Trustees
The members of the board of trustees are:
Anna Walker - Chairman
As well as her post at the Healthcare Commission, Anna has also undertaken various senior government roles including Deputy Director at the Office of Telecommunications (OFTEL) during the mid-1990s and Director general at the Department for Trade and Industry, responsible for the Government’s energy policy during the late 1990s. She has also had responsibility for land use and rural affairs at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and is currently the Chair of the Office of the Rail Regulator and a member of the board of Consumer Focus.She joined Young Epilepsy as a Trustee in June 2009.
Helen Cross
Professor Helen Cross is The Prince of Wales’s Chair of Childhood Epilepsy and Honorary Consultant in Paediatric Neurology at UCL-Institute of Child Health, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Trust, London and Young Epilepsy, Lingfield. She qualified from Birmingham University in 1984, trained in paediatrics in Birmingham and subsequently in paediatric neurology in London, obtaining her PhD in 1998.Although she has a significant research commitment, she has been involved specifically in developing epilepsy services, particularly the epilepsy surgery programme, working across four departments. She is Chair of the ILAE Commission for Paediatrics, Assistant Secretary to the Board of the European Paediatric Neurology Society, Chair of the Trustees of Epilepsy Research UK and President of the British Paediatric Neurology Association. She is on the Editorial Board of Epileptic Disorders, Developmental Medicine Child Neurology and European Journal of Paediatric Neurology. In 2007 she was awarded an Ambassador for Epilepsy Award by the ILAE. Her research interests include neuroimaging as well as the role of early surgical intervention and new treatments in childhood epilepsy. In addition she is involved in national and international collaboration in the development of epilepsy services, teaching and research.
June Davies
Currently Chair of Young Epilepsy's Education Governing Body.Following an early period in the Civil Service, June has enjoyed a long career in the field of education as an Ofsted and Adult Learning inspector, as a College Deputy Principal and as a practitioner. Since 2001, June has also been working as an educational consultant, specialising in the areas of management, quality assurance and curriculum for a wide range of educational providers and government-funded organisations.
Kathryn Cearns
Kathryn is the Consultant Accountant at Herbert Smith Freehills LLP, an international law firm. She trained at one of the big accountancy firms and has in the past been a project director at the UK Accounting Standards Board, where she dealt with charity accounting issues.
Kathryn is chairman of the ICAEW Financial Reporting Committee and also Chairman of the Financial Reporting Advisory Board to HM Treasury. She chairs the Young Epilepsy Audit and Risk Committee.
Mike Plant
Mike spent most of his career in the foreign exchange markets, both in New York and London. He left his last post in the City as Chief Executive of Spot Foreign Exchange for ICAP plc. He was also a member of the Bank of England Foreign Exchange Joint Standing Committee.More recently, he set up Broadham Care Ltd to develop and operate Learning Disability homes in the South East, bringing new quality standards to the learning disability sector.
Tony Chalkley
Tony qualified as a Chartered Surveyor in 1984 and is a Member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and holds a degree in Estate Management, His career started at one of the first London Docklands developments for Taylor Woodrow at St. Katharine’s Dock next to Tower Bridge.The development comprised mixed use office, hotel, residential and commercial development and won many awards for innovative and sympathetic refurbishment and new build. Tony then moved to consultancy to advise on development and commercial lettings throughout the South East. In 1995 Tony was part of a management buyout of commercial surveying practice Grant and Partners which recently merged to form Grant Mills Wood of which Tony is Managing Director.
Tony is married with three children.
Michael Sydney
Michael has spent an eventful life, at the Rank Organisation, Reed Paper Group, a spell as a management consultant, Merrydown Wine Company and then running companies owned by the Rothschild family. He then spent 25 years as a hatter, running Herbert Johnson, moving on to James Lock before setting up his own hatter, Harrison Hillhouse. He also found time to take up livestock farming. This became very useful when he became, first a District Councillor at Tandridge, representing Dormansland and Felcourt, and latterly as Surrey County Councillor representing the Lingfield Division, an area which is over 90% Green Belt. He is Chairman of the Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and a strong supporter of wood fuel as a contributor to the aim to develop more sustainable energy use.Michael is the Surrey County Council representative on the Young Epilepsy Board of Trustees.
Ben Osborn
Having graduated from Leeds University in 1998, Ben joined the pharmaceutical industry with Pfizer Inc. Over the past 13 years he has held a variety of commercial roles of increasing responsibility in the UK and European Oncology business. He has a keen interest in healthcare reform and access to create better outcomes for patients.Ben has a deep understanding of the issues faced by children with epilepsy as his son has a rare epileptic condition.
Angelo Rombo
Co-founder and former Managing Director of London Care PLC, an organisation providing Domiciliary Care and specialist support services to a wide range of service users. Angelo had previously held senior financial and commercial roles in the telecommunications industry with NEC Corporation and IBM UK.Through personal circumstances he has for a long time had a particular interest in the field of learning disabilities and associated epilepsy conditions.
Phil Hughes
Phil until recently was the CFO for Castrol, the global lubricants company and was a non Executive Director of Castrol India PLC. Most of his career has been working for BP in various commercial, planning and accounting roles in UK and abroad.He trained as a Chartered Accountant in Oxford and obtained his degree from Loughborough University.
Michael Kirilloff
Michael retired in 2009 following a 22 year international career as a Business Executive at Shell International Petroleum Company. Michael has a degree in Mechanical Engineering and a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) from Texas A&M University, USA.
As part of his executive development he was exposed to many different businesses across various countries and regions. In his formative years he led teams in sales, fuel retail networks and in building and developing a countrywide franchise of convenience stores.
He has extensive experience in building and developing new business and created and led a new to industry venture called Shell Energy Efficiency, which he set up in a few countries. He was also the lead non-executive for Shell on the board of the JV acquisition of the largest gas distribution utility in South America.
He has gained significant experience throughout his career in change management and in acquisitions and divestments. He was also continuously exposed to sound strategy setting and planning, solid governance practices and to performance based management.
Nigel Kennedy
Nigel Kennedy attended Oxford University from where he joined the oil industry, working in London and Paris, primarily in marketing. For the past 25 years, he has been a public relations consultant based in London and worked for international communications consultancy, Grayling, for 16 years. As Grayling’s Group CEO, Nigel was responsible for all of Grayling’s operations in the UK, continental Europe, the USA and Asia where he established businesses in Singapore, Hong Kong and Thailand.Alongside his management responsibilities, Nigel has always remained a frontline communications consultant, specialising in corporate and business-to-business communications, public affairs, financial PR and issue and crisis management. He has had particular experience in devising and managing international programmes.
He left Grayling at the end of 2009 and is now a self-employed public relations and marketing consultant.
Nigel is married, has four children and lives in London.
Anita Devlin
Anita has been a consultant in paediatric neurology at the Newcastle-upon-Tyne NHS FT since 2002. She graduated from University College London Medical School in 1988 and has trained in Oxford, Southampton, Aberdeen, London and Newcastle gaining a higher doctorate (MD) for research in 2001.Anita has composed several successful business plans to expand and improve regional services and set up the regional paediatric epilepsy network in the North East. She was a member of the award winning team, which produced national training courses in paediatric epilepsy (PET courses) and has published in peer review journals as well as reviewing manuscripts and guidelines for publication.
Anita graduated from the London Business School Executive MBA programme in 2009 and co-authored an NHS turnaround case currently used as a business school teaching case at London Business School, on the NHS Senior Leadership Programme and is available to other business schools via the European Repository of business school teaching cases.
