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 90 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: 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: 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.

How he can help you: 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: 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 genuine understanding of the competing demands of operational health care management and the challenge of meaningfully engaging clinicians in quality improvement. He is an accomplished facilitator and enjoys the challenge of working with teams to bring about improvements for patients and staff. A graduate from the NHS management training scheme in 2002, he has an MSc in Health Care Policy and Management.

Recent Accomplishments: Robin leads the quality improvement faculty at NHS Elect and is passionate about supporting organisations to design and deliver organisation-wide QI improvement initiatives.  Robin is a trained coach and supports quality improvement coaches across the NHS.  Robin has supported hundreds of teams across the country and enjoys facilitating team away days, workshops and development sessions.  Having worked in the NHS since 1997, Robin understands the challenges NHS staff face and is excited to be leading the Happier Working Lives programme for NHS Elect, which uses quality improvement tools to improve working lives across the NHS. 

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

Email: robin@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: 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: 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: 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's professional background was in pharmacy. He then worked in general management and for over a decade, in operational roles at board level in three different acute hospital trusts.

Recent Accomplishments: Darren is head of the coaching faculty at NHS Elect. He has worked on the design and delivery of a number of key leadership development programmes and retains an active interest in academic research, education and the development of people. Completing a PhD in 2013, an executive coaching qualification in 2014 (ILM Level 7) and a CertCE (Psychology) in 2022, Darren’s research and a number of subsequent publications have focused on areas such as competition (in the NHS), leadership and coaching.

How he can help you: As an experienced coach, Darren regularly works with senior clinical leaders and has helped many clinicians, managers and executives in the NHS. Darren’s key portfolio areas include personal, team and board development. Darren also works on leadership development programmes, along with a range of other work focussed on clinical and operational service improvement at NHS Elect member sites.  

Email: darren@nhselect.org.uk

Biography: Piers Young is a Senior Manager and leader in healthcare, with a proven track recording in supporting NHS organisations, the Department of Health and NHS England in improvement and NHS operational management. Piers has experience at executive and board level and has worked at Chief Operating Officer level at a NHS acute provider. He has an extensive operational and service improvement background and is a graduate of the NHS management training scheme. He has overseen and been the SRO for the development and delivery of a system-wide recovery plan for elective care, which included the return to reporting for RTT and the delivery of RTT and cancer access standards. Piers has also worked for NHS England on national data quality improvement programmes, and he was part of the national 18-week programme when it was initial established.

How he can help you: As a director for NHS Elect, Piers leads on Quality Improvement and Strategy work in healthcare. He has led on change management programmes for members and network programmes for both elective and non-elective services. He has experience leading on national improvement programmes and he is the spinal surgery and vascular quality improvement associate for the specialised commissioning frailty network with NHS England.

Email: piers@nhselect.org.uk

Biography: Nicki had been an Associate with NHS Elect for several years before joining as a Director in February 2022. She began her career as a nurse and is passionate about improvement. She has held national improvement leadership roles in both England and Scotland, including Associate Director and National Lead for Wave 4 of the Emergency Services Collaborative, Head of Improvement Programmes for NHS Scotland and National Transformation Lead for the Enhanced Recovery Programme. 

After experience as a Director of Nursing and Programme Director for Integration, Nicki worked as an independent improvement consultant and coach managing a varied portfolio of commissions. Nicki has an MSc in Management and has completed The Kings Fund Athena leaderhsip development programme for executive women, the IHI Summer School programme and the Human Systems Dynamics certification. Nicki also holds the ILM Level 7 Certificate in Executive Coaching and Mentoring. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Leadership and Management and is a Chartered Manager and Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute. 

Recent accomplishments: Nicki has recently designed quality improvement programmes and has supported ICSs to develop clinical and care professional leadership.

How she can help you: Nicki has experience of different quality improvement approaches and methodologies to help teams solve problems and learn together. She is an experienced trainer, facilitator and executive coach.  Nicki has a keen interest in complexity and systems and in helping teams lead system change. 

Email: Nicki@nhselect.org.uk

Biography: Leanne has gained experience and knowledge of a range of healthcare settings, having worked within the NHS in England, Wales and also internationally. An Alumna of the NHS Graduate Management Training Scheme, she has a Masters (MSc) in Health & Public Leadership and a Senior Level Management Accreditation from the Institute of Healthcare Management. She is an MBTI Step 2 Practitioner and is currently qualifying as a Professional Coach.

She has managed complex services across a range of organisations for more than a decade, most recently leading teams in a large teaching hospital in London through a period of significant challenge and transition as part of the Covid-19 response and recovery. She has undertaken a 6 month Quality Improvement Fellowship, working in South Africa and a 6 month Global Health Research Fellowship in London. Alongside her role at NHS Elect, she remains involved with global health and is the Partnership Lead for an IGH/HEE programme for the Eastern Cape in South Africa.

Recent accomplishments: Working at St George’s University Hospitals in London, Leanne led a team of 500 through the Covid-19 pandemic and despite this challenging period delivered significant improvements in staff morale, sickness absence and retention. She was instrumental in a number of Trust wide changes, including moving from paper to electronic patient records and the rapid move to virtual working across Outpatients – resulting in improved governance and generating significant efficiencies. Leanne was also the SRO for the South West London Mortality Management Group and the operational lead for the Covid-19 Vaccine Programme at her Trust.

Whilst working as a QI Fellow, Leanne worked with Leaders in South Africa, including their Health Minister, to improve Clinical Leadership development across the Country.

How she can help you: Leanne is an energetic, compassionate leader who puts people at the heart of the work she does. She has worked largely with challenged teams, organisations and services and has significant experience leading and delivering change, including performance and quality improvement and has delivered numerous successful elective care recovery programmes.

Email: Leanne.saddler@nhselect.org.uk

Biography: Sally started her career as an NHS as an NHS General Management Trainee in 2006, gaining an MSc in Healthcare Leadership and Management as part of this programme. She has worked in various operational management roles across mental health and acute services since then, mainly in London teaching hospitals. More recently she was the Associate Director for Surgery, Theatres, Anaesthetics and Critical Care at Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust, successfully leading those services through the Covid pandemic surges and elective recovery phases. Sally is a qualified coach and has training in Quality Improvement methodology. She is currently studying on the Leadership Academy's Nye Bevan Programme and to become an MBTI Practitioner. 

Recent accomplishments: Sally supported the opening of the Heatherwood Hospital as a state of the art orthopaedic and opthalmology elective centre at Frimley Health and increased Critical Care capacity permanently as part of the post-Covid response. Her leadership and coordination of surgical services at Frimley saw some of the first 'green pathway' elective patients treated outside of London in a Covid-safe environment against a backdrop of her Trust treating the 4th highest level of Covid patients in the country. 

How she can help you: Sally supports the Leadership and Organisational Development Faculty at NHS Elect.

Email: sally@nhselect.org.uk

Biography: Cath joined NHS Elect in October 2022 and has over 20 years’ experience working in the NHS, in a variety of sectors including primary care, acute hospitals, mental health, and integrated care systems.  Her aim is to nurture the skills and confidence of NHS people.

She is an Improvement Advisor, a graduate of the Institute for Health Improvement’s IA programme, and an Organisational Development Practitioner, having trained with Roffey Park Institute. She is an accredited mentoring practitioner, a Healthcare Leadership Model 360 degree feedback facilitator, an MBTI Step 1 practitioner, an Affina Team Journey coach (Affina OD), and trained in the application of Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT) in the workplace (City University of London).

With a passion for facilitation, Cath has trained at Roffey Park Institute in Practical Facilitation Skills and with the Q Community (Health Foundation) in Liberating Structures and Community of Practice leadership.

Recent accomplishments: Cath’s recent accomplishments include being an Improvement Advisor to a number of clinical directorates at East London NHS Foundation Trust (ELFT) through the Covid pandemic, growing Quality Improvement practice to tackle emergent challenges and nurturing the role of the Quality Improvement coaches. In addition, she recently moved into the virtual world of facilitation on Zoom, Microsoft Teams and WebEx; designing and delivering reflective workshops for 250+ staff and service users to shape the future of services together. A personal highlight for Cath of working with ELFT was the co-production of Quality Improvement work with service users and carers, in particular in services for young people and talking therapies.

Cath was also an Organisational Development Manager through the acquisition period at Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust, with a focus on organisational values, staff engagement and building effective team-based working and has been a speaker at NHS Do OD conferences.

How she can help you: Cath specialises in Quality Improvement – building capacity, capability and developing strategy and infrastructure, including service user involvement. She can also help with facilitation and workshop design and with personal development - through mentoring (London and South East Leadership academies).

Email: catherine.heaney@nhselect.org.uk

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: Richard is an Associate at NHS Elect, working three days a week with the team and at a coffee shop in Reading he owns for the remaining two days.

He spends the majority of this time facilitating sessions on topics such as Resilience, Leadership, Teams and Difficult Conversations. Prior to joining NHS Elect, Richard worked with the London Ambulance Service NHS Trust where he qualified as a mediator. Prior to this, he managed a leadership programme for a university.

How he can help you: Richard's passion lies in helping people to improve their capacity for self awareness so they can help themselves to greater self leadership. He believes this ultimately leads to a greater capability for people awareness and better organisational leadership.  Richard uses techniques for better breathing, mindfulness and gratitude to improve the foundations of self awareness. 

Mailto: richard@nhselect.org.uk

Biography: Clementine is an organisational development practitioner; equality, diversity and Inclusion specialist; social researcher; and writer. Her publications include: ‘Dementia Peer Support: Service Delivery for the People by the People’. Her career spans NHS senior management; higher education, local authority; the Not for Profit sector and as a Specialist Advisor on race equality for the Care Quality Commission. She is also a mentor for the Promise Foundation - a schools based mentoring programme.

How she can help you: Clementine has an active interest in developing people.

Biography: Dawn is a highly skilled facilitator and organisational development consultant with over 25 years of operational experience. She is currently an NHS elect associate and an independent consultant designing and delivering Team and Leadership programmes.

What she can do for you: Dawn is passionate about inclusivity and delivers results through real engagement and is a confident and inspiring facilitator with a great sense of humour.

Biography: Chris has over 30 years’ experience working in health and with NHS professionals and leaders. He has worked as a GP, medical educator and in leadership positions in NHS Trusts and at the Department of Health. He was Chief Executive of a Local Medical Committee in the Midlands and has been an Associate Dean for Health Education England.

Chris believes it is important that patients and carers are directly involved in running health and social care and he has led work on the implementation of new services, building projects and reviews of corporate and clinical governance. Chris has also worked as a medico-legal adviser and clinical complaints advisers with a leading UK medical defence organisation and continues to enjoy coaching individuals and teams with complaints handling, governance and regulatory matters and in dealing with serious allegations. Chris trained as a mediator with Regents University in London and works to resolve conflict by finding a golden path for all parties to walk away with dignity. Chris is an accredited professional coach with the International Coaching Federation and has regular professional supervision.

How he can help you: Chris’s skills include team facilitation, service improvement, mediation and professional coaching. Chris understands the challenges for medical leaders and the context of their work.

Biography:  Jim has worked in and around the NHS for more than 30 years, 20 of them at Exec level or equivalent.  His Board-level experience has been drawn from roles in several large acute Trusts, a Strategic Health Authority and in the NHS Trust Development Authority.  He also spent four years as a Senior Civil Servant, in national positions in the Department of Health and later as head of the health team in the Prime Minister's Delivery Unit.

Jim has a longstanding interest in the development of holistic, person-centred models of care with a focus on prevention and population health.  He has extensive experience of partnership working and has been closely involved from a Trust perspective both in local ICS development and in collaboration between acute providers.

The breadth of this experience has allowed Jim to build significant insight into most aspects of strategy development and implementation, change, engagement and operational delivery in the health and care system.

How he can help you:  Jim's experience makes him well-placed to advise on all aspects of organisational and system strategy and delivery.  He has a particularly rounded view of governance and the interactions within and between organisations having held a number of Executive roles on the Boards of provider organisations as well as senior regional and regulatory positions.  Building relationships and shared priorities in the face of often conflicting priorities and incentives has been a theme throughout much of his career.

Email: jim.lusby@nhselect.org.uk

Biography: Jude is a highly skilled facilitator, coach and organisational development consultant with over 30 years of public sector service. She was Executive Director of Strategic Development and Partnerships in the NHS, taking the leading in vital modernisation programmes in North Yorkshire. Jude's behavioural science and psychotherapy training enables a strong rapport with her clients. She understands how the NHS and the wider system operations and how people work within it.  Jude uses a wider systems approach to enable senior leaders to explore the power of their effect with colleagues and within their organisation. 

How she can help you: As an experienced Organisational Development consultant, Jude is particularly interested in working with groups and teams. She is interested in group images - ie how the individual carries the picture of themself and the group in their mind and how that works with the pictures that others have in their minds.

Biography: Marian's early career was in HR and training management in the NHS, winning NHS trainer of the year.  She went onto lead a performance improvement team to support business transformation in local government.   She is currently an NHS Elect Associate and Independent Consultant, designing and delivering development and coaching programmes. She also works part-time as a Counsellor in the NHS IAPT service.

How she can help you: Marian is a Trainer and Coach, specialising in communication. Her expertise includes the written and spoken word, how we communicate with ourselves and the impact of communication on relationships, influence and confidence.

Biography: Sheryl has been professionally facilitating and coaching for about 15 years and has worked with NHS Elect on a number of leadership development and strategic review programmes since 2012. Working for the NHS for 30 years, Sheryl has worked from ward to board as a therapist, manager, executive director, coach, consultant and trainer.  She also holds a post graduate diploma in Executive Coaching and Leadership Mentoring.

How she can help you: Sheryl has always been drawn to work that involves creating better communication and connection, from her early days as a speech therapist, to becoming an executive director of communications and strategy, latterly as a coach and facilitator. Her approach is grounded in compassion, curiosity and a healthy sense of humour.

Biography: Lucky started his medical career in A&E, however he eventually elected to train as a GP in Boston, Lincolnshire. He joined a practice as a partner in 2006 and has worked in the NHS as a clinician for over 20 years. During this time, Lucky completed a postgraduate training in medical education and has been inolved in supporting and training GPs, as well as holding leadership positions including as an executive GP in a PCT and subsequently the CCG. Lucky completed an MSc in Coaching and Mentoring and is registered as a master practitioner with the European Mentoring and Coaching Council.

How he can help you: Lucky's goal is to continue to develop himself and to help and support others who wish to develop themselves. He likes to work with leaders and enjoys working on strategy and planning problems. His mission in life is to work with people and teams so that they can be more productive.

Biography: Jan is an independent Leadership Consultant, qualified Coach, Team Coach and Action Learning Set facilitator with extensive senior leadership experience in the healthcare sector in both strategic and local settings.  A Chartered Physiotherapist by background, Jan has over 32 years' experience in healthcare. She has a track record of delivering results through excellent engagement and communication skills, leading large scale change across multiple settings, balancing business with quality targets, leading collaboration for successful partnership and building high performing, motivated teams. 

How she can help you: Jan is passionate about helping individuals and teams connect with their potential to achieve great results. She has extensive experience in supporting teams and organisations build purposeful cultures and draws on her experience in both clinical, operational and leadership roles to contextualise learning and support. Jan's last substantive NHS leadership role was Director of Service Transformation at a multi-site hospital leading system change built on strong engagement and partnership working.

Email: Jan@nhselect.org.uk

Biography: Ruth has 20 years HR and OD experience in the public and private sector, leaving the NHS in 2012 to set up her own business ‘Enjoy Work’ and specialises in creative leadership development and executive coaching.

Ruth works internationally coaching and running residential leadership programmes for global organisations such as UNICEF, WHO, UN Women and PLAN International and charitable NGOs in a range of countries including, Afghanistan, Brazil, India, Kenya and Belize. 

In the UK Ruth designs and delivers workshops for mostly the NHS, on topics such as career development, resilience and positive psychology, feedback skills, coaching skills for leaders and team development.

How she can help you: Ruth is an ICF accredited coach and has an MSc in Innovation, Creativity and Leadership. In her work she uses creative tools such as drama, visualisation, drawing,  mindfulness and storytelling to stimulate creative thinking and develop leadership capability.

Biography:  Anna is a senior communications professional with 30 years’ experience. Anna has held Director of Communications roles in national organisations across the public sector, in healthcare and education at organisations including the Design Council, and an acute Trust, where she led significant service change and reconfiguration communication programmes for eight years. She has advised senior teams, developed and delivered strategic communications reviews, led insight-gathering programmes and stakeholder engagement. She is a qualified educator and experienced facilitator and enjoys facilitating in person and online. She keeps her knowledge current as a qualified member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (MCIM) and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Anna is currently an NHS Elect Associate and independent consultant.

How she can help you: Anna has extensive experience in supporting organisations to develop their communications strategies as well as enabling teams to develop their communications skills. As an experienced facilitator and qualified educator, Anna also offers facilitation to support workshops, meetings and events and provides communications training. As a trusted communications expert, Anna supports teams with their engagement planning for change, stakeholder insight gathering, strategic communications reviews and content development.

 

Biography: Eleanor is an independent consultant and qualified work-place mediator, executive coach, team coach and facilitator. She has had a varied career, both in the public and private sector. She started out in research and development before moving into service improvement and change management on behalf of public sector organisations, including the MOD, county councils and the civil service. Healthcare is her favourite working environment, and she has worked in primary and community care and arm’s-length bodies for the last 12 years. Switching from process to people development, Eleanor headed up a new Organisational Development service within an NHS Trust, which quickly became a trusted partner to senior leaders, team leaders and staff throughout the organisation. She continues to have a passion for creating value-based solutions to support a culture of compassion and inclusion. She squeezes in a bit of mediation too.

How she can help you: Eleanor is happy to draw upon all aspects of her previous experience, skills and knowledge to support individuals, teams and organisations create the right type of learning and/or developmental event/s. She has extensive experience in co-designing, coaching and facilitating team sessions and she is at her best when drawing upon the resources of others to facilitate positive change. She is currently studying to become a hypnotherapist and psychotherapist and looks forward to finding out how this learning can be used too, for the benefit of her clients.

Email:eleanor.clarke@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 managing 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 Head of Improvement Networks since April 2021, having joined NHS Elect as Urgent Care Networks Manager in 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. 

Biography: Lenah has been working with NHS Elect since September 2018, 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. 

How she can help you: Lenah provides project management support.

Email: Lenah@nhselect.org.uk

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.