John Craig
Chief Executive 

John joined Care City as Chief Executive in October 2016. Over the last two years, John has established Care City as a key player in the East London health and care system. He has continued to develop the programme of work, securing funding for the rollout of successful innovations and maintains a relentless focus on the two founding programme priorities of the Wave 1 Test Bed and NHS Healthy New Town at Barking Riverside. 

Prior to joining Care City, John spent five years leading Innovation Unit, an independent non-profit that develops radically better, low-cost public services. Through his leadership, the organisation grew to thirty staff and extended to have international reach. Before his time at Innovation Unit, John worked as a Policy Advisor at the Cabinet Office and at the think-tank, Demos as a senior researcher.

Hannah Harniess
Head of Projects

Hannah has recently joined Care City as Head of Projects. She is interested in the social determinants of health and a cross-sector approach to population health as well as the potential of technology to transform health outcomes. She has an MSc in Social Epidemiology from the London School of Economics and also completed a Darzi Fellowship 2015-16, from which she obtained a PG Cert in Leadership in Health from the University of Leeds.  

Hannah joined the NHS in 2002 as a Physiotherapist and worked clinically across North East London, leading on numerous service improvement and QI projects. However, most recently she was Programme Director for the DigitalHealth.London Accelerator Programme. In this role, she was responsible for delivering an in-depth programme of support to high-potential digital health companies in order to speed up the spread and adoption of digital technology in the health and care system. Hannah worked with NHS organisations across London, providing leadership in digital innovation as well as working closely with City Hall, NHSE and the Arm’s Length Bodies on wider system changes needed to facilitate innovation in the public sector. The role also involved collaborations with academic partners to evaluate the impact of digital innovation. Whilst at the Accelerator, Hannah also worked as Programme Director for Technology at the Health Innovation Network. Her most recent output in this role was to lead a pan-London Digital Outpatients collaborative on behalf of NHSI, supporting 16 London Trusts to implement digital health projects. 

Outside of work, Hannah enjoys running, travel and keeping up with her three growing children.

Lindsey Carter
Senior Administrator

Lindsey joined the team in January 2015 and is responsible for supporting all areas of Care City administration, including all operational areas and management of day to day running of the organisation.

Lindsey has previously worked for KPMG, Hammonds Law Firm and Relate and has now moved to support the development of Care City due to her interest in Health, Social Care and community development.

Lindsey has a love for learning, walking, socialising and fashion.  She enjoys spending time with her children and family, seeking new adventures.

Rachel Fuller
Communications Lead

Rachel joined the Care City team as Communications Lead in January 2016. Further to delivering the Care City launch event she identified an opportunity to use her marketing and communications experience to build the Care City brand across the local community and wider health and social care environment, building communication stakeholders and designing the communications strategy for the Test Bed Programme among others. 

Prior to joining Care City, Rachel was Marketing Manager for Bupa International where she was responsible for driving revenue growth and brand awareness via IFA, multinational broker and partner networks and engaging provider networks through effective marketing and communication strategies.

Rachel’s 20 years communications experience has been across many different industries including finance, insurance, civil engineering, education and sport.

Rachel spent a whirlwind year travelling the world – 26 countries in 12 months – but is now very happy simply walking her beloved border collie around Southsea Common where she now resides.

Zella King
Senior Associate

Claire Stidston
Test Bed Programme Manager

Claire rejoined the Care City team in February 2019, having previously managed Wave 1 of the Care City Test Bed. 

Claire has extensive programme management and service design experience working with organisations in the NHS, local authorities and the voluntary sector, to plan and implement joint health and social care and innovative approaches across the system. Particularly passionate about early intervention, with parity of esteem across mental and physical health, Claire is focused on helping public sector organisations to think more strategically, to ensure that the ever expanding and ageing population, can continue to be effectively supported. 

In recent years, alongside her work in the public sector, Claire has pursued her passion for design through establishing her own ethical and sustainable clothing brand, and co-founding a curated platform for brands, artists and designers to showcase their work. 

Claire has a BSc in Psychology and is currently studying part time for a MSc in Health and Medical Sciences at University College London. 

Mary France Jardiel
Project Lead

Since joining the health and social care sector in 2011, she remains passionate in reducing health inequalities, supporting healthy ageing, increasing awareness and implementation of social prescribing and the use of innovative digital solutions.

Mez joined Care City in January 2018 as a Skills for Care Graduate Trainee. She provided project leadership and support to the testing of a digital social prescribing tool in primary care, under the NHSE Wave 1 Test Bed Programme. Following its success, she is leading the rollout of the tool across GP practices in the LB Barking and Dagenham whilst simultaneously working with the innovator to improve the tool based on patient and staff feedback.

Since securing a permanent role at Care City, Mez continues to collaborate with service users, frontline staff and innovators to design and test digital innovations that has the potential to improve of patient care, experience and outcome. Mez holds a BSc in Biomedical Science from Queen Mary, University of London and holds two leadership and management qualifications.

Julie Atkins
Project Lead

Julie is a core member of the Innovation Test Bed Wave 2 Programme Team, focussed on the co-design of new care pathways and workforce development for Expert Carers, Digital Prescribers and Administrator Patient Supporters.

Julie comes to Care City with a wide range of experience in public services. She has worked in the civil service, social services, the voluntary sector, a Community Interest Company and the NHS. In all her work she has strived to ensure that users of the services and their families to have a voice, be listened to and feel valued for their experiences and insights.

Julie has been involved in delivering self-management courses to people with long term conditions, a peer led service for many years across London and for the past 6 years with NELFT.

Julie lives near the sea in Kent, is a trained Feldenkrais teacher, Executive Coach, NELFT Quality Improvement Facilitator and Mentor and is learning to play the saxophone

Shilpi Begum
Project Lead

Shilpi joined the Care City team in Sept 2019. Prior to this, she was with North West London Collaboration of CCGs where she was a Programme Coordinator for the WSIC Dashboards. During her time there, she gained first hand experience in delivering a digital tool within Primary Care. Shilpi is passionate about how digital innovations can help to transform the healthcare sector and improve patient experience and outcomes.

Shilpi has an MBA in Healthcare Management from Coventry University and is currently enrolled into Cohort 2 of the NHS Digital Pioneer Fellowship hosted by DigitalHealth.London. This programme supports 'change makers' to design and lead transformation projects underpinned by digital innovations.

Amber Gibney
Senior Data Analyst

Amber joined the team on secondment from the Health Innovation Network, south London’s AHSN, in April 2020 to work with the Care City Cohort linked dataset to share insights with our local health and care workforce.

A maths geek, with a passion for finding innovative ways to use data to answer questions, tell stories, generate ideas and drive change, Amber has worked across a range of projects in both academia and the NHS. Recent work includes building a probabilistic early warning system based on machine learning/Artificial Intelligence technologies to promptly identify high-risk patients needing urgent care during the clinical triage process in A&E,  as well as developing a bespoke desktop application to enable non-analytical members of the ESCAPE-pain for backs project team to monitor clinical outcomes.

Amber has undergraduate degrees in English Literature and Drama as well as in Maths and Physics. When not happily coding, she is usually running, cycling, climbing and trying to compile a list of the top 100 albums of the last decade.

Ben Williams
Project Lead

Ben joined Care City with a background in social care development including age-friendly models and accessible design; and human rights advocacy, especially with regards to the Mental Capacity Act; and supporting carers. 

Ben set up the Dementia Friendly London Housing group working with the Mayor of London to create a dementia friendly capital city. He was also on the NICE committee who developed the current national Dementia guidance (NG97), and continues to be an Expert Adviser for NICE. 

He recently developed a project between the UCL and a social care provider to create customised 360 degree video content for residents who were unable to leave their homes, but can go on trips out with virtual relativity headsets.

Ben is based in Central London where he continues to write radio comedy that will eventually be turned down by many, many reputable organisations.

Julia Prudhoe
Project Lead

Julia has recently joined the team as a Project Lead. Prior to this, she worked as a Senior Project Officer at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, working in the Improvement team. She led on pieces of work to implement the Model for Improvement method for staff to follow when involved in Quality Improvement projects. She also coordinated the Flow Coaching Academy programme funded by the Health Foundation. This involved skilling up two coaches who are assigned a patient pathway of care to improve and implement positive change. Julia remains passionate about QI and coaching. 

Outside of work, Julia is part of a West End Musical choir and has recently performed at Chelsea Flower Show. 

Chelsea Greyson
Project Support Officer

Chelsea graduated from the University of Northampton in 2018, with a BA hon in Geography with International Development. Soon after she went on to join the NHS as an administrative clerk within their surgical and pre-operative departments across multiple sites. After gaining first-hand insight into how the healthcare environment is run from an administrative perspective, she wanted to pursue a career that would allow her to make a positive contribution to enhancing the services.

Joining Care City in July 2019 she aims to facilitate the smooth running of projects by continuing to adhere to the Trust’s values and supporting colleagues where needed. Outside of work, she regularly partakes in yoga and guided meditation classes and has a passion for working towards the empowerment of BAME and LGBT+ groups.

Nicola Kelly
Administrator

I joined the NHS in 2015 as a hospital receptionist moving on to provide administrative assistance to numerous clinical services. I came to Care City in November 2016 a friendly face to meet and greet everyone.  I provide front of house support.

I manage and organise Care City training rooms. I take all room bookings and deal with the invoicing.

Alexa Kerr-Dineen
Skills for Care Graduate

Alexa joined Care City in October 2019 as part of the Skills for Care Graduate Management Programme after graduating from the University of Bath in 2018 with a BA in Modern Languages. Post-graduation she was yet to experience the 'lightbulb moment' that would dictate her next steps, so she spent a year as a nanny and a bartender to give her brain a rest after umpteen years of education and figure out her next move. Pursuing a career in healthcare has proven to be a bit of a U-turn from her arts degree, but caring for people, be that directly or indirectly, has been central to her personal ethos and lifestyle. 

Outside of work, you'll find her spending time with her family and being a fun-loving aunt who will always say yes to chocolate before bedtime, reading a good book or keeping active at various fitness classes, Zumba being a personal favourite! 

Jenny Shand
Executive Director

Jenny has been with Care City since April 2015, working with stakeholders to develop the strategy and programme of work for the organisation, and securing grants to fund our activities.

Jenny also works and UCLPartners, our local Academic Health Science Partnership, where she supports partners to deliver integrated care, with a particular focus on frailty, services for older people and support for carers. Jenny has a wide experience of healthcare in different contexts - as a researcher, a hospital manager and as a consultant at McKinsey.

She holds a Masters in Public Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and is currently completing a PhD at University College London.

Jenny can be contacted via her email

Prof Martin Utley
Care City Researcher in Residence

Professor Martin Utley is Director of the UCL Clinical Operational Research Unit and Researcher in Residence at Care City. His role at Care City is to help strengthen academic presence in the boroughs it serves. This includes embedding evidence-based interventions, deploying robust but pragmatic evaluation methods and developing Care City's portfolio of research work. Martin is leading the evaluation of the Care City NHS England Innovation Test Bed.

Martin can be contacted via M.Utley@ucl.ac.uk

Dr Sonya Crowe
Improvement Scientist in Residence

Sonya is an Operational Researcher from UCL who joined the Care City team in January to help develop and embed robust approaches to service improvement and to evaluate its Health and Social Care Innovation Test Bed. She will be working with stakeholders across organisational boundaries to identify where, in a system, improvements are needed and using metrics and analysis to support this.

Sonya can be contacted via sonya.crowe@ucl.ac.uk

Laura Gillet
Care City Administrator

Laura joined the Care City team in December 2018 as an administrator, supporting the project team and managing reception and bookings.

Previously working as an apprentice for the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, Laura has an NVQ Level 2 in Business administration. She is excited to face a new role and challenges and is thoroughly looking forward to developing new skills within the Health and Social Sector.