Non-executive directors

Charles has been Chairman of Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust since December 2022.

He is former Chair of both the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity, roles he held between 2016 and 2022, and King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust from 2022 to 2024.

Charles has had a long and distinguished career working at board level across a number of different sectors, including very senior leadership roles at NM Rothschild and GE Capital Europe. He is Chairman of VIVID Housing, a leading housing association and housing development company in south England.

He is a strong supporter of the arts and has served as the lead non-executive director at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. He spent 6 years volunteering with Trinity Hospice, providing support to patients and families at the end of life. He was made a CBE in 2022 for his services to culture and health.

He has a passion for the NHS and a strong desire to support our local communities. He aims to use his connections to the life sciences sector and extensive leadership and commercial experience to support our organisations to continue to provide exceptional care to patients.

Sally joined the Board in February 2021 having previously been a non-executive director and chair of Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Foundation Trust. Sally was made a life peer in 2001.

She has served as Minister of State in the Cabinet Office, Political Secretary to the Prime Minister and Director of Government Relations at 10 Downing Street, Chair of OFSTED and board member of the Olympic Delivery Authority. Sally is Master of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, a post she has held since 2019.

Sally chairs the Heart, Lung and Critical Care Clinical Group Board and is a non-executive member of all other clinical group boards.

Felicity has considerable senior leadership and national and international strategic planning experience. She was Director General for Public and International Health until her retirement from the Civil Service in June 2016. Prior to that, Felicity was Director of the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit. After qualifying in medicine in 1980 at St Bartholomew’s Medical College, London, she completed an International MBA.

Since her retirement in 2016, Felicity has been both a member and Chair of the Independent Oversight and Advisory Committee for WHO Health Emergencies (IOAC). She is also a Visiting Professor at the Institute of Global Health, Imperial College, London was non-executive director of Mediclinic International plc, now adviser to Mediclinic Group Ltd, an international private healthcare services group, and non-executive director of Halcyon Topco Ltd (Sciensus Group). Felicity joined the Trust Board in September 2016 and became Senior Independent Director in June 2023. She also chairs the Cancer and Surgery Clinical Group Board.

Miranda is a business expert, board advisor, investor and philanthropist across many sectors, with a career that spans financial service, law, charity and health. Before joining the Bar of England and Wales as a barrister and senior banking lawyer, she worked as an investment banker. She has served as an equality commissioner for Lambeth Council and is the Founder, President and Board Chair of The Miranda Brawn Diversity Leadership Foundation.

Miranda is an award-winning champion for diversity, inclusion and sustainability. She commenced 'The Brawn Review: Boardroom Sustainability, Inclusion and Corporate Governance' during her time at the University of Oxford as a Senior Visiting Fellow. Miranda chairs the Trust’s People, Culture and Education Board Committee.

Nilkunj brings diverse experience as an executive and non-executive director, having worked across the technology, healthcare, and telecommunications sectors. Until recently, he served as a non-executive director at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, a position he held since November 2015.

Previously, Nilkunj was regional director of McKinsey & Company's health strategy and systems practice. He also served as a non-executive director at Epsom and St. Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust and chaired the South West London Elective Orthopaedic Centre (SWLEOC).

Currently, Nilkunj is an executive at Oracle, where he channels his passion for health technology, digitally enabled transformation, and the utilisation of data to enhance patient care and support caregivers. He holds an MBA from INSEAD and is a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.

Nilkunj chairs the Trust’s Audit and Risk Committee.

Simon is a chartered accountant and was a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC), where his career spanned more than 35 years. He has a depth of expertise in finance and audit, as well as a thorough understanding of governance across a range of sectors, technical rigor and board experience at the highest level. Simon is also a member of Council at the Royal Academy of Arts, non- executive director of Bevan Brittan LLP a national law firm, and a non-executive director of Otsuka Pharmaceutical Europe Limited. He is also a non-executive director of King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

Simon joined the Guy’s and St Thomas’ Board in February 2021, having previously been a non- executive director of Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust. He chairs the Finance, Commercial and Investment Committee.

Deirdre joined the Trust on 1 July 2023.

She has non-executive experience on the boards of a number of healthcare bodies including the Care Quality Commission, the General Medical Council, NHS Blood and Transplant, the Health Research Authority and the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust.

She is also a professor of paediatric hepatology at the University of Birmingham and Consultant Paediatric Hepatologist at Birmingham Women’s and Children’s Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. She set up the Paediatric Liver Unit at Birmingham Women’s and Children's Hospital which provides a national and international service for children with liver failure and undergoing liver and small bowel transplantation.

She is currently the National Clinical Lead for the Paediatric Hepatitis C Operational Delivery Network.

Pauline joined the Trust on 1 July 2023.

She has experience working in Board-level roles across the NHS, including as Chief Executive at Luton and Dunstable NHS Foundation Trust. From 2002 to 2010, she was the Executive Director responsible for Patient Safety at the World Health Organisation.

Since 2016, she has been NHS England’s National Director for Emergency and Elective Care working closely with Government, the service, and a wide range of stakeholders.

Pauline also has non-executive experience - she is presently Chair of Beaumont Hospital in Dublin and Chair of Lifebox, a global non-profit organisation that she co-founded with the aim of making surgery and anaesthesia safer worldwide.

Ian joined the Trust following the merger with Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Foundation Trust. He joined Royal Brompton and Harefield in 2020 as a non-executive director.

He has been a senior executive with over 30 years' experience across the public and private sector. His previous roles include interim chief executive of the Government Property Agency, where he was asked by the Cabinet Office to set up and manage central Government's £3bn office, warehouse and science estate.

He was also a group property director of Kingfisher PLC where he set the strategy for their capital investment programme and retail distribution portfolio of 1,000 stores across ten countries. 

Ian has also been a member of the board of HM Courts and Tribunals Service and the Queen Victoria Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in East Grinstead.

Professor Shitij Kapur is the Vice-Chancellor and President of King’s College London. He returned to lead King’s in June 2021, following more than four years at the University of Melbourne, where he was Dean and Assistant Vice Chancellor (Health) for the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences and interim Deputy Vice Chancellor (International).

Shitij is well known at King’s having previously served, between 2007 to 2016, as Assistant Principal (Academic Performance), Dean and Head of School for the Institute of Psychiatry and the founding Executive Dean of the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (IoPPN).

Shitij is a member of the College Council and also serves on the Governance and Nominations Committee, the Estates Strategy Committee, the Finance Committee, the Investment Subcommittee, the Governance & Nominations Committee, the Chairs' Committee and the Fellowships and Honorary Degrees Committee.

During his time in Melbourne, he significantly increased the educational footprint of the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, introducing innovative models of learning, increasing both research income and impact, while doubling philanthropic support. In collaboration with colleagues across the university and medical research Institutes he was involved in creating the Centre for the Digital Transformation of Health and establishing the Aikenhead Centre for Medical Discovery. He Co-Chaired the Australian Million Minds Mission and during the Covid pandemic took a lead role in bringing together scholars from the Group of Eight Universities to deliver the ‘Roadmap to Recovery – a Report for the Nation’.

He graduated from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in 1988. He went on to complete his residency training in Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, and a Fellowship in Schizophrenia and a PhD in Neuroscience from the Institute of Medical Science, both at the University of Toronto.

Shitij is recognised worldwide for his own research on understanding psychosis and antipsychotic treatment – with over 300 papers, numerous presentations and an H-index of over a hundred. While at King’s he led NEWMEDS, an international consortium of scientists from 19 institutions from nine EU countries, which was one of the largest academic-industry research collaboration projects in its time.

He has received many awards and honorary fellowships including the honours of Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (UK), Fellow of the Academy of Health and Medical Sciences (Australia) and Fellow of King's College London. He has an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Copenhagen.