Trust Board Members

Naomi was appointed as the UCL nominated Non-Executive Director for 4 years from October 2018 and for a further 2 years from October 2022. 
 
Naomi is Professor of Health Care Organisation & Management in the Department for Applied Health Research, UCL. Her research focuses on organisational change and improvement in health care, both in the NHS and internationally.
 

Naomi trained in social sciences at the Universities of Bristol and London, and in public health at Harvard on a Fulbright scholarship. Before joining UCL, Naomi was Professor of Health Policy at King’s College London and, prior to that, Lecturer then Senior Lecturer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Naomi began her career in the late 1980’s with Islington Health Authority, based at the Whittington.

 

Naomi has previously been a Non-Executive Director at Barnet and Chase Farm hospitals, and the elected Chair of Health Services Research UK, a national network bringing together those who produce and use health services research to improve policy and practice. Naomi is currently a Non-Executive Director on the board of Covid Bereaved Families for Justice UK.

 

Committees: Chair of Quality Assurance Committee, Member of Nominations and Remuneration Committee, Member of Improvement, Performance and Digital Committee .
Qualifications: BSc; MPH; PhD
 

Amanda was appointed as a Non-Executive Director on 1 May 2020 for a term of four years and is governor at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH) where she chairs both the UCLH Organ Donation Committee and the University College London / UCLH Biobank Ethical Review Committee.

She is a lay member of the NHS Blood and Transplant’s National Organ Donation Committee. Amanda is a member of the Human Tissue Authority and is also a trustee of various charities and a Justice of the Peace and Deputy Chair of the Youth Panel, North London Bench.

At Whittington Health, Amanda is a member of the Audit and Risk, Finance & Business Development, Quality Assurance (Deputy Chair) and Arts Committees.

Glenys was appointed as a Non-Executive Director on 1 May 2020 for a term of four years and is from three generations of family that have accessed and used the range of NHS services in Camden.

 

Glenys has been a member of the House of Lords since 1998, including Junior Health Minister from 2008/10 and Shadow Health Minister from 2010/2012, a position she picked up again in 2017 and still holds. From 2015/2017 Glenys was CEO of the ethnographic research organisation The Young Foundation, and is now a senior fellow.

 

Following this, Glenys held the position of Shadow Equalities Minister until 2015. She is also Chair of the Advisory Committee to the Healthcare and Assistive Technology Society (HATS), which regulates the manufacturers and suppliers of aids and technology for health and social care. In the NHS, she was previously a lay member on Camden Clinical Commissioning Group’s Governing Body.

 

At Whittington Health, Glenys sits on the Quality Assurance, Workforce Assurance and Audit and Risk Committees. She is an Emeritus Governor of the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a Council member of the University of Bradford.

Rob was appointed as a Non-Executive Director on 1 May 2020 for a term of four years. Rob has wealth of experience from local government and was Chief Executive of two councils in Yorkshire.  He also has experience as a member of the Electoral Commission.

In the NHS, he previously served as Deputy Chair of Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust. At Whittington Health, Rob is Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee and is lead Non-Executive Director in support of the Freedom to Speak up Guardian.  In October 2020 Rob also joined the Board of University College Hospitals London NHS Foundation Trust where he chairs the Workforce Committee.

Junaid Bajwa was appointed as a Non-Executive Director of the Whittington Health Trust Board on 14 April 2022 for a four year term. He is a practising physician in the NHS, and the Chief Medical Scientist at Microsoft Research. Junaid was previously the Global Lead for Strategic Alliances and Solutions for the Global Digital Centre of Excellence, at Merck Sharp & Dohme where he led a range of strategic initiatives to improve patient care, including establishment of internal partnerships across the enterprise and external partnerships across the health care ecosystem.

He cofounded “VelocityHealth” as Europe’s first prevention focused digital-health accelerator, in partnership with Telefonica, and led his team to deliver the "NHS Testbed" in partnership with Verily Life Sciences (part of Alphabet) which the Health Service Journal recognized as the "Best Pharmaceutical Partnership with the NHS” in 2018. Junaid has worked across primary care, secondary care, and public health settings in addition to acting specialising in informatics, digital transformation, and leadership.
 
He has consulted for health care systems across the US, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Europe, in addition to being seconded by the NHS to work with IBM. Junaid completed his MBA at the Imperial College Business School in London and has studied health strategy and quality improvement at both Harvard and the Institute of Healthcare Improvement in Boston. Academically, he is a Clinical Associate Professor at UCL, and Visiting Scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health. Junaid is also a Non-Executive Director at University Hospitals London NHS Foundation Trust.

Sarah began her career in the NHS as a nurse. Her previous role was the Director of Nursing for Integrated and Specialist Medicine at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, where she provided nursing leadership to a clinical group with around 8,000 staff and which included a large number of services, including acute and general medicine and integrated local services.

Norma has spent her entire career in the NHS and has been a Director of Workforce since 2000.

 

She joined Whittington Health in June 2015 and brings experience and skills in both strategic and operational areas of management within acute settings. Recently she has been employed at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, North Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust, Barts Health and Milton Keynes Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

 

Norma’s particular expertise lie in the development and implementation of innovative human resources interventions, to achieve organisational goals and enable the integration of leading human resources policies into all aspects of service delivery.

 

She is qualified to administer Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) Tests Step 1 and 2, is an Executive Coach and a specialist adviser supporting new wave Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspections.

Qualifications: MA MCIPD

Jonathan Gardner joined Whittington Health in May 2018. Jonathan is responsible for digital, estates, communications, strategy, and corporate affairs as well as the Whittington Health Charity.  Prior to this role, he worked on Cancer Programmes and Strategic Development projects at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
 
Jonathan’s previous NHS roles include operational management in specialist services at UCLH, followed by surgery and then the A&E and Medicine Division at North Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust. He has a varied background in both private and public sectors, having previously held several roles at the Department of Health over a number of years as well as working as a management consultant and an entrepreneur. He has in the past been Chair of Governors at a local primary school and a Churchwarden.

Swarnjit has extensive experience in working with boards in the civil service and NHS. 

 

He previously worked as Private Secretary to the Parliamentary and Health Service and Ombudsman and as Trust Secretary at Hounslow and Richmond Community Healthcare NHS Trust. He was diversity and inclusion lead at Guy’s at St Thomas NHS Foundation Trust and secured them exemplar status from NHS Employers. He went on to lead inclusion work at the London Strategic Health Authority and then became the national NHS Equality Delivery System Manager. 

 

Swarnjit is also the Management Side Co-Chair of the NHS Staff Council’s Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Group, and is a trustee on the Board of CASPA (Children on the Autistic Spectrum Parents Association), a charity in the London Borough of Bromley.

Tina has worked in healthcare since 1989 and trained initially as a nurse and then as a midwife. She worked as a nurse practitioner in Sickle Cell Disease at Guys and St Thomas', before becoming one of the Trust leads, working with Mckinsey Consultants in Trustwide projects where she gained expertise in change management. Tina's other previous experience includes a management role in Renal and Urology Outpatient and a Senior Matron of the Medical Wards and Older People Services.

 

She moved into the Lead Nurse position for Quality and Assurance in 2011, a post jointly funded by Islington Council and Whittington Health. Tina is a Queen's Nurse and Trust Workplace Race & Equality Standard (WRES) Expert, having considerable expertise in supporting high quality care and staff engagement to deliver organisational culture change. She is passionate about inclusion and equity and aims to ensure that inclusion, fairness, and compassion are role modelled to benefit staff and patients alike.

The public rightly expect the highest standards of behaviour in the NHS, and we take our responsibility as custodians of taxpayers’ money very seriously. Decisions involving the use of NHS funds should never be influenced by outside interests or expectations of private gain, but we recognise that conflicts of interest are unavoidable in complex systems.

 

That is why we publish a Declaration of Interests for our Board Members, downloadable below: