Royal Society for Public Health welcomes new Trustees

RSPH are delighted to announce the appointment of a number of new trustees to our council. Due to a number of trustees reaching the end of their term we have been able to appoint 7 new trustees to the council. The new trustees will bring a range of additional and new skills to support the organisation to achieve our ambitious new strategy. The new trustees bring a wealth of experience from diverse range of sectors and backgrounds, and we are delighted to welcome them to RSPH.

“ I am delighted to welcome the new members to the council who bring a wealth of diverse expertise. I look forward to working with them to support William and the Executive team to deliver our new strategy which focuses on enabling everyone to improve the public’s health, addressing inequalities in health that matter to us all and empowering the breadth of the public health workforce to tackle these challenges.” RSPH Chair of Council, Dr Jonathan Pearson-Stuttard FRSPH FFPH

Find out more about our new council members below.

 

Charlotte Wood

Charlotte Wood is UK Managing Director at Oxehealth, a global leader in vision-based patient monitoring systems working directly with the NHS.  She is a commercial leader and strategy consultant, experienced in building teams and delivering top-line growth for digital innovations in the healthcare and medical technology sectors.

Charlotte is a Fellow of the NHS Innovation Accelerator, a fellowship run by NHS England and chaired by Professor Stephen Powis to “support exceptional individuals to scale promising innovations in the NHS for greater patient and staff benefit”.  Prior to joining Oxehealth, she worked at Kearney, a management consultancy, where she advised global healthcare businesses and their leaders on how to build digital products and transform their services through technology.

Charlotte holds a MChem in Chemistry from Oxford University and a MSc in International Public Policy & Public Health from University College London.

 

Halima Khan

Halima has a background in public service innovation and, in particular, in people powered public services which build on the insights and motivation of citizens and frontline staff. She has co-designed, funded, researched, advocated and implemented people powered approaches across social policy with a particular focus on health and social care.

She has worked as a policymaker in national, regional and local government, including at the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit. She has also worked in social innovation at Nesta, the UK innovation foundation, where she initiated and led their work on people powered health. During the Covid 19 pandemic she was Executive Director, Communities & Skills at the Greater London Authority, responsible for public health, adult skills, communities, civil society and youth on behalf of the Mayor of London.

Halima now works independently on public service innovation and is currently an Affiliated Researcher at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. She has non-executive roles at the British Academy and the Mayday Trust. In 2015, Halima was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Health Sciences by Anglia Ruskin University for her work on people powered health.

 

Jeremy Benson

Jeremy Benson is a career civil servant who has spent most of his career in education, particularly at the Department for Education (DfE) and at Ofqual, the qualifications regulator. At the DfE he has worked in many different areas, including finance, qualifications, construction skills and further education. At Ofqual he worked on general qualifications reform, apprenticeships, and regulation of vocational qualifications.

From summer 2020 to March 2023, he worked on the Government’s response to Covid-19, initially at the Joint Biosecurity Centre and then at the UK Health Security Agency, where he developed a keen interest in public health.

Jeremy is also Chair of Learn-AT, a primary Multi-Academy Trust based in Leicestershire.

 

Liz Wynn

Liz Wynn is Managing Director of Sky TV, with 20 years of commercial, marketing and operational experience in the telecoms and media sectors in the UK and overseas. 

Liz originally joined Sky in 2016 with a mandate to create a new consumer champion in Sky Mobile, overseeing the launch of an award-winning proposition and rapid customer growth in its first two years. Liz is now responsible for the commercial performance of the Sky TV business unit, bringing new products and propositions to market and all brand and trading marketing activities.

In addition to her core responsibilities in Sky TV, Liz takes a leadership role in business continuity preparedness for Sky’s direct-to-consumer divisions – through which she has become increasingly interested in the contribution of employers to public health.

 

Malcolm Groat

Malcolm began his career with PwC London where he qualified as a Chartered Accountant before working abroad in corporate finance and strategy consulting.  He then spent two decades in senior executive roles with global companies, enjoying a really wide range of experience all over the world.

Malcolm took up his first non-executive role with the former Milk Marketing Board in 2004 and has since served on many boards. Until last year he was Chair at The Corps of Commissionaires, and he is currently Chair for two AIM companies, TomCo Energy and Harland & Wolff.

Malcolm has a long-standing interest in Public Health with particular interests in homelessness and housing, mental health (PTSD in ex-Servicemen), and community health and vaccination in remote societies (notably the ancient tribes of New Guinea).

 

Meir Hakkak FCMA

Meir is International Chief Operating Officer at HIMSS, a membership association with 120,000 members, whose mission is to “reform the global health ecosystem through the power of information and technology.”  At HIMSS, Meir leads the teams serving EMEA and Latin America, with a remit to grow HIMSS’s conference and media footprints, while also building relationships with Ministries of Health to expand the reach of HIMSS’s education and digital maturity models. 

Meir is experienced in Commercial Finance, Strategic Planning and Business Development and has worked across multiple industries as Business Development Director at Tesco, Chief Investment Officer in Venture Capital, and as VP for Strategy and Business Development for Bob the Builder!  His past journey included a period with the Department of Health Strategy Unit, correlating expansion of NHS activity with expenditure growth. 

Meir has a keen interest in sustainability and biodiversity and is also currently volunteering for the Natural History Museum, helping their science and education teams with commercial growth initiatives to create and inspire advocates for the planet.

 

Professor Rachel Isba

Rachel is passionate about improving the health and wellbeing of children and young people and is delighted to be a Trustee of the Society. Professor of Medicine at Lancaster University and a clinically active NHS Consultant in Paediatric Public Health Medicine in the Northwest of England, her work focuses on delivering opportunistic public health interventions, such as vaccination, in non-traditional settings, such as hospital Emergency Departments.

Rachel qualified from Oxford in 2003 and moved back to her native Manchester to undertake training in paediatrics and public health. In addition to her medical qualifications, she has Masters Degrees in Public Health, Physiological Sciences, and Infectious Diseases. A firm believer that every day can be a school day, she recently completed a Doctorate in Data Science, to accompany her PhD in Medical Education. She has a number of honorary appointments, including at the University of California, Riverside.

 

Co-opted Council member

Abigail Johnston Hume

Abi works within the Internal Audit Team at AstraZeneca. Abi has experience of working across external audit, internal audit and advisory, with specialism in risk and governance. Prior to joining AstraZeneca, Abi worked with public sector organisations, including charities and the NHS. Abi holds a Biology degree, a Masters’ of Public Health and an ACA.