David Walker was appointed Chair of Oxford Health in April 2019. Prior to this, he served as deputy chair of  Central and North-West London NHS FT since 2011. Previously, he has been a Trustee of the Nuffield Trust, the National Centre for Social Research, a Board member of Places for People, and a council member of the Economic and Social Research Council.

Until 2010 David was Managing Director for Communications and Public Reporting at the Audit Commission. He is a member of council at Royal Holloway University of London and impact assessor for Research Excellence Framework 2022 and is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.

As a journalist he was a Leader Writer for The Times, Chief Leader Writer for The Independent, Founding Editor of the Guardian’s Public Magazine and he has worked as a local government and social policy correspondent. He is the author of several books.

Grant is our interim Chief Executive Officer, in post from July 2023. Previously he was the Executive Managing Director for Mental Health and Learning Disabilities from joining Oxford Health in March 2022.

A highly experienced leader with 20 years experience in executive director roles on NHS Boards, Grant’s NHS career spans 36 years and he remains a registered mental health nurse.

He has worked in the South East region before, previously as Executive Nurse and Chief Operating Officer at Berkshire Healthcare before joining Central & North-West London NHS Foundation Trust as Executive Director of Strategy & Workforce.

Before joining Oxford Health he was the Chief Operating Officer at Southern Health.

Amélie Bages joined Oxford Health as Director of Strategy and Partnerships on April 25, 2022

She was previously Head of Mental Health for NHS England, a position held for more than three years in which she oversaw the finance, planning, strategy, performance, delivery, and equalities work for the National Mental Health Programme. This covered government spending reviews, leading on business cases and negotiations, integrated care systems and operating model development work.

In 2019, she led the development of the NHS Long Term Plan for mental health, securing an additional £2.3bn funding for mental health services across England.
Most recently, as part of the National Mental Health Senior Leadership Team, she worked closely with the Department of Health and Social Care to secure an additional £500m of funding for mental health services in 2021/22 to address the immediate impact of Covid-19, as published in the Government’s Covid-19 Mental Health and Wellbeing Recovery Action Plan.

Her work with large acute trusts in London including the Royal Free presented her with opportunities to see first-hand the benefits of embedding research and innovation in the delivery of care and also as part of a wider organisational transformation approach.

Britta Klinck was appointed to the role of Chief Nursing Officer for the Trust in November 2023.  Britta became Deputy Director of Nursing for Mental Health in 2018, and was promoted to her previous role in 2021 as the sole deputy to the previous Chief Nursing Officer. Britta has worked at Oxford Health for 30 years, joining initially as a Healthcare Assistant before qualifying as a Registered Mental Health Nurse in 1994. From here she progressed through Team Manager and Service Manager roles to Head of Nursing for Mental Health in 2015.

Charmaine holds the role of Chief People Office.  Prior to joining Oxford Health she was the HR Director at the Greater London Authority, the capital’s devolved governance body which supports the Mayor of London and London Assembly.

Charmaine has worked across a range of organisations in the public sector, starting her career as a graduate trainee at the BBC where she qualified as an HR professional.  She has held senior HR Director posts in central government in HM Revenue and Customs and Cabinet Office. Charmaine is also a voluntary Board member at Hightown Housing Association – a charitable housing body that works across the home counties to provide homes and support housing to the local community.

Charmaine holds a MSc in Organisational Behaviour from Birkbeck College and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD).

Dr Marlowe joined Oxford Health as the new Chief Medical Officer in 2021. Karl was previously the CMO at Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust where, since 2018, he was responsible for the clinical leadership of 6,000 staff across more than 300 sites – including five community hospitals – and a £320m budget. During this time, he saw Southern Health experience a shift in culture, transforming it from a trust requiring improvement to one rated as ‘good’ by the Care Quality Commission.

A consultant psychiatrist, Karl’s extensive training has taken in Liverpool Medical School, Barts and The Royal London, Maudsley Hospital and Guys and St Thomas Hospitals. He holds post-graduate qualifications from UCL, the Institute of Psychiatry and Oxford’s Said Business School. He has previously been clinical director of adult mental health at East London NHS Foundation Trust and continues to chair the Social Interest Group, a non-profit organisation set up to enrich and extend opportunities for people facing social and health exclusion.

He is also passionate about climate change and the need to reduce air pollution. He also led on embedding a quality improvement methodology across the Trust.

Heather Smith joined Oxford Health in 2022 from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs where she had also been Chief Finance Officer.

Before joining DEFRA – a £6 billion public sector group – in 2018, Heather had worked in senior civil service Finance and Policy roles in HM Revenue & Customs and in the Department for Business Innovation & Skills.  Before that Heather worked at HM Treasury, the World Bank and for Arthur Andersen and Deloitte & Touche.

At Oxford Health, Heather is responsible for the financial and commercial leadership of the Trust. This means contributing to the development of Integrated Care System financial strategies, enabling transformation of clinical services and models of care to use resources more efficiently and effectively.

Heather is also responsible for the Information Management & Technology and Estates & Facilities teams who provide the digital and physical environment used by patients, the public and people working at the Trust. Heather is also the senior responsible officer for the Warneford Park programme.

Dr Ben Riley was appointed to the newly created role of Managing Director of Primary and Community Care Services in 2020 to enable better working across community, primary, social care, and third sector partners, in order to improve services and the health of the communities in Oxfordshire.

Before joining the Trust, Ben’s experience includes the role of Chief Clinical Officer and Chair at OxFed, the GP federation for Oxford City. He was a GP Partner at Oxford’s 19 Beaumont Street Surgery for eight years, where he was an Oxford University College Doctor and the lead doctor for a care home that included patients with complex healthcare needs and dementia. He was also joint Clinical Director of the Healthier Oxford City Primary Care Network (PCN) and has previously worked as a GP in Faringdon and Leighton Buzzard.

Ben has held leadership roles at national level. In 2012, he received a commendation from the Royal College of General Practitioners for outstanding contributions to the discipline of general practice and primary care and is a Fellow of the Royal College. As Medical Director of Curriculum and GP Education from 2012 to 2019, Ben led the national team that updated the GMC-approved curriculum for GP training, which was adopted in GP training programmes throughout the UK. Before this he led the RCGP’s national e-learning programme, co-authored several national strategy documents and produced over 250 educational resources and publications for the NHS workforce. He was a trustee of Lymphoma Action, a leading national charity for people with lymphatic cancer, from 2012 to 2018.

At Oxford Health, Ben leads the Primary, Community and Dental Directorate with over 2000 staff who provide a wide range of health care services for people of all ages across Oxfordshire. This includes services for children, young people and vulnerable families; urgent and emergency care; community rehabilitation wards, community nursing and therapies, and a wide range of planned care services. He also heads up the Trust’s community vaccination services and dentistry teams.

Rob began his NHS career in 1990, becoming a consultant psychiatrist in 1998. He has over 25 years’ experience as a consultant psychiatrist and clinical leader.

The last twenty years have been spent at Oxford Health, most recently as clinical leader for the Oxfordshire, Bath, North East Somerset, Swindon & Wiltshire Mental Health Directorate.

Rob has led core mental health services for people of all ages, alongside specialist services including adult learning disability, specialist forensic services and three mental health provider collaboratives.

He is committed to improving the lives of those experiencing mental ill-health and supporting staff as teams and individuals.

David M Clark is Emeritus Professor of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford. He is well-known for his pioneering work on the understanding and psychological treatment of anxiety disorders: especially panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, health anxiety and PTSD.

Recently, he has also focused on how to disseminate effective psychological treatments within healthcare systems and is one of the architects of the English Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme (recently renamed as NHS Talking Therapies).

He is a Fellow of the British Academy, the UK Academies of Medical Sciences and Social Sciences, the British Association of Behavioural Psychotherapies, and the Association for Psychological Science (USA). Honours include a CBE for contributions to mental health and Distinguished Scientist / Lifetime Achievement Awards from the British, Canadian and American Psychological Associations. The latter described his work as “pure genius with a real-world application”.

Geraldine joined Oxford Health as a non-executive director in 2022. A solicitor with experience in private practice and in-house, she is a pragmatic, inclusive and people­ oriented person with broad experience and expertise in advising businesses, individuals and local authorities ,and providing practical guidance to charities. She also has a wealth of experience in strategy, establishing financial governance and managing assets.

She uses her experience and transferable skills gained elsewhere to the benefit of the Oxford Health board.

Chris was appointed in 2017 and is a consultant and executive coach with 25 years board experience, working in both executive and non-executive roles.

He is a chartered accountant and has worked in the banking and technology sectors, in local and national government and as a Deputy CEO in the NHS.

He is a Board Trustee of the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) and a non-executive director of a small digital development company.

Mohinder Sawhney, was appointed a Non-Executive Director in 2021. A senior adviser to international companies and non-profit organisations, Mohinder is an economist who has extensive experience advising organisations large and small, including the World Bank, the Department for International Development, Diabetes UK, Hampshire County Council, and the Bank of England.

Mohinder, whose name is sometimes abbreviated to ‘Mindy’, is a speaker of Croatian, and has worked extensively in former Yugoslavia. In 2020 she completed her final third term as Chair of Revitalise, a charity providing respite breaks for disabled people and carers.

Sir Rick joined Oxford Health as a non-executive director in 2022. He has been the rector of Exeter College at the University of Oxford since 2014 and was previous head of two other universities, Greenwich and King’s College London (KCL).

He brings substantial senior leadership expertise, particularly in higher education and extensive experience in fostering academic-clinical links evidenced by his time as a board member of King’s Health Partners, the academic health sciences centre linking KCL with three NHS trusts.

He has wide-ranging boardroom experience having served on governing or advisory boards of the Museum of London, the Royal Academy of Music and the Francis Crick Institute. He is a former president of Universities UK and a former chair of Oxford’s Conference of Colleges and is currently a Pro-Vice­Chancellor (without portfolio) of Oxford University.

Sir Rick believes he can help Oxford Health deal with the many social, economic, cultural and political factors that an organisation responsible for mental and community services has to take into account.

Lucy was appointed as an Associate Non-executive Director in 2017 and became a Non-executive Director in 2019. She is a chartered accountant who has spent most of her career in the private and charity sectors.

She is a Non-executive Director (Vice Chair) of Soha Housing.

Andrea was appointed to the board in 2022. She has had a long and distinguished career in the NHS and was the former chief executive of North Bristol NHS Trust until she retired in 2020. Andrea started her career in 1977 as a student nurse and subsequently trained and practised as a midwife.

Before joining NBT, she worked nationally and regionally across a wide range of public health and health commissioning roles. At Bristol she oversaw a range of achievements, including leading the move into the multi-award winning, state-of-the-art Southmead hospital in 2014 and in 2019 the trust being recognised by the Care Quality Commission as “Good” overall with “Outstanding” care and leadership.

Andrea is also a governing board member at the University of West of England. She is an accredited coach/mentor working independently and as an Associate with Tricordant. She lives in Oxford with her husband.