Carole retired from Plymouth City Council in 2019 after 40 years Local Government experience. She started her career as a Social Worker in Plymouth and ended as Strategic Director for People which covered the Statutory roles of Director of Children’s Services and Adult Services. Carole worked with partners in health to spearhead a transformation of social care in Plymouth to deliver a pioneering project to integrate the commissioning and delivery of community health and social care services.

She worked in a range of senior leadership roles across the Council and led a wide range of services including central services, refuse collection, community connections as well as the children’s and adults services. She was responsible for the development and build of Plymouth Life Centre and played a leading role in the city’s response to a number of emergencies.

Carole was awarded an MBE for services to children and young people in June 2017.

Married and living in Plymouth, Carole has 2 grown up sons and 5 grand-children. 

With a background in speech and language therapy, Karen has over 40 years’ experience in health, social care and education as a clinician, senior leader, researcher, author, coach and mentor. She has an enduring passion for working collaboratively to improve people’s experiences and opportunities.

Since 1997 Karen has worked in the facilitation of change and improvement with a strong focus on positive and strengths based leadership. Quality assurance, innovation, and transformation are key elements of her extensive work leading local, regional and national programmes in the NHS. Her work to involve patients and the public in service development and redesign has been conducted both in the UK and internationally.

A fellow of the RSA and ILM qualified executive coach and mentor, Karen now works independently with statutory, voluntary and social enterprise organisations. She has a PhD in healthcare improvement and has held honorary research and visiting lecturer roles with the Universities of Birmingham and Worcester. 

Clive is an experienced Chair, and has led Boards of Trustees and Directors in the public, charitable and private sectors. His passion is improving public services, and his career has been devoted to that goal.  He has a Doctorate in child care law from the University of Oxford, and a Management Diploma from the Open University, and is a qualified Solicitor and governance expert. He began as a community lawyer and Parliamentary Policy Adviser, and then joined the Inner London Education Authority as Head of Legal.  He concluded his employed career as a Director-General of the Audit Commission. He is now a consultant in the UK and abroad, working mainly on issues of governance, public services, and decentralisation.   He also serves on various charitable and public sector Boards.

As a Chartered Accountant, Graham has over 30 years financial experience across a wide range of sectors and industries, and over 10 years’ experience of senior financial management roles in the housing sector.  Since 2014, he has been acting as an interim helping housing associations to improve the quality and value of their finance teams, both in large and small organisations.

His work has involved:

• motivating and empowering teams;
• arranging new finance and funding streams; and
• revising systems and processes to improve quality and efficiency.

Geraldine O'Sullivan has over forty years of experience in education, health and social care, over twenty years at a senior level. A retired Head teacher of a special provision and ex local authority senior officer of an integrated service for children with disabilities and learning difficulties. Geraldine now works as an education consultant focusing on the areas of Alternative Learning Provision, Special Educational needs and Safeguarding. Geraldine is passionate about improving the life chances of young people and committed to supporting all children/young people reaching their full potential. She is a governor at a local primary school in North Devon and another special school in Somerset. Geraldine holds a BSS Hons and a post-grad qualification in Autism in children.

Kathryn has over 40 years experience as a nurse, most recently as the Executive Chief Nurse at a large acute Trust in London. In 2018 she was awarded an OBE for her work within nursing and in 2019 an honorary doctorate from UEL for her work related to improving inclusion and social mobility.

Over her career she has worked extensively in adult and children’s services including leading an independent review for the Department of Health into Children with life limiting conditions and being the Assistant Chief Nurse at Great Ormond Street Hospital.

Kathryn has is committed to improving the opportunities for children and young people and pro-actively reaches out to the wide and diverse potential workforce to encourage them to see the NHS as an organisation that has opportunities for all. She is recognised as a leader in this area and has led on a number of national projects related to apprenticeships leading to long term employment within the NHS.

Information coming soon.