Our People

Sir Cyril Chantler | Chairman

Sir Cyril Chantler is Chairman of University College London Partners, a designated academic health science system. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of the American Medical Association and an adviser to the Associate Parliamentary Health Group. He is a trustee of the Media Standards Trust, a non-executive director of a fostering agency “By the Bridge, and of MediHome Limited, a member of the public sector advisory panel of Doctors.net.uk and of the Council of Southwark Cathedral.

 Cyril Chantler was Dean of the Guy’s, King’s College and St Thomas’ Hospitals’ Medical and Dental School, where he was the Children Nationwide Medical Research Fund Professor of Paediatric Nephrology until his retirement in 2000.  He was a consultant to Guy’s Hospital (1972 – 2000).  Previously, he was Principal of the United Medical and Dental School of Guy’s and St Thomas’s Hospitals (1992 – 1998) and General Manager of Guy’s Hospital (1985-1988). He was Chairman of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children (2001- 2008), of the Clinical Advisory Group for NHS London 2007/2008 and of the Beit Memorial Fellowships for Medical Research (2003-2009). From 2004 until 2010 he was Chairman of the Kings Fund, London. 

In addition, he served as a member of the Member of the NHS Policy Board (1989-1996), President of the British Association of Medical Managers (1991-1997), and as Chairman of the Council of Heads of UK Medical Schools and Faculties (1998 – 1999).  He was also a Member of the General Medical Council (1994 – 2003), where he was Chairman of the Standards Committee. He served for some years as an adviser to the Hospital Authority of Hong Kong and co-chaired the SARS expert advisory enquiry in 2003.

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Professor David Fish | Managing Director

David’s last post was Medical Director for the Specialist Hospitals within UCLH, responsible for the provision of neurosciences, women’s health, cardiovascular disease and dentistry, as well as services at UCLH for cancer and the care of children and young people. He has also been Professor of Epilepsy and Clinical Neurophysiology at UCL since 2000. In 2008 he became Chair of Monitor’s Medical Director’s Advisory Group, supporting clinical engagement to improve health care management across Foundation Trusts. In 2006 he became a fellow of the British Association of Medical Managers, and is committed to recognising medical leadership as a full time specialty.

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Lord Ajay Kakkar | Chair of Quality

Professor the Lord Kakkar is Professor of Surgery, University College London; Consultant Surgeon University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust; Chairman for Clinical Quality, University College London Partners Academic Health Sciences System and Director of the Thrombosis Research Institute.

He completed his medical education at King’s College Hospital Medical School, University of London and was made a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1992.

His research interests are prevention and treatment of venous and arterial thromboembolic disease and cancer associated thrombosis.

Professor the Lord Kakkar was created a life peer in 2010

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Professor Alan Thompson | Neuroscience

Professor Alan Thompson is Director of the UCL Institute of Neurology and a Consultant Neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology & Neurosurgery.

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Dr Amanda Begley | Director of Innovation and Implementation

Amanda supports UCLP Clinical Programmes with the implementation of innovation at scale, with a particular focus on empowering patients to ‘pull’ proven innovations across the NHS. To achieve our mission of ‘population health gain’, UCLP must deliver not just on the generation of innovations, but also on their diffusion – ensuring proven innovations benefit entire populations. Amanda is currently focusing on supporting the implementation of an integrated cancer system in North London, and implementing e-health patient relationship management systems within diabetes and maternity. Following an educational psychology PhD, Amanda joined the NHS as an Assistant and Trainee Clinical Psychologist. Amanda has worked as a commissioner and manager across primary, community and secondary care, and has led the implementation of policy. Before joining UCLP, Amanda worked as Head of Innovation at NHS London, leading the implementation of regional Health Innovation and Education Clusters and the Regional Innovation Fund.

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Barbara Cummins | Executive Assistant

Barbara joined UCL Partners as Executive Assistant to the Chairman & Managing Director in October 2009. Prior to joining UCLP, Barbara worked at UCLH NHS Foundation Trust as an Executive Assistant to Professor David Fish in his previous role as Medical Director for the Specialist Hospitals Board. She has over 20 years experience in the health service in various roles, having worked at Croydon University Hospital (previously Mayday Hospital) and Lewisham University Hospital to name a few.

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Cate Hogan | Team Assistant

Cate provides support to UCLPartners as an assistant to the core team of Directors. She is an experienced administrator with previous roles as a PA to the Director of a surveying company and an administrator for a finance trade association. She moved to London from Australia in 2008 and has a degree in Health Science, specialising in Public Health.

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Professor David Goldblatt | Child Health

Professor David Goldblatt is Professor of Vaccinology and Immunology and Head of the Immunobiology Unit at the UCL Institute of Child Health, as well as a Consultant Paediatric Immunologist at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Trust. He is also the Director of Clinical Research and Development for the joint Institution and Director of its affiliated National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Specialist Biomedical Research Centre.

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Professor Deenan Pillay | Infectious diseases

Professor Deenan Pillay is Professor of Virology at UCL, Head of the Research Department of Infection and Honorary Consultant Virologist at University College London Hospital.  He is Director of the NIHR UCLH/UCL Comprehensive Biomedical Research Centre, and is also Research Director and Infectious Diseases Programme Director for UCL Partners.

His research focuses on the biological and clinical implications of HIV drug resistance, and the molecular epidemiology of HIV. In addition, he works on international studies of HIV treatment rollout, and is Director of one of the five WHO Specialist Reference Laboratories for HIV drug resistance.

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Professor Hans Strauss | Immunology and Transplantation

Professor Hans Stauss is Clinical Director of Immunology, Endocrinology and Diabetes at the Royal Free Hospital, as well as Head of the UCL Immunology Centre focussed on Cancer Immunology and Immunodeficiency.

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Dr James Mountford | Director of Quality

James’s work supports UCLP’s clinical programmes and partner organisations to develop and deploy measures of quality describing care which best meets the needs of patients and populations. We are implementing a joined-up approach to quality which matches the pathways or journeys patients follow — whole system or whole-pathway quality metrics. Our focus is on improving results on these over time. Within UCLP Quality are a range of initiatives to build capacity and results in continuous quality improvement, and to embed safety and quality into education across professions.

Before UCLP, James’ background includes work as an NHS doctor and as a consultant at McKinsey. James has also been a Commonwealth Fund/Health Foundation Harkness Fellow, based in Boston at Massachusetts General Hospital and at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). James has a medical degree from Oxford and a Masters in Public Health from Harvard. In 2009 he co-edited one of the UK’s first books on clinical leadership – Clinical Leadership: Bridging the Divide. He sits on the board of Diagnosis, a healthcare social enterprise.

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Janet Pressland | Director of Finance

Janet Pressland is an experienced qualified Chartered Accountant with 10 years Director level experience within the Public (NHS and Education) & Not for profit Sector. She has been the Finance Director for UCL Partners since June 2010, prior to that Director of Finance for The Learning Trust (2006-2007) and Bournemouth Primary Care Trust (2001-2006). She also has her own business providing financial support and advice to NHS organisations including UCLH.

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Jenny Shand | Director of Integrated Care

Jenny works across our population to ensure that services are designed and delivered around the needs and preferences of patients and populations. She is supporting “Whittington Health” to create an integrated care system across Islington and Haringey. Jenny is responsible for developing GP relationships: across the programmes to link GPs with specialist interests into particular areas of work, and ensure we take a whole systems approach to improving outcomes. Jenny has wide experience of healthcare in different contexts. She has been a Policy Fellow at the Kings Fund, a consultant at McKinsey, and a Manager at Guys & St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. Jenny holds a Master’s in Public Health from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and has a Philosophy degree from Oxford.

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Sir John Tooke | Academic Lead

Professor Sir John Tooke is UCL’s Vice Provost (Health), Head of the UCL School of Life & Medical Sciences and Head of the UCL Medical School. Prior to this, he was Dean of the Peninsula College of Medicine & Dentistry. He is the former Chair of the Medical Schools Council and former President of the European Society for Microcirculation. He currently chairs the UK Healthcare Education Advisory Committee (UKHEAC) and is a member of the National Institute for Health Research Advisory Board and the Health & Education National Strategic Exchange (HENSE). In 2007 he led the Inquiry for the Secretary of State for Health into Postgraduate Medical Educating and Training, culminating in the final report, Aspiring to Excellence. In the same year he led a high-level group for the CMO on Barriers to Clinical Effectiveness, the report of which led to the creation of CLAHRCs (Collaborations for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care). He received a knighthood for services to medicine in 2007

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Professor Judith Stephenson | Women’s health

Professor Judith Stephenson is Margaret Pyke Professor of Sexual & Reproductive Health at the UCL Institute for Women’s Health. She is also Head of the UCL Research Department of Reproductive Health, and holds Honorary Consultant contracts with UCLH in Women’s Health and with Camden Primary Care Trust in Public Health.

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Professor Kathy Pritchard-Jones | Cancer

Kathy Pritchard Jones is Professor of Paediatric Oncology at the UCL Institute of Child Health. She has been a consultant in the field for 20 years. She heads a laboratory for research into the molecular biology of renal tumours, and is running a large Phase III trial for newly diagnosed kidney cancer children in the UK.
Kathy is the UK lead within the International Society of Paediatric Oncology (SIOP) and Vice Chairman of SIOP Europe

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Professor Martin Birchall | ENT

Martin Birchall is Professor of Laryngology at UCL. He studied medicine at Cambridge, and specialised in head and neck surgery. Working with an international consortium of surgeons and stem cell engineers, he has developed a new stem-cell based therapy for people whose airways have been destroyed by disease. In 2008 this team replaced a young woman’s trachea using airway epithelium cultured from stem cells in the laboratory – the first clinical application of a tissue-engineered transplant. And in March 2010 they transplanted a trachea into an 11-year-old child, using a scaffold from a donor and seeding stem cells taken from the patient’s bone marrow in the same operation – the first example of a human bioreactor.

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Professor Peng Khaw | Eyes and vision

Professor Peng Khaw is a Consultant Ophthalmic Surgeon at Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Professor of Glaucoma and Ocular Healing at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology. Professor Khaw is also Director of the affiliated National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Specialist Biomedical Research Centre.

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Professor Peter Fonagy | Mental Health & Wellbeing

Peter leads the UCLP initiative on mental health and wellbeing. He led the group of Trusts and UCL departments who joined together to write the original bid to UCLP identifying six areas of work including both ends of the developmental spectrum, impulsive disorders, mood disorders, psychosis and implementation science. The programme has flourished with strong contributions from leaders of the collaborating mental health Trusts (NELFT, BEHMHT, GOSH, C&I and T&P). Peter leads a specific project on value-based mental health care and supports others including a project on dementia, a project on translating evidence on interventions for children and families, and a newly formed consortium on psychological therapies research. Peter is a Fellow of the British Academy, a senior NIHR Investigator and heads up the Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology at UCL.

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Rebecca Graham | Interim Director of HR

Rebecca supports the central team and the research and educational programs in human resources and organisational development.  She works closely with the corporate and clinical services programme and the cancer provider network providing strategic input to these evolving programmes.  She has designed the HR function for the company and works to continue to embed the values and objectives of the organisation in all of our practices.  Rebecca has over 10 years experience working in HR both in the private and public sectors in Canada and the UK.  She has a Master’s from Kings College London School of Management and Public Policy.

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Professor Rosalind Raine | Population Health

Rosalind Raine is Professor of Health Care Evaluation at UCL, UCL Partners Programme Director in Population Health and Lead of the Health Services Research (HSR) Theme at the NIHR UCLH/UCL Comprehensive Biomedical Research Centre. Her background is in medicine, psychology, public health and HSR. Her research interests centre on health care inequalities, clinical decision making and evaluations of public health and health care interventions.

She provides scientific advice to the World Health Organisation, the Department of Health and national policy Think Tanks. She is Chair of UK Heads of Academic Departments of Public Health and sits on MRC and NIHR research panels.

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Tony Lezard | Director of IT

Tony leads the IT programme at UCLP, which aims to deliver a consolidated patient record, available securely wherever it is needed. This combines a whole-pathway approach to patient information with initiatives to aggregate data held on Trust systems. It will be supported by a robust information governance regime, standardised across the entire UCLP area including UCL. He supports each of the UCLP programmes as needs require, with current emphasis on cancer, child health, and women’s health, and also administers the company’s own IT resources. Tony’s career includes healthcare IT roles at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and the North London Cancer Network. Previously, he worked for a financial software company as a developer and client services manager. He has an MA in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge.

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Professor William McKenna | Cardiovascular

Professor William McKenna is Professor of Cardiology at University College London (UCL), Director of the Institute of Cardiovascular Science and Cardiovascular Program Director at UCL Partners (University College London/UCL Hospitals Trust).

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