Andy Knox  is a dad and a doctor. He is Medical Director at NHS Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care Board, a GP Partner at Ash Trees Surgery, Carnforth, and Honorary Professor of Compassionate Leadership at Lancaster University Management School. His work focuses on improving population health, tackling health inequalities, system improvement, building cultures of joy and compassionate leadership. He co-founded the Lancashire and South Cumbria Population Health Leadership Academy and holds roles with the King’s Fund and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. He is author of Sick Society and was awarded an MBE for services to primary care and health inequalities.

Thomas Simons, Chief HR and OD Officer, NHS England

Thomas Simons is the Chief HR and OD Officer and Deputy National Director of People at NHS England and has been leading work with the Human Resources and Organisational Development (HR&OD) profession across the NHS. This includes the delivery and publication of ‘The future of NHS human resources and organisational development report’ which outlines the ten-year strategy for HR and OD services in the NHS and aims to make the NHS the best place to work for all NHS staff, as set out in the People Promise.

Under Thomas’ leadership, the NHS successfully rolled out a program that resulted in the vaccination of 1.5 million staff members during the COVID-19 pandemic. His efforts and achievements in the field of HR within the NHS have been recognised with Chartered Companion status from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), one of the highest levels of recognition in HR which is awarded to those who have demonstrated exceptional impact on the profession throughout their careers.

Neil Carberry was appointed as Chief Executive of the CIPD in September 2026, after almost 30 years at the crossroads of business and human resources leadership. He was Chief Executive of The Recruitment & Employment Confederation for over eight years, representing the UK’s talent businesses. Neil began his career in recruitment in 1999, before doing a post-graduate degree in Human Resources at the London School of Economics and specialising in employment relations. Joining the CBI in 2004, he stayed until 2018, ultimately leading UK domestic policy work for the organisation as Managing Director. Neil is a member of the Advisory Board of the Fair Work Agency, having also spent a decade as a member of the Council of the conciliation service ACAS and two terms as member of the Low Pay Commission. He was appointed an OBE in the King’s Birthday Honours List of 2025 for services to business and the economy. Neil is a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD, a Fellow of the RSA and a member of the Company of HR Professionals. Neil is also on the board of a Multi-Academy Trust in England and the Professional Services Business Council, part of the Government’s industrial Strategy. He is an RFU-qualified rugby referee and coach and is one of the 8000 co-owners who made Heart of Midlothian the UK’s biggest fan-owned football club.

Terry Roberts is Chief People Officer at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Chair of HPMA. In 2023 he won HPMA HR Director of the Year and was named a Top 20 HR Practitioner 2023. In 2023 he was named in the Health Service Journal Top 50 most influential BME Leader.

Prior to joining Oxford University Hospital NHS Trust he was at the Hillingdon Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, where he was Director of People and Organisational Development.

Prior to this role he was Director of Workforce at Kingston Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Associate Director of HR at Barts Health NHS Trust.

He has held a number of other senior HR positions in NHS trusts, as well as being seconded to NHS England as Joint Director of Equality and Inclusion.

Terry is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), has completed the Top Manager Programme with the King’s Fund, and is a certified Coach and Mediator.

Penny Pereira

Q Managing Director, the NHS Alliance

Penny leads Q: a diverse community of people across the UK and Ireland, collaborating to accelerate improvement in health and care.  Q brings people together to make progress on complex challenges, for example through our Improvement Lab and generates insights to influence how change happens. Following work with national leaders across the UK and Ireland, Q developed a framework and support service to enable transformation across systems.  Q has also developed a wide range of resources on quality management systems.

She’s co-author of multiple reports, for example on making improvement mainstream business, the challenge and potential of whole system flow, developing learning health systems in the UK. And the role of improvement in neighbourhood health. Penny co-hosts the leading improvement in health and care podcast.

Before joining NHS Alliance with the Q team, Penny spent 14 years at the Health Foundation, where she led the Foundation’s work on patient safety; improving flow, leadership development and achieving change through networks.

Penny has spent her career leading improvement work at local and national level in the NHS in England, with particular expertise in process and system redesign and leading strategic change across organisations.

Janine has an exceptional wealth of expertise across workforce strategy, organisational development, and cultural transformation. She is a highly respected HR leader within the healthcare ecosystem – including her role as Chief People and Strategy Officer at Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust and her strategic work across NHS England.

Stacey is Deputy Director at Q, a UK and Ireland membership community hosted by the NHS Alliance. She helps lead Q’s strategic development and day-to-day delivery, working with members, partners and colleagues to strengthen connections, support learning and enable positive change across health and care.

Her work focuses on bringing people together to tackle complex challenges, fostering collaboration across organisational boundaries and creating the conditions for improvement to flourish. She has led a range of national programmes spanning leadership development, organisational effectiveness, community building and system transformation.

Prior to joining Q, Stacey was part of the founding team of the NHS Leadership Academy, supporting the development and delivery of national leadership programmes. She remains particularly interested in how people, relationships and communities can be harnessed to create meaningful and lasting change.

Bernadette Thompson OBE is an accomplished HR leader specialising in culture change, inclusion and organisational transformation. Her NHS leadership roles have included Director of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at King’s College Hospital and Associate Director of Inclusion at Barts Health Trust.

Prior to joining the NHS, Bernadette spent 23 years in the Civil Service, working across major Government Departments and Agencies including the Ministry of Justice, Home Office, HM Treasury and Cabinet Office. She has developed and delivered strategies that embed inclusion, transform workplace cultures and strengthen talent pipelines, and spent five years as co-chair of a cross-Government race network, helping to drive change across the public sector.

A respected keynote speaker and facilitator, Bernadette shares her expertise on inclusive leadership, culture, diversity, engagement and wellbeing. Her contribution has been recognised through numerous awards, including an OBE for services to Diversity and Inclusion, the Zenith Global Healthcare Leadership Award and the RKY Careers Diversity and Inclusion Legacy Award.

Bernadette is also an author, publishing Silent Echoes in 2025 to raise awareness of workplace bullying. She is a Trustee of Black Inclusion Week and continues to champion inclusion and meaningful change within and beyond the workplace.

Michael is a graduate of the NHS Management Training Scheme with 30 years’ experience of working in and with the NHS and has been a Partner at KPMG since 2016.

He is the Global Lead for Health and Care Workforce Solutions at KPMG a role which gives him oversight and understanding of the activities underway in 72 countries to address the global workforce shortage.  Since 2024 he has been leading work on the impact of AI on the workforce across all sectors of the economy, providing insight into how different employers are employing AI, assessing its impact, and on the issues HR must consider as AI becomes mainstream.

Michael is a member of the KPMG team supporting NHS England with the scaling HR programme and a Visiting Lecturer on Healthcare Workforce at University College London

Claire Scrafton is an accomplished NHS People leader with extensive experience leading large-scale workforce transformation, organisational development and people services across the health sector. Throughout her career in the private and public sectors, she has championed innovative approaches to workforce strategy, digital transformation and shared services, delivering measurable improvements in staff experience, operational performance and organisational culture. During 2025/26 as Chair of the HPMA North West Branch, Claire led the development of the HPMA Supervision and Support Toolkit for NHS People Professionals, helping to strengthen reflective practice, wellbeing and resilience across the profession. A respected speaker and thought leader, she is passionate about developing future leaders and creating high-performing, people-centred workplaces that deliver outstanding care.

Tim Keogh’s mission is to spread kindness in healthcare, because kinder healthcare is safer and more effective. 

Tim is co-founder of A Kind Life, author of “Kinder Conversations: talk it out without falling out” an Amazon no. 1 bestseller in 20 categories, and host of the ‘Kinder Conversations’ podcast.

Over the past 15 years, A Kind Life have delivered masterclasses, workshops and training sessions to more than 100,000 people working in healthcare. In over 75 healthcare organisations, they have embedded practical behavioural techniques and useful resources to create kinder working cultures – delivering proven improvements to staff engagement and patient outcomes across the NHS.

Dr Rebecca Courtney-Walker is a Lead Consultant Clinical Psychologist with over 25 years of NHS experience, including specialisation in organisational development during her doctoral training. She is a qualified coach and throughout her career has supported organisational development in the organisations she has worked in. Since 2023, she has been the Trust wide lead for Trauma Informed Practice & Approaches for Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS FT and is also North-East and North Cumbria regional lead for the ICB Trauma Informed training and implementation workstream; she has also contributed to the national development of a trauma informed nation. She also works outside of the NHS as a Trauma Informed Consultant, most recently with the HPMA North West, collaborating with Tim Keogh (A Kind Life) to develop the HPMA People Professionals Supervision and Support toolkit, which adopts a trauma informed approach to support those who support others. Rebecca is also leading on the evaluation of the toolkit and whether people professionals are experiencing its use in a trauma informed way. She is passionate about trauma informed workforce and organizational development as a ‘trauma informed intervention’ for organisations and sees people professionals as key leaders and innovators in developing trauma informed cultures and practices.

Andrew Cooper is the Development Director for the HPMA’s Avoiding Harm programme. He also Head of the Avoidable Employee Harm Programme in Aneurin Bevan University Health Board and leads the ‘Improving employee investigations’ work in NHS Wales with Health Education and Improvement Wales. He is currently leading research exploring the impact of the disciplinary process on individuals and organisations.

Liz has been CPO of Devon Partnership NHS Trust since September 2022. She joined from North Bristol NHS Trust, where she was Director of People for six years. She is a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). Liz has worked in the NHS across the South of England for over 25 years, in areas such as acute care, former Strategic Health Authorities and NHS England, as well as community and mental health settings.

Liz is a qualified workplace mediator and an experienced facilitator in the NHS 360-degree feedback tool. She has a particular interest in workplace culture and behaviours and the impact of these on the success and wellbeing of organisations and their people.

Liz has been the HPMA branch lead for the South West since February 2025.

Simon has spent 20 years building and leading teams, and providing consultancy and training that drives lasting change. He’s committed to helping people shift mindsets, tackle root causes, and unlock potential, bringing a personal belief in strengths-based development backed by real-world results.

With over 20 years’ experience in public sector practice and leadership before founding The Wellbeing Collective, Amy has a strong track record in managing and leading services, as well as designing and facilitating hundreds of development programmes for thousands of staff, managers, and senior leaders. She is a coach, mediator and Organisational Development specialist, certified in Appreciative Inquiry and Positive Psychology, and a Master Practitioner in Neurolinguistic Programming. Amy has led successful programmes of work for organisations across London, as well as for clients across the UK. Her expertise lies in advanced communication and supporting people to have effective, confident, and constructive conversations.

As Co-Founder and CEO of SARD, Kevin Monk is driven by a passion for technology and a commitment to improving the NHS.

His journey into entrepreneurship began with a deep love for technology – a passion for its ability to solve problems and streamline tasks. Creating a business from this was a serendipitous outcome for him. Yet, the most surprising and rewarding discovery for him has been the power of people. For Kevin, the most gratifying aspect of this venture has been witnessing SARD’s talented, motivated colleagues thrive in their roles.

SARD has built a supportive, dynamic team that delivers meaningful change for its clients. To Kevin’s surprise, it’s not the technology itself that drives SARD’s success, but the consulting and teaching that truly make a difference.

Kevin’s background is rooted in engineering and technology. With a degree in computer engineering and electronics, he and his Co-Founder Phil Bottle embarked on a mission to revolutionise NHS operations – a mission that continues to this day.