supply Chain Management, and was actively involved in his organisations world class continuous improvement programme. He then moved on to a variety of senior, and executive commercial posts in the rail, energy and travel industries, where his experience includes acquisitions and a management buy out. At the turn of the Millennium Mark started his own Consultancy Company providing PFI support before broadening into a wide variety of improvement and change management assignments.

Recent accomplishments: Mark has been supporting NHS members in both strategy development, commissioning, tendering and service redevelopment initiatives. He has also been providing a range of Commercial Development workshops, including Leadership, Responding to Tenders, Report Writing, and Procurement and Specification Writing.
A strong advocate of lean thinking techniques and the impact safety has on the entire service stream delivery, he has recently been researching, and is now developing, a Human, Technical and Organisational Factors programme for roll out later this year.

How he can help you: Strategy, commercial development, commissioning, tendering, service re-egineering, human, technical and organisational factors, and leadership.
Email: mark@nhselect.org.uk

Biography: Toni started at NHS Elect in December 2005 on a 5 week contract and either as a penance or a stroke of good luck (depends on what kind of day she is having) she has been here ever since. Her background is in HR and she was an HR Manager for a Music Company for many years. After leaving the Music company she was approached by a recruitment agency to increase their temporary workforce which she accomplished. After the company was bought out she started her own recruitment company which she still runs in conjuction with her work for NHS Elect.

Recent Accomplishments: Managing the very busy team diaries, and so far she hasn’t managed to send one of the team to Narnia for a membership visit, but she wouldn’t rule it out in the future.

How she can help you: She can deal with most of your queries from the general 'What or Who is NHS Elect?' and 'What do you do?', to events, in house

Email: toni@nhselect.org.uk

Biography: Claire has been coordinating events for NHS Elect for over ten years now, having returned to work part-time after starting a family. Prior to this, she worked for 15 years in Public Relations in the private sector, both in-house and in PR consultancies, latterly as the PR Director for a large French cosmetics company. Large and small-scale event organising formed part of her previous roles.

Recent Accomplishments: We are working hard to increase the number of delegates attending and benefiting from our network-wide sessions across all our member organisations, especially as we now offer these sessions virtually.  We are keen to ensure we keep offering our most popular events, adapting and updating where necessary, and making the sessions as interactive as possible.

How she can help you: Contact me with any session requests or booking queries via email.

Email: Claire@nhselect.org.uk

Biography: After graduating with Mathematics and Statistics degree in 2015 Jey began his career in NHS finance at Kings College Hospital. He progressed through various finance roles including accounts payable, management accounts and specialist projects in both acute and community trusts. Jey started at NHS elect in January 2019 as the Business and Corporate Services Manager.

Recent Accomplishments: Design and implementation of a new financial model and reporting tools to inform business decisions going forward. Put in place processes to streamline current BAU tasks.

How he can help you: Jey will be your main point of contact regarding arranging for invoicing for membership fees.

Email: jey.punitharajah@nhs.net

Having always shown a passion for statistics, Alice joined our Measurement team after graduating with a first class Master’s Degree from Cardiff University. Prior to completing her postgraduate studies, Alice spent a year working for the NHS as part of an Undergraduate placement scheme. Her work there focused on service improvement projects, including reshaping of the referral pathways from General Practitioners to Mental Health Services, and a published project looking at the communication of Mental Health information on hospital referrals. 

Applying her knowledge of measurement and statistics to healthcare settings has enabled calculation of Return on Investment and Measurement for Improvement case studies for our members. 

Andy is Co-Production Manager at NHS Elect and works across the AEC and Acute Frailty Networks.  Andrew has over 20 years’ experience in Urgent and Emergency Care, Acute Medicine and Critical Care within the NHS and internationally. 

Andy initially developed his clinical career in a number of EDs as well as other acute and critical care areas, becoming a Service Lead and Advanced Nurse Practitioner.   

Andy has previously developed and implemented a nurse-led AEC service and during his time with NHS ELect has worked with over 50 Trusts and other providers across the UK in optimising their SDEC offers. He has particular interests in Experience Based Design, nursing workforce and development, and Quality Improvement techniques. 

In addition to his work at NHS Elect, Andy has undertaken interim strategy posts and provides consultancy to nursing agencies.  Andrew has been a visiting postgraduate lecturer in Emergency Practice and is passionate about promoting Advanced Nursing.   

Emma Backhouse has been the Urgent Care Networks Manager at NHS Elect since September 2015.  During her time at NHS Elect, Emma has programme managed a number of externally commissioned programmes including the Emergency Care Improvement Programme (ECIP) for NHS Improvement, Cancer Collaborative programmes for both South and Midlands & East regions, the NHS South Urgent Care Collaborative and the Midlands & East Red2Green initiative. Emma is currently the programme manager for both the Specialised Clinical Frailty Network (SCFN) and the Beneficial Changes Patient Flow Network (PFN).  

Prior to her time at NHS Elect, Emma has undertaken a number of roles within NHS England and the Department of Health, including being the Performance Lead for Urgent and Emergency Care, reporting on all aspects of performance against national standards for urgent and emergency care, and providing current, task-focused briefings to a wide range of senior officials including National Director of Operations, Chief Executive, Secretary of State and the Prime Minister’s office. 

Jodie is a qualified physiotherapist and has also worked as an Advanced Practitioner and service lead, based in A&E with Trauma & Orthopaedics as her specialty. She led the inpatient therapy team at the renowned Wrightington Hospital. She had a passion for developing new ways of working and using data to inform and evidence service development.  

Jodie left clinical practice to work in a large North West Improvement Organisation, gaining a PGC in Improvement Science, NVQ in Management & Leadership, and Bronze Kirkpatrick Evaluation. Jodie designed and delivered improvement science training for the members, and also designed and delivered a highly successful quality improvement network. 

Jodie has worked with NHS Elect for a number of years, within central improvement programmes, bespoke work for individual members and the AEC Accelerator Programme. In October 2020, Jodie joined the NHS Elect team as an Associate Director and now works as part of the core AEC Team.  

With first-hand frontline clinical experience of service improvement projects, using data effectively and extensive knowledge of improvement science, Jodie helps to bridge the gap between theory and practice. 

Biography: Lenah has been working with NHS Elect for two years now, having previously completed her MSc. in Project Management. Prior to NHS Elect, Lenah has enjoyed working to deliver value-adding projects and programmes, strategic partnerships and continuous improvement across education, NHS and non-governmental organisations. 

Recent Accomplishment: The planning, marketing and technical delivery of the virtual NHS Elect Valuing Patient Time Conference October 2020. We received over 2000 hits on the day! 

How she can help you: Lenah is the Project Support Officer for the Acute Frailty Network programme. Contact her with any queries related to the programme.  

Mandy is an Associate Director and provides QI support to teams in the Acute Frailty, Specialised Care, Same Day Emergency Care and Patient Flow Networks. She trained at St Thomas’ Hospital and has over 30 years' experience in healthcare. She has had an eclectic career working in various nursing and management roles in primary, community and secondary care as well as a seconded post as clinical lead within a PCT. Mandy is a nurse clinician and a Non-Medical prescriber and as such was trust lead in prescribing and in the development of an academy of prescribing within Dorset. In the past, she was involved in the development of Nurse Practitioners in Emergency and Acute Medical Care, Community Hospitals and the development of one of the first Emergency Care Practitioner degree courses with Bournemouth University. She is on the Faculty of the HECTOR course in Northumbria.

Mandy was a contributor to the Silver Book, RCN BEST staffing tool and was involved in the development of competencies in AEC within Kings College Hospital and more recently in development of RCN emergency care competencies in older people. She has presented at several national and international conferences on clinical and managerial subjects and has written articles relating to older people and emergency care.

For the last 19 years Matt has spent most of his time directly supporting healthcare organisations, working with clinical staff, board members, directs and operational managers.  Designing, promoting and supporting the delivery of products and services, such as the national analyst training programme (a 12 day course run over 6 months), the development of an improvement faculty in NHS Lothian and developing QI doctors in the Wessex Deanery, amongst many others. 

As an improvement analyst he has extensively enjoyed helping teams and individuals apply measurement for Improvement techniques within a variety of clinal areas to identify areas of concern / interest.  This process includes, assisting teams gather the correct data and appreciate variation, and spot any signals from the ‘noise’ in the system.  Linking this to return on investment principles is often a great tool to help with the change management. 

He has worked for the Acute Frailty Network (AFN) for the last 5 years, and SCFN for the last two years.  He presents at all the national events, runs the measurement masterclasses and created the tools that the sites use to understand if they have made any improvement.  He provides strategic advice on programme development and operational support to AFN and SCFN sites. 

Biography: Values and results driven senior strategic and operational leader in a variety of NHS, third sector and education organisations. Commissioning and provider experience in acute, community and primary care services. Led complex multi-site services with a track record of delivering improved quality, better value combined with great engagement. Successful service and strategy development.

Current roles: Director of NHS Elect: Working primarily as an improvement coach with 8 acute trusts across the country as part of the Acute Frailty Network (AFN).
Co-ordinating cancer improvement work across Midlands & East.
Seconded part-time to the New Care Models team to work with multi-specialty community provider (MCP) vanguards across Midlands and East.
Chair / Trustee of Heritage Care – medium-sized national charity providing supported living to older people and those with learning disabilities and mental health needs.

Previous experience: Roles of Director of Strategy and Director of Operations for Derbyshire Community Health Services NHS Foundation Trust: Developed integrated service models with statutory and third sector partners, led much of the FT establishment work, and established the Trust’s first commercial strategy
Previously worked in London for 20 years at Board level in commissioning and acute, community and primary care provider organisations.
Chair of Governors in a Hackney primary school and Derbyshire secondary school academy.

Biography: Deborah Thompson MSC, Dip HE, RGN is a Director at NHS Elect Director covering Urgent Care Delivery Networks. This involves leading the design and delivery of two large-scale improvement programmes across the UK; The Ambulatory Emergency Care Network and Acute Frailty Network. In addition, she also designs bespoke programme support and expertise to frontline teams to improve emergency care. Deborah has 37 years’ experience as a clinician and manager in NHS acute services.

During her career, Deborah has undertaken a variety of roles from Ward Sister through to ‘acting’ Director of Nursing. In 2003, she diversified her career path by undertaking the role of general manager in Emergency Services leading to a role as Director of Operations.

Recent accomplishments include: Since then she has worked on a number of national healthcare improvement programmes and since 2011 has focussed on improving emergency flow leading the improvement and expansion of ambulatory emergency care (AEC) services in over 120 organisations in the UK. This work expanded to include the Acute Frailty Network in 2015 that aims to improve the quality and safety of emergency care for frail older people in the first 72 hours.

How she can help you: Deborah is passionate about working with front line staff to support them to understand and improve emergency patient flow, and has a particular interest in clinical pathway redesign and working with health communities on a large scale to design processes to safely provide ‘same day’ emergency care reducing the reliance on hospital beds for treatment and ensuring frail older people don’t spend a day longer than necessary in a hospital bed.

Biography: Lisa has 30 years’ experience in the NHS, and is an experienced leader of transformational change and improvement. Prior to joining NHS Elect as a Programme Director in 2013, Lisa held a variety of executive director roles in acute Trusts and the charitable sector; including the Directorships for Strategy and Service Transformation, and Campaign Director for Patient Experience. Lisa, who is a nurse by background, has led a number of significant projects including service reconfiguration and major capital builds, cultural change programmes and within the charitable sector set up a UK pipeline for system redesign projects. Lisa uses a combination of service improvement and programme management approaches with social movement techniques.

Recent accomplishments: In her campaign director role Lisa was the lead for Patient and Public Involvement, developing the Trust’s patient and public engagement strategy, including the creation of networks of users, and a database to bring together the 10,000 trust members and patient participants as a powerful user voice.

How can she help you? Lisa’s key skills include: programme direction, strategic development, stakeholder engagement, service improvement and transformation, group facilitation.