Sir Peter Dixon (Chair)
Mr Julian Baust (Vice Chair)
Ms Helene Brenchley-King
Miss Sue Browell
Mr Gavin Cookman
Ms Gill Fine
Mr Noah Franklin (Treasurer)
Dr Kamila Hawthorne
Dr David McCance
Mr Frank Moxon
Mr Gerald Tosh
Sir Peter Dixon
Sir Peter Dixon took up the post of Chairman of Diabetes UK on 1 January 2013.
Peter brings to the charity a depth of senior-level experience with the NHS and other public bodies. For ten years he served as a Council Member and Trustee for the NHS Confederation, the membership body for all organisations that commission and provide NHS services. He has also been Chairman of University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and the Enfield and Haringey Health Authority.
He currently chairs the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee, which is community pharmacy’s national representative on NHS matters, as well as the Barking, Havering and Redbridge NHS Trust which runs King George’s Hospital and Queen’s Hospital, Romford. He also serves as a Trustee of The Children’s Cancer & Leukaemia Group and is a Member of the Norfolk Broads Authority.
Peter has been a board member in registered social landlords for nearly 40 years and was Chairman of the Housing Corporation, the government’s national affordable housing agency, from October 2003 until December 2008. He was knighted for services to housing in 2009.
In his earlier career, Peter held a number of roles in business, banking, and corporate finance. He is a graduate of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and holds a Masters degree in Modern History and an MSc in Business Studies from London Business School.
Mr Julian Baust
Julian retired in March 2010 from the position of Chairman and Managing Director of Kodak Limited and is currently involved in Management Consultancy and as a Non Executive Director.
During his 30 years at Kodak, Julian fulfilled a number of key management roles within sales, marketing, operations and ultimately general management. Over the last ten years, the imaging industry has undergone a revolution as the technology moved from film to digital. Julian led the transformation of Kodak Ltd, driving market-led change through the organisation to position the UK business as the digital business it is today. This included significant restructuring, the integration of acquired businesses and the launch of new products and services into new markets.
In addition to his role in general management, Julian was Chair of Trustees of the Kodak Pension Plan. He was also actively involved in the company’s implementation of their CSR Strategy, including working with local, national and international charities.
Diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 1962, Julian has experienced first hand the progress made in diabetes care and understanding. He believes that there is a lot more to be done to build awareness and fund research, to make life easier with the condition, reduce its occurrence, and ultimately to find a cure.
In his spare time Julian enjoys a number of country based activities in addition to playing some tennis.
Ms Helene Brenchley-King
Helene's involvement with Diabetes UK began in 1998 following the diagnosis of her younger child with Type 1 diabetes. Since then she has been heavily involved in all aspects of diabetes care, recognising the need to promote the best possible standards for everyone affected by diabetes.
As a founder member of the Diabetes UK Bexley Support Group, she was chairman until December 2011. In addition she serves as a patient representative on the Bexley Diabetes Network Group; she is also a Patient Champion on the local GP Practice Development Team; since 2007, she has been a lay trainer, delivering structured patient education for people with Type 2 diabetes.
Other volunteer roles have been in education – as a school governor, chairing a governing body and in fundraising for a local hospice. Helene's experience in working in local government and public relations has proved advantageous in enabling the local support group to expand to currently over 850 members. She has played an active part in the design and improvement of health services for diabetes within Bexley.
Raising the profile of diabetes amongst the public, patients and healthcare professionals has been key and she regularly gives talks about the work of the charity as well as working with members from the local BAME communities to raise awareness. In her leisure time she enjoys gardening, literature, film, and travel.
Miss Sue Browell
Sue Browell is an HR Director in the health and social care sector.
Sue has worked in human resource management and development in public, private and non-profit sectors for all her career and is a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development. She has been responsible for consultancy projects, courses and workshops for a variety of organisations in the UK and overseas and lectured at a university business school.
Sue is author of 'Successful Facilitation, Successful Staff Retention' and co-author of '6 Weeks to Strategic Excellence'. She has also written a number of articles and book chapters.
Sue's experience of diabetes is both personal and professional. Her father had diabetes for 45 years. She has employed staff with diabetes and some of the residents and patients where she works have diabetes.
Mr Gavin Cookman
Gavin was elected in July 2010 and is a very experienced general manager having worked in the financial services sector for over 25 years.
Gavin has a Bachelor of Arts degree in History and joined NatWest in 1984 where he worked in a number of senior roles in lending, sales, operations and corporate finance in the UK, Belgium and Spain.
In 2000 he joined KPMG Consulting where he was involved in a number of large scale change programmes, and notably worked on the successful post-merger integration of NatWest and Royal Bank of Scotland working in Edinburgh for two years.
In 2003 he joined his current employer, Old Mutual, where he has held a range of senior leadership roles both in the head office and in a number of the Group's subsidiaries which has seen him work in South Africa, Sweden and the UK. As part of his current role, he has lead the change to the Old Mutual Group's operating model and sits on a number of subsidiary Boards and Audit Risk Committees.
Gavin was diagnosed with Type 1 in 1973 and is a passionate believer that, with the right support, advice and guidance, successful self-management is within most people's grasp. He also believes that we need to increase the public's awareness and understanding alongside continuing to help support research for a cure.
Outside of work, Gavin spends as much time as possible with his Spanish wife and two young children, and plays and coaches at Teddington Hockey Club where he is Chairman of the Junior Section.
Ms Gill Fine
Gill was elected as a Trustee in July 2010 and is a member of the Audit & Risk Committee. She is a qualified Public Health Nutritionist with a BSc in Home Economics and an MSc in Nutrition. Over the past thirty years, she has worked in a variety of food and health-related roles in the public, private and voluntary sectors and has a passion for using food and nutrition science to improve public health and to improve the quality of information provided to consumers.
From 2004–2010 she was Director of Consumer Choice and Dietary Health at the Food Standards Agency, responsible for the strategic direction and delivery of the Agency's activities across a wide range of areas, including food labelling and nutrition. She retired from the Agency in April 2010 in order to move to Cornwall. She has recently been appointed as a Scientific Governor to the British Nutrition Foundation.
Mr Noah Franklin (Treasurer)
Noah was elected as Treasurer in July 2011. He is Chief Financial Officer of Elektron Technology plc, a publicly listed engineering technology company, and Honorary Treasurer of Precious Sisters, a charity supporting girls through secondary school and beyond in Kenya.
Noah studied Philosophy and French at Oxford University and subsequently qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Arthur Andersen, where he worked for 11 years in London and Paris. After a period at Whitbread, he spent 12 years at Cadbury Schweppes in a variety of finance and general management roles, including Finance Director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa and Managing Director of Global Business Services. More recently, he had a spell as Chief Financial Officer of a venture developing large-scale arable farming in South America.
Noah chairs the Diabetes UK Finance Committee and is also a member of the Remuneration Committee and the Audit and Risk Committee.
In his spare time, Noah enjoys theatre, running, Pilates, cricket, skiing and jam making.
Dr Kamila Hawthorne
Kamila was elected as a Trustee in July 2011 and is a practising NHS GP in Cardiff, South Wales, and an academic in the School of Medicine, Cardiff University. She is married with two children.
She trained at Oxford University, graduating in 1984, and has worked in Reading, Nottingham and Manchester before moving to Cardiff in 1995. She has been the lead GP in diabetes care in her practice of 11,000 patients for 16 years, and has recently moved job to help set up a new, patient-centred, community based medical undergraduate curriculum in the School of Medicine at Cardiff University.
Kamila developed an interest in diabetes care in 1988, while still training to be a GP. This led to conducting research into ways of developing culturally appropriate health education for people with diabetes from ethnic minority backgrounds, initially working with the British Pakistani communities in Nottingham and Manchester.
In Cardiff her work expanded to the Cardiff Bangladeshi community. With funding from the Welsh Assembly's Health Inequalities Fund, she set up and led the 'HeartLink Project' which worked with both the various minority communities in the most deprived sector of Cardiff (Butetown) to raise awareness of heart disease and diabetes, as well as with the local Primary Health Care Teams to provide training and specialist support to health professionals in the locality.
Her work has been published widely and was recognised with a 'GP of the Year' Award for Diabetes in 2000.
Dr David McCance
David has been involved in diabetes care for over 20 years and since 1994, as Consultant Physician to the Metabolic Unit, Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast. His involvement with Diabetes UK is extensive including chair of the NI Diabetes UK Advisory Council, member of Diabetes UK Advisory Council Science and Research Health Professional Committee and Diabetes UK Research Advisory Group. He was chair of the 2007 Annual Professional Conference Organising Committee of Diabetes UK.
He served as a co-opted member of the Board of Trustees until his re-election to the Board of Trustees at the 2008 Annual General Meeting in Birmingham. He was a member of the NI Diabetes UK Task Force and member of NI CREST committees for diabetic pregnancy and obesity. He is currently joint lead clinician on a project seeking to integrate primary and secondary diabetes care in NW Belfast and has drafted a number of clinical guidelines in this context. He also has major teaching and research interests and reviews research proposals for the charity and original papers for Diabetic Medicine.
David brings to the Board the necessary qualities including energy, creativity, communication skills and balanced judgement. From a research perspective, he seeks to promote ongoing research which endeavours to lighten the daily load of people with diabetes.
Mr Frank Moxon
Frank is a corporate financier specialising in mining, oil & gas and other natural resources. He was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in late 2006 when he became a life benefactor of Diabetes UK. He was elected a Trustee in September 2007 (re-elected 2010) has been on the Finance Committee since April 2008 and was appointed Interim Treasurer in February 2011.
With over 25 years of experience in the City, the vast majority as an adviser to the boards of quoted, international companies he brings to the Charity a degree of financial and strategic expertise. He is also Chairman of Imperial Minerals Plc, a non-executive director of Cove Energy plc, Whetstone Minerals Ltd and the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment and is an active fundraising volunteer for the RNLI in Norfolk and the City of London.
In his spare time Frank pursues interests in history, scripophily and numismatics.
Mr Gerald Tosh
Gerry Tosh lives in Dundee Scotland and in his leisure time enjoys watching rugby, playing golf, walking and music. He was past Captain of his golf club and is President of Premier 1 side Dundee High Rugby. He is involved in fundraising for a number of charities and trustee of two other local charities. Gerry is a fully trained hypnotherapist and NLP practitioner with membership of a number of national registered and recognised bodies. He is a regular speaker on motivation to many different organisations.
He has built a property business which is now being run successfully by his youngest son. He has built up many successful businesses over the years and has worked in sales as a top-level third line manager responsible for hundreds of staff and hundreds of millions of turnover.
He has had Type 2 Diabetes for 17 years and is working closely with Diabetes UK to continue the excellent work in helping people living with diabetes cope and care for their condition, informing the public and keeping public bodies and Government aware of all issues concerning diabetes. Gerry is also on the Diabetes UK finance committee.