Board of Trustees

About the Board of Trustees

Our Board of Trustees is responsible for:

• The overall control and strategic direction of our organisation including agreeing our overall strategy and monitoring progress against plan 
• Ensuring our financial stability
• Acting in the best interests of our organisation
• Ensuring that we comply with our governing documents, charity and company law as well as any other relevant legislation.

All of our Trustees support and work with us on a voluntary basis to ensure that we are doing everything we can to fight diabetes. Our Trustees collectively have a broad range of skills and experience including those affected by diabetes as well as healthcare professionals and experts from across the four nations. Trustees usually serve an initial term of up to three years, which may be extended on two further occasions up to a maximum of nine years.

Our Board delegates some areas of its work to the following sub-committees:

Audit & Risk; Finance; Governance & Nominations; Remuneration; and Research.

Board of Trustees

Dr Carol Homden CBE (Chair)

Carol took up the post of Chair on 1 January 2022. She has been Group Chief Executive of the Thomas Coram Foundation for Children, the world’s oldest children’s charity, since April 2007 and has built the Coram group of children’s charities, quadrupling its turnover, and regenerated its historic campus.
Carol has led the organisation in achieving Investors In People Gold status and in developing the group’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion plan, identifying the need for culturally sensitive approaches to the different ways in which families and individuals face barriers to inclusion.

Before joining Coram, with a background as a journalist and in communications, Carol held senior marketing and public affairs’ roles at a number of organisations including The British Museum and the University of Westminster.

Carol is committed to enabling people living with conditions or disabilities to live well and increasing public understanding of them, serving as a charity trustee including ten years as Chair of the National Autistic Society. 

Janice Watson (Vice-Chair)

Janice became a Trustee of Diabetes UK in January 2015. She first became involved with Diabetes UK when her son developed type 1 diabetes in 2010. Her father-in-law also has type 2 diabetes, giving her personal experience of the challenges of managing both conditions in day to day life.

Janice brings considerable senior financial experience to her role as Trustee. She is a professional treasurer, with over 25 years’ experience in this field, and is currently employed in the financial services sector. She has both current and previous experience as a pensions’ Trustee and sat on the Advisory Investment Committee of WHO from 2006 to 2015. Her early working life was spent teaching English in Sudan, the UAE and Egypt.

In her spare time, she enjoys walking her dog in the Chilterns, where she now lives, and relaxing through yoga practice.

Alexandra Lewis (Treasurer)

Alex was born and brought up in South West London, where she still lives with her husband and two daughters, who are now 15 and 13.  At the age of 18, she was diagnosed with type I diabetes – so has been living with diabetes for all of her adult life. 

Alex qualified as an accountant in the mid-1990s before joining National Grid in 1997.  Since then, she has undertaken various roles within the finance department, including in Treasury, Investor Relations and Insurance, and was appointed Group Treasurer in 2017.  She is now responsible for managing the group’s financing strategy, including managing its £40 billion debt book, and associated financial risks, and is also responsible for Pensions and Insurance for the group. 

Dr Asiya Yunus

Asiya is an inner city London general practitioner (GP), and a Medical Director at Londonwide Local Medical Committees. 

She has worked at NHS England and UCLPartners, and has high-level experience leading transformation, collaborating with system leaders within the NHS and beyond to make a measurable difference to population health and patient safety. 

Asiya completed her medical degree at Imperial College, and trained as a GP in Bloomsbury.  Asiya has a long-standing interest in health management and leadership; she holds an NHS Leadership Academy Award in Executive Healthcare Leadership, and has completed a Leadership Fellowship at the King's Fund.

Professor Linda Bauld OBE

Linda is a Professor of Public Health in the College of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh and Interim Chief Social Policy Adviser to the Scottish Government.  Her research focuses on the prevention of non-communicable diseases, in particular behavioural interventions and policies relating to nicotine and tobacco, alcohol and diet. 

From 2014 until July of this year she combined her academic roles with a secondment to Cancer Research UK as their cancer prevention adviser. She leads two research consortia - the Tobacco Control Capacity Programme involving seven countries in Africa and South Asia, and SPECTRUM, involving ten UK Universities, public health agencies and alliance partners including the Obesity Health Alliance.  

Ngozi Emeagi

Ngozi Emeagi is currently a Director in corporate communications at the London Stock Exchange. Prior to joining LSEG, Ngozi Emeagi was a Senior Consultant at Powersourt Group, a financial communications agency, where she covered Banking and Insurance clients. Whilst at Powerscourt, Ngozi also led on diversity and inclusion, writing and implementing several proposals for clients and signing Powerscourt up for the 10,000 black interns’ programme, where they were required to take on a number of black interns during a summer programme.

Prior to joining Powerscourt, Ngozi Emeagi was global media and PR lead at MS Amlin and led the communications for the Group’s transformation project which saw the restructuring of the insurer as well as the divestiture of several non-core businesses. She has previously held roles at Direct Line, FleishmanHillard and Tulchan, covering a variety of sectors including banks and property. Ngozi started her career on the government bonds team at Goldman Sachs.

Throughout her career Ngozi has been dedicated to improving the diversity within the organisations she has worked, and she is currently Vice President of Women in PR, a not-for-profit group aimed at increasing the number and diversity of senior Women in PR.  She is an Advisor for the No turning back programme, aimed to increase diversity and retention of ethnic minorities in Communications and Marketing and is a school governor for Cromer Road School. Additionally, she was recognised in the HERoes Women Role Model list in 2021.

Melanie Stephenson-Gray

Melanie has been an ambassador for Diabetes UK and other diabetes charities, such as JDRF and IDF for over a decade. She has lived with type 1 diabetes since she was 13. Not letting her condition stop her, she went on to become an international athlete and an Olympic torch bearer in the London 2012 Games.

Melanie is a qualified NHS dietitian, specialising in diabetes (type 1 and 2) and weight management, bringing a wealth of experience as a global patient representative, diabetes advocate and volunteer. In 2013, Melanie set up the Blue Circle Diabetes peer support group in Cardiff, recognising the importance of improving mental health support for young people with T1D. She is passionate about tackling health inequalities and raising awareness and access to diabetes education, nutrition, sport and technology.

Sian Jarvis, CB

Sian is a strategic communications and marketing specialist and former TV broadcaster working now in the health sector and digital health technology.  
She’s an advisor to the tech scale-up, Huma Therapeutics where, until recently she was   the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer and has been appointed a senior adviser to the board of Cygnet Health, a mental health provider.  She was recently awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of GPs. Sian’s career began in journalism first as a BBC trainee and later as a producer on Radio 4, with the Today programme and she later became GMTV's political correspondent based in the Westminster Lobby.

In 1999 she moved into Government and spent 12 years as Director General for Communications at the Department of Health and NHS, serving six Secretaries of State for Health, leading numerous public health marketing campaigns including Change4Life, aimed at tackling childhood obesity and campaigned hard to ensure Diabetes care and prevention was a priority in the NHS long term plan.   
She is a long-standing member of the Management Committee of Women of the Year and in 2010 was awarded a CB in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to the NHS and Department of Health. 

Sian is a single Mum to teenage twins and loves music, horseback riding and travelling especially to Africa where she is involved in a horseback safari in the Okavango Delta.  

Michael Gibbs

Michael is currently a Director at Different Tracks Global Ltd, a consulting and training company that specialises in healthcare management, leadership development and conflict resolution with a focus on equality and diversity. He travels nationally and internationally, assisting healthcare, civil society and public sector organisations to develop the management and communication skills required to support operational success. 

Matt Higham

Being a technologist and a problem solver to the core, Matt relishes in finding outcomes that transform operations, empower people, create new opportunities and fundamentally make a difference through digital implementations. Cultural and mindset transformation is his focus area in any situation, bringing people, the consumers and beneficiaries of technology on the journey to outcome delivery.

He has been privileged to work across a wide range of vertical markets such as financial services, manufacturing, health, automotive, critical national infrastructure, transport, local & national services. This provides a knowledge base and deep interest which allows him to think disruptively to create outcomes where technology is at the forefront of driving change and opportunity.

Dr Sarah Ali

Sarah read Medicine at the University of Oxford then undertook specialist training in Diabetes in North West London and Imperial College London.  She’s now a Consultant Diabetologist at Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust and am also the Clinical Leads for the Diabetes Antenatal service and the Barnet Community Diabetes service.

Her interests include integrated community diabetes care, diabetes in pregnancy, health inequalities in minority ethnic communities and diabetes in Ramadan.

Sarah strives to improve outcomes for people living with diabetes, including contributing to the NICE diabetes guidelines update and other diabetes projects, including an NHS England project on the delivery of Diabetes in the PCN.  She is a Trustee for the South Asian Health Foundation, which allows her to help address health inequalities.

Sarah is passionate about both science and the humanities.  She is trilingual and an artist, creating contemporary/ abstract medical art and is working on several art projects to raise health awareness and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Professor Wasim Hanif

Wasim is a Professor of Diabetes & Endocrinology, Consultant Physician, and Clinical Director in Diabetes at University Hospital Birmingham. He is an eminent authority on diabetes, obesity, and ethnic health and works with several national bodies, and professional groups in the UK.

He has been involved with major research projects in diabetes and has published widely. He was selected for King's Fund Leadership Programme in Diabetes.

His research interest includes: diabetic kidney disease, diabetes prevention, management of diabetes in Ramadan, obesity, ethnicity and tackling health inequalities. He is involved as a chief and principal investigator in several international multi-centre trials and was instrumental in setting up UKADS (United Kingdom Asian Diabetes Study).

Wasim has been involved at a parliamentary level to advise the government on issues relating to Diabetes and ethnic health. He is the Chair of the Diabetes Working Group of the world-recognised South Asian Health Foundation (SAHF). Wasim is a member of the Parliamentary and Stakeholder Diabetes Think Tank advising the All Party Parliamentary Group on Diabetes.

His involvement in NICE has been extensive, sitting on advisory NICE Health Technology Appraisal Committee since 2009, and acting as an advisor on many issues including the use of health technologies, definitions of Obesity and Waist circumference in British South Asians, prevention of diabetes in high risk groups, physical activity and type 2 diabetes.

He is on the Expert Advisory Committee of Commission of Human Medicine, advising MHRA on new Medicinal agents. He is on the Board of Governors as a Trustee of Diabetes UK, helping in strategy, advocacy, patient empowerment and research to help improve outcomes in people with diabetes in the UK.

He holds the qualifications MBBS MD FRCP.

Martin Dewhurst

Martin has spent 25 years in the market research industry helping organisations use data and insight to create better business decisions and outcomes. He has broad experience across the private and public sectors, client and agency side, and has worked with many of the world's most iconic brands and flagship UK Government departments. 

He is currently Chief Commercial Officer, Insights UK, at Kantar; the world's leading data, insight and consulting company. He has held leadership roles at Omnicon agency, Hall & Partners and COI, the Government's marketing centre of excellence and part of the Cabinet Office. 

He has considerable experience in commercial strategy and activation, go to market strategy, new business development and ensuring insight is central to the development and evaluation of brand and marketing activities. 

My daughter was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 2021 which created my passion to help create a world where diabetes does no harm. 

Emma Foulds

Emma became a trustee of Diabetes UK in March 2023, bringing considerable marketing and strategy experience from across the commercial and not for profit sector. As an Executive Director at Guide Dogs, Emma led the creation of a new brand driving growth in public awareness, donations and volunteer recruitment. Previously Emma was Director at Brand Learning, Accenture, providing strategic consultancy to companies including M&S, AstraZeneca, Beiersdorf and Barratt Homes and UK/Eire Commercial Leader of Max Factor, Olay and Oral B at Procter and Gamble. Alongside her executive roles, Emma was a trustee of Crisis for seven years. In her spare time, Emma enjoys going to the gym and spending time with her three children.  

Emma chairs Diabetes UK Brand and Income Generation Committee.