I’ve spent more than 30 years working across adult social care, health and education and I’m still endlessly curious about how we can make things better.

My career has taken me from frontline services to national programmes, and through charities, government, the NHS, education and consultancy. I’ve led major work on workforce and digital transformation, built new teams and programmes, managed significant investment, advised organisations through change and worked with leaders and Boards across the sector. That breadth has shaped how I work now.

I’m interested in the connections between things. Workforce and technology, strategy and culture, policy and what actually happens in someone’s home. What we do today and the world we might be operating in ten years from now. Often, the most interesting work sits somewhere between the traditional boxes.

How I work

I like complicated problems, plain English and getting things done.

I’m naturally curious and I ask a lot of questions - particularly the ones that help us understand what problem we’re really trying to solve before racing towards an answer.

I believe change works best when the people affected by it are genuinely involved. That means creating space for different perspectives, being clear about what we know and what we don’t, and paying attention to the human side of change as much as the process.

I’m also a connector. After three decades in and around social care, I know a lot of people but more importantly, I enjoy bringing together people and ideas that might not otherwise meet.

Sometimes my role is to provide expertise. Sometimes it’s to challenge. Sometimes it’s to facilitate a conversation, spot a connection, bring an outside perspective or help turn a good idea into something that can actually happen. Usually, it’s a mixture.

Experience that spans the system

I’ve worked at local, regional and national level, including leading national programmes to support the digitisation of adult social care and helping to develop England’s first long-term workforce strategy for the sector.

My work has included workforce strategy and development, digital transformation, innovation, organisational change, leadership, learning and development and policy.

Alongside my executive and advisory work, I’ve held a number of trustee and non-executive roles. Sitting on the other side of the Board table has given me a different perspective on leadership, governance, risk and the realities of turning strategy into delivery.

I continue to work across different parts of the sector because I think that breadth matters. Social care’s biggest challenges won’t be solved by looking at workforce, technology, commissioning, leadership or policy in isolation.

What matters to me

Social care is fundamentally about people having good lives.

That can get lost when we talk about systems, workforce numbers, technology, regulation and funding. All of those things matter enormously but ultimately they are the infrastructure around people, relationships and communities.

I’m particularly interested in what comes next for social care - how expectations are changing, what technology and AI might make possible, how the workforce could evolve, and how organisations can prepare for a future that won’t simply be a slightly updated version of today.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I do enjoy working with people who are willing to ask good questions.

Away from work

I live in Wales with my husband and three dogs, who make sure there is very little danger of me spending my entire life behind a laptop.

I’m a drummer, an enthusiastic feeder of garden birds and a firm believer that some of the best thinking happens while walking a dog rather than sitting in a meeting.

And despite spending a lot of my working life thinking about technology, I remain very interested in the human stuff.