Board Members

The Trust Board is made up of voting and non-voting members which includes our Chief Executive, Non-Executive Directors and Executive Directors.

You can find out about each of our Board Members below.

Voting members - Non-Executive Directors

Keith joined the Trust from the NHS Vale of York Clinical Commissioning Group Governing Body where he was a Lay member, with lead  responsibilities for quality and patient experience and remuneration. Prior to that he held the position of Chair of the Governing Body. He is also currently a group board member of Incommunities Group, based in Bradford.

 Over the course of his career, Keith has held a number of senior roles as chair or non-executive director in different organisations including: as a Non-Executive Director at NHS Yorkshire and the Humber Strategic Health Authority, Chair of Thackray Medical Museum and the Altogether Better Big Lottery Fund and as a non-executive board member at Leeds Metropolitan University.

Julie Charge is a Senior Independent NED at Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust.

Julie qualified as a Management Accountant in 1992 and was appointed to the Trust Board in December 2015. 

She has previously held a number of financial roles in the private health sector with Circle Health. Julie has also been the financial lead in the commissioning of two newly built hospitals in Bath and Reading. 

At Scottish & Newcastle Breweries (now Heineken) she was involved in creating a spin off company for the service of beer dispensing in pubs. Currently she is the Finance Director at Salford University.

David has more than 20 years’ experience as consultant renal physician, medical manager and leader, during which he has amassed more than 18 years’ combined experience as a Clinical Director, Deputy Medical Director and Medical Director at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. His particular areas of interest are clinical leadership, informatics, clinical quality, and the management of health services across evolving structures such as Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships and Integrated Care Systems. He joined the Trust in April 2020.

Gary has been a qualified accountant for over 29 years and a Chief Executive of a national charity for 9 years.

As Chief Executive of the Coalfields Regeneration Trust he works with communities where health and well being is a major challenge and has led on programmes where the aim is to improve health outcomes.

Alan has over 30 years’ experience as a clinician providing NHS care and has worked at the University of Leeds for over 25 years.  As Dean of the School of Dentistry his responsibilities include NHS workforce development, providing an excellent educational experience and ensuring that research and innovation are impactful across the region and more widely. 

Diane started her career working in homelessness and mental health. She held a variety of local policy and commissioning roles based in public health before moving to national roles in healthcare and central government audit. Diane held board level executive roles in national mental health and learning disability charities before becoming a CEO of a supported housing association. Diane has previously been a non-executive board member in a Primary Care Trust and Clinical Commissioning Group as well as a number of charities. Diane currently Chairs a West Yorkshire Housing Association based in Dewsbury and sits on the board for a large not-for-profit care home and supported housing provider.

Diane holds a first degree in Psychology and Master’s degrees in Social Policy and in Executive Management. Diane has always been passionate about giving a voice to vulnerable and marginalised individuals and communities.

Lydia has held senior finance and leadership roles across the education and skills sector and is currently Director of Finance at the University of Huddersfield.

A Chartered Management Accountant, with more than 25 years' experience, she also holds a degree in Economics from the University of Manchester.

Lydia is an experienced trustee, working with multi-academy trusts and education charities, where she has been a board member and chaired Audit, Risk and Finance Committees.

 

Voting members - Executive Directors

Len is an established NHS leader in the UK and internationally and has worked in the health sector for over 30 years. He became Chief Executive of Cardiff and Vale University Health Board in June 2017. Before this he was Deputy Chief Executive of South Australia Health and had a focus on system performance and delivery for the Australian Government.

Len has extensive expertise in leading and delivering healthcare management and working in partnership with a range of healthcare providers, including the commercial sector, to produce evidence based results – all improving quality and supporting patient care.

He has worked on service transformation programmes, capital development programmes including developing a $280 million Cancer Centre, a hyper acute stroke unit and a number of new hospitals. He has led on a significant number of high profile and sensitive clinical re-configurations involving specialist services, focussing on the improvement in quality and safety and the elimination of waste.

Chris joined us in August 2023 from Portsmouth Hospitals NHS University Trust where he was the Deputy Chief Executive & Chief Operating Officer.

Prior to this Chris was the Chief Operating Officer at Warrington and Halton Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and has held previous positions including being the Managing Director for the Salford Integrated Care Organisation at Salford Royal NHS FT where he led both health and social care services across the system.

Chris has gained a wealth of NHS operational leadership experience from a range of Trusts in his early career, being the manager for the Women and Children’s Division at the University Hospital of South Manchester. He commenced his NHS career in 2002 undertaking a range of administrative positions locally within what was Salford Primary Care Trust.

Subsequently, Chris developed his managerial career and gained experiences working throughout the North West at both Central Manchester University Hospitals and The Christie. He has managed a variety of acute, community and social care services.

Amy was appointed in 2022. She has extensive experience working in NHS finance having joined the NHS Graduate Training Scheme in 2002. 

She has a degree in Chartered Institute of Public Finance & Accountancy (CPFA) alongside a BA (Hons) for Computing in Business. 

Throughout her career Amy has mainly worked across Acute and Specialist Trusts in a variety of financial management roles. Amy remains a keen supporter of the graduate training scheme, being passionate about the development of finance teams, and with a particular interest in diversity and inclusion across NHS finance.

Richard Robinson was appointed interim Chief Medical Officer in March 2023, following his time as an interim in the role. He joined Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust as a Consultant Radiologist in 2009 following specialist training in West Yorkshire and Australia.

He has held leadership roles since 2011 within Radiology and more latterly as Divisional Clinical Director in the Division of Families and Clinical Support Services.

In this time he has been involved in leading change within the Trust and across the wider system with a strong belief that partnership working will help support the NHS to meet the needs of the patients we serve.

Richard is passionate about continuous learning and improvement of services provided for patients. This includes using new technologies and enabling different ways of working in order to best support staff to do their jobs well resulting in patients receiving the highest standards of care in a safe environment.

An experienced nurse executive and clinical leader with 44 years’ experience in healthcare.  Talib started as a nurse cadet and then completed RN training in Halifax, before specialising in intensive care nursing and subsequently moving into nurse manager and executive nurse positions in a number of hospitals in England. He also worked as the Regional Nurse Director for NHS Northwest.

He has international healthcare experience working for seven years in the Middle East in a number of senior nursing and executive roles in Abu Dhabi as the Director of Quality and Accreditation with Zayed Military Hospital before joining Cleveland Clinic, Abu Dhabi, and finally four years with Hamad Medical Corporation in Qatar, before returning to the UK in the spring of 2018. He joined the Integrated Care System in Lancashire and South Cumbria in June 2018 as the Director of Transformation supporting the new approach to integrated healthcare.

Talib remains passionate about nursing, midwifery and clinical services and the development of people to deliver world class services.

Talib was awarded an OBE from the Queen in 1998 for services to nursing management and Furness General Hospital.

Phillip joined the Trust as director in September 2018. He is responsible for providing strategic and operational Human Resource leadership, with lead board director responsibility for associated areas including; Organisational Development, Communications, Staff Engagement, HR, Childcare and Staff Benefits, Occupational Health, and Equality and Diversity. He has worked in the NHS in Yorkshire since 1987 and is a Chartered Fellow of the Institute of Personnel and Development with a Master of Science degree in Human Resource Management.

Phillip is a chartered Fellow of the Institute of Personnel and Development with a Master of Science degree in Human Resource Management. He also won NHS HR Director of the Year at the national Healthcare People Management Association (HPMA) awards 2017.

Non-voting members - Executive Directors

Emma was appointed as Chief of Planning, Partnerships and Strategy in September 2022.

She has a degree in Psychology and has spent 18 years working in the NHS in several local and national organisations.

Prior to joining the Trust, Emma worked at NHS England where she led the Urgent and Emergency Care Transformation agenda, including the world’s largest clinical trial and redesign of Ambulance Services  - The Ambulance Response Programme. She also worked on Acute Medical Transformation, including the development of peer review for Major Trauma Networks, the ‘Saving Babies Lives’ care bundle, and the National Maternity Review – Better Births.

Emma lives locally with her husband and young son and is passionate about working in partnership with other NHS organisations to deliver excellent services to our population.

Jo has responsibility for Community Services at the Trust and is also the Accountable Officer for Wakefield District Health & Care Partnership and the Chief Officer of NHS Wakefield Clinical Commissioning Group, Corporate Director for Adults and Health at Wakefield Council. This gives her overall responsibility for integrating health and care for the whole of the area. She is one of the first leaders in England to have three executive roles across one local health and care system.

In addition Jo is a member of the West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership System Executive Leadership Group and the NHS Integrated Care Board who work together across all health and care sectors to transform and improve services for the 2.4 million people living here. She has been a founding member since its creation in 2016. 

Passionate about delivering quality care closer to home and working with communities to develop support that is insight driven, Jo has initiated award winning programmes of work such as ‘Connecting Care Wakefield’ which has received national recognition for innovative partnership working and piloting new initiatives with care homes. Wakefield Clinical Commissioning Group was rated outstanding in 2021 under her leadership.

With a background in front line care services and commissioning for over 25 years, Jo’s goal is to make sure everyone in Wakefield District and West Yorkshire has a great start in life and receives the support they need to live a long, healthy, and happy life, whilst preventing ill health wherever possible.

Mark Braden, Director of Estates, Facilities and Digital Services, is an experienced and passionate estate management professional with 20 years’ NHS experience, delivering service and efficiency improvements in Sheffield, Nottingham and most recently at the North Midlands NHS Trust.

Rob holds a joint role of Chief Digital Information Officer across both Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust (MYTT) and Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trusts (CHFT). Rob has been part of the regions digital journey for more than 20 years, before moving into the joint role of Chief Digital and Information Officer (CDIO). Over those years he has a proven track record of delivering digital services both into CHFT as well as across a wide range of health and social care partners throughout the region and nationally with The Health Informatics Service. Prior to joining the NHS, Rob gained invaluable experience within the private sector and the military.

Since his part in regional Electronic Patient Record programmes, where he was responsible for the transition into operational delivery, Rob has focused on the aggregation of data at place level and digital as an enabler to compassionate care, as well as continuing to grow The Health Informatics Service and maintain its reputation for exceptional service delivery across the system.

Rob is proud to be part of two digitally focussed, forward thinking Trusts and can see the further potential for digital as an enabler and the direct impact that it has on delivering compassionate care to our patients.

Rob has an MBA from the University of Huddersfield and has been part of the WY&H ICS Shadow System Leadership Executive programme, learning with senior leaders from across the whole public and charity sector. He is also an advocate for the Trusts Armed Forces Network.

Non-voting members - Non-Executive Directors

Lindsay brings over 17 years of senior management and leadership experience working in complex, high profile, regulated environments. 

While working at BT Lindsay held accountability for delivering IT services to top 10 FTSE global financial services companies.  Following her strong desire to move into healthcare Lindsay successfully transitioned to lead BT’s N3 Service Provider. NHS N3 was the underpinning IT infrastructure connecting employees, clinicians, healthcare professionals and other services providers to key NHS services.  This was the spring board to her leading the UK’s portfolio of managed service delivery to Local Government and Health clients bringing systems thinking to delivering programmes of work including organisational design and development, technology focussed digital transformation and business change programmes. 

In January 2020, Lindsay joined the Test and Trace Covid-19 response programme as part of the Test Digital programme (NHS Digital), commissioned by DHSC. Test Digital is the core team responsible for delivery the digital elements of the testing service.