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.

Mark Caffrey
Senior Project Lead

Prior to joining Care City, Mark spent three years with Tempo Time Credits (formerly Spice Time Credits), a rapidly scaling social enterprise that develops innovative volunteering and service transformation projects for communities and the public sector. As Senior Programmes Manager, Mark provided leadership and development of new delivery models and an organisational evaluation strategy, also leading on growth and business development for two regional delivery areas and a national healthy ageing programme in partnership with Nesta / DCMS.

Mark is Senior Project Lead at Care City and will be leading on Wave 2 of our successful NHS England Test Bed programme.

Mary France Jardiel
Project Lead

Mez joined Care City in January 2018 as a Skills for Care Graduate Trainee to work as a Project Lead for the NHS Test Bed Programme. The Skills for Care Graduate Management Programme aims to develop the next generation of leaders for health and social care by fast-tracking graduates towards leadership roles within innovative health and social care settings.

Through her experiences working in a care home and volunteering in hospitals across different NHS Trusts, Mez has been exposed to the problems facing the ageing population and the most deprived communities. She is passionate in reducing health inequalities, supporting healthy ageing, increasing awareness and implementation of social prescribing and the use of innovative solutions to improve of patient care and outcome.

Mez holds a BSc in Biomedical Science from Queen Mary, University of London and is currently undertaking two leadership and management qualifications: Mary Seacole Programme from the NHS Leadership Academy and Charter Management Institute’s Level 5 Diploma in Management and Leadership. 

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

Beth Carty
Project Lead – Healthy New Towns

Beth graduated Durham University in 2016, with a BA in Combined Honours in Arts. Upon leaving University, she secured a place on the NHS Graduate Management Training Scheme, where she specialised in General Management. Beth undertook a wide variety of roles during her time on the scheme, working in community, acute and private sector settings. Through her exposure to a range of different healthcare environments, Beth found her ‘niche’ and interests predominately lay in community care, transformation, sustainability and public health. 

These interests led her to Care City in 2018, where she acts as a Project Lead. In her role at Care City, Beth provides leadership and support to the ‘Healthy New Towns’ development at Barking Riverside, creating new models of care through partnership working, evidence and innovation. Outside of work, Beth is currently studying for a Post Graduate Diploma in Healthcare Leadership, and (when she has time!) enjoys reading, blogging, spending time with family and friends and fundraising for charity. 

Simran Janjua
Project Lead

Simran joined Care City in October 2017 as a Project Lead for the NHS England Test Bed Programme. Since joining, she has been working with frontline health and social care professionals to design, test and understand the impact of digital innovations in their local systems. 

Simran is a mental health pharmacist by background with experience leading the implementation of a new clinical pharmacy service across both acute and community settings. Most recently Simran completed the Darzi Fellowship in Clinical Leadership programme during which she based at the Health Innovation Network, south London’s Academic Health Science Network. 

Simran is passionate about taking a holistic approach to wellbeing and have recently started yoga and mindfulness classes for women in Barking. When I am not at work I am most likely experimenting in the kitchen, playing with paint or volunteering.  

Teju Sogbetun
Project Lead

Teju joined Care City as a Project Lead in November 2018. She holds a degree in Medical Science and a Masters of Public Health. She has previously worked for HMRC and as a Student Support Worker. More recently, Teju worked at Public Health England within their Parliamentary Team, assisting with answering Parliamentary Questions, producing briefings and submissions for ministers and being the first point of contact for all parliamentary and ministerial work.

Teju is interested in the social determinants of health with particular interest in the relationship between an individual’s built environment and its impact on health. Outside of work, she enjoys going to the gym and spending time with friends and family.

Teju is also a trained Mental Health First Aider – so feel free to get in touch!

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.

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.