What is the Board of Trustees?
A group of people from diverse backgrounds who are legally responsible for the charity’s best interests, set our strategy, make key decisions and oversee the running of the charity.
Dr Joanne McCormack (Chair)
Dr McCormack was a GP for 30 years and was a GP partner in Warrington up until April 2015. She was also a GP Trainer, and was the Named GP for Safeguarding Children for an area of 300,000 people. Over the past 30 years she has seen the incidence of diabetes go up five fold in her town, something that has been echoed nationally. Dr McCormack wants to do what she can to reverse that trend.
Dr David Jehring (Vice-Chair)
Dr David Jehring is the CEO of Black Pear Software, a medical software house who use new technology to put joined up health and care records into the hands of patients and those in the front line. Alongside a 20-year career as an NHS family doctor, David designed the first Windows GP clinical system in the UK. He is among a handful of this country’s GP computing pioneers, having taken start-up Apollo Medical into practices nationally before founding Black Pear.
Ellen Calteau RD
Ellen is an experienced Registered Dietitian with 5 years of working across the Midlands within the National Health Service (NHS). Her areas of expertise reside in supporting patients that may have an addiction to food and more specifically in obesity and eating disorders. Currently, Ellen is completing her PhD in Behavioural Sciences where she will conduct a feasibility RCT of a brief intervention that involves screening for food addiction among people who access dietetic services.
Ellen is passionate about the potential for 12-steps programmes and strengthening the research evidence-base underpinning these programmes.
Ben Rubin
Ben is a digital innovation and human-centred design specialist, who’s spent the past 17 years collaborating on growth and transformation programmes across large parts of the economic system.
Hailing from a family of clinicians, he has a deep interest in the digitisation of healthcare and is passionate about ensuring the future viability of the UK’s public health system.
He believes that a healthy society is a self-sufficient one. That individuals and communities should be given the tools and information they need to establish their own systems of care, with minimal bureaucratic intervention.
He’s particularly passionate about mental health and wellbeing and helping individuals make positive life choices that benefit themselves and those around them.
Olivia Khwaja
Olivia has been a Consumer Strategist and Marketing expert for large brands for over 20 years. At British Airways she launched a number of industry first services on ba.com and drove up customer loyalty when heading up the Executive Club programme for Europe & Africa, resulting in award-winning direct marketing campaigns. At British Gas she led the consumer engagement programme for the national smart meter rollout, the largest infrastructure upgrade in the UK’s history. This included the set up and oversight of a national education campaign body with government, as well as the development of British Gas’ industry leading multi-channel customer engagement programme, designed from detailed consumer attitudinal insights into their motivations and barriers, and with a particular focus on utilising digital, social media and PR channels. She has since worked with the Department of Business & Energy on further consumer engagement projects and has now directed her passion towards human health transformation and empowering the younger generation to make informed decisions about their own health.
Lesley Adams
With qualifications in Anthropology, Public Health Nutrition, Human Resources Development and Management and Photojournalism – Lesley’s professional focus has been in the international AID sector, supporting organisation development interventions, leadership development, team-building, strategic planning and change management. She is particularly interested in human rights organisations, and sees the PHC’s work as key to restoring our right to high-quality, safe, effective and timely health care, free from commercial bias.
Lesley joined the PHC as an Ambassador to help drive the national campaign, but would also like to spread the message internationally. She runs local groups, through her Real Food Rebels project, as a way of keeping connected with the people we are trying to help, and better understanding barriers within the health service.
She became a Trustee to help develop a sustainable business model, a Theory of Change and compelling and high-impact campaign strategies – ensuring the precious time of Ambassadors, Trustees and Advisors is well-used.
Giles Corby (Treasurer)
A chartered accountant, Giles runs his own practice in Exeter where he’s lived most of his life. Giles believes the best part about being an accountant is using his skills with numbers to help clients make a difference to their lives – it’s not always just about the tax bill!
When he’s not at work he spends a lot of time reading about his main interests, which are good health, regenerative agriculture and restoring wildlife habitats. In his spare time he’s often found working on his new wildlife friendly garden, which he started in early 2020. He also enjoy music and rugby. He sings in a local chamber choir and sometimes provides cover when a cathedral’s main choir is on holiday. At weekends he usually watches the Exeter Chiefs rugby team.
Graham Phillips BPharm, FRPharmS, Dipp Comm Pharm
Graham is a second-generation pharmacist, fellow of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain (since 2009) and Superintendent of a multi-award winning pharmacy group. He has worked with GPs and in Primary Care widely for 35 years, and wants to see much-closer working relationships with GPs
He has been involved in pharmacy politics at local and national level, for 25 years including four years on the Council of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. He also has a long-term interest in Public Health and has been involved with NHS cancer-reform strategy, was a Trustee of the National Obesity Forum and was also a member of the Healthy Living Pharmacy reference group.
The role of the Community Pharmacy in pro-active, preventive public health is among his research interests. Most recently he has styled himself as “The Pharmacist who Gave Up Drugs” and his recent project ProLongevity combines lifestyle interventions and de-prescribing.
Paul Whittle
Paul has interacted with a wide range of NHS clinical services over the last 30 years as a patient with chronic conditions, while also working closely with the organisation as a professional in the medical industry. A lot has changed, especially in terms of the information available to patients and the impact this has had on shared decision making. Much of the last 8 years have been spent developing new ways of working to maximise the potential of this situation, forging real partnerships between the NHS and key organisations which can deliver new care pathways with improved outcomes.
Professor Susan Fairlie RN, BSc (Hons), MSc
Susan is a clinician and organisational development specialist. She has significant experience of the NHS and has worked across the health sector from primary care to tertiary care. She has held several national senior leadership roles and is preoccupied with improving the quality of healthcare. She was previously the Director of Service Development and Executive Nurse in an NHS Trust. She is an Executive Coach, an NLP Practitioner, an accredited Leadership Framework Facilitator and licensed to use both the Strengths Deployment Inventory and Emotions and Behaviours at Work Facilitation. She is an experienced facilitator and is particularly skilled in Quality Improvement; applying innovation, co-design, service improvement and transformation techniques. She is committed to supporting others to develop a culture of compassionate leadership. She offers a range of interventions from Board development to frontline service improvement. Susan has also been a Judge for the patient safety category in the prestigious HSJ Awards.
Susan holds an MSc in Organisational Consulting from Ashridge Business School. She has designed and delivered several clinical leadership development programmes and her contribution to the NHS improvement agenda has been recognised through, amongst other things, an invitation to meet the Prime Minister at Downing Street and being awarded the CNO Silver Medal for Nursing Excellence. She is currently a Visting Professor at the University of East London.
She was co-author of the application which won Innovation of the Year and Doctor of the Year for Nurse-led care in primary care. Her clinical work has been published and she has produced several national service improvement guides. The majority of her work resides in healthcare consultancy, however she has also undertaken significant organisation and leadership development work with public and private sector organisations.
Susan is passionate about promoting (and improving) metabolic health through diet and lifestyle and is delighted to be joining the PHC as a Trustee.