Meet our Board of Directors

Graham Sims, joined the Trust in August 2015, bringing a wealth of chair and corporate experience and knowledge in strategy, investment, operations and leadership.

He has held roles as Chairman and various Directorships within large and small corporate businesses including BP, Mobil, Compass, the Home Office and a number of PE backed businesses in the UK and internationally. Graham is also involved with a number of charity boards. 

Dr Janet Lippett, has been Acting Chief Executive since October 2022. Janet was appointed Chief Medical Officer in July 2019 and along with her executive colleagues led the Trust's response to the Covid-19 Pandemic. Janet was responsible for leading the Trust's Covid vaccination programme and the Covid Medicines Delivery Unit (CMDU).

Janet qualified in 1999 at St Georges Hospital, London and has always had a special interest in geriatric medicine. She joined the Royal Berkshire in 2007 with a remit to develop an orthogeriatric service, and along with colleagues developed a hip-fracture service for elderly trauma patients that was in the top 10 rated services in the National Hip Fracture Database (NHFD) annual report.

After moving into management in 2010 as Clinical Director for Specialist Medicine, Janet became Care Group Director for Networked Care; a role which enabled her to work closely with health system partners to ensure high quality care across the community. She was instrumental in the Frail Elderly Pathway work including the enhanced support to care homes and the re-establishment of the Trust’s Dermatology Service.

Bal Bahia Joined the Trust in April 2019. Prior to this he was clinical lead for the Berkshire West Clinical Commissioning Group and was the vice chair of the West Berkshire Health and Wellbeing board, working collaboratively with local authorities and the voluntary sector. Bal qualified as a Doctor from St George’s in 1989 and has since been a partner at a West Berkshire General Practice for the last 26 years and held roles including GP trainer and appraiser. Bal is also a director of Recovery in Mind a mental health charity in west Berkshire.

Bal previously worked at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in the 1990s. He is interested in systems leadership and holistic systems thinking for the local population, especially health inequalities.

Priya joined the Trust in October 2021. She has thirty years of leadership experience across three industries – airlines, telecommunications and utilities. Her main areas of expertise include IT management and digital transformation, particularly across Africa, Middle East and Asia Pacific when she worked for British Airways and many years of service, digital and customer experience transformation – both globally and specific to the UK in BA, BT and Thames Water.

She is particularly interested in people development, well-being and inclusion and has sponsored various- diversity and inclusion networks in BT and TW. She has experience of designing inclusive service propositions for customers in vulnerable circumstances in BT and TW and has also been previously a non-executive on the board of Citizen’s Advice Reading.

She is a certified Executive coach, member of the International Coach Federation and is now the founder and Managing Director of a coaching company that specialises in leadership and customer experience coaching/mentoring and consultancy.

Sue Hunt joined the Trust in October 2014. She is Deputy Chair of the Trust, chairs the Finance and Investment Committee and is the named non-executive director (NED) for the Organ Donation Committee. Sue is a chartered accountant whose long and varied career at KPMG spanned audit, mergers and acquisitions and healthcare consultancy. She led the team contracted by the Department of Health to advise trusts on all aspects of their foundation trust application and also provided due diligence services on potential investments in the independent healthcare sector.

Sue is an experienced NED in the health, education, housing and space technologies sectors with current roles at The Satellite Applications Catapult Ltd and Connected Places Catapult Ltd. She was previously on the Board of CfBT Education Trust, Notting Hill Housing Trust and was also a NED and then Acting Chair of NHS Direct until its disestablishment in 2014.

Helen Mackenzie joined the Trust as a clinical Non-Executive Director in January 2019. Prior to this she was Executive Director of Nursing with Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, the main provider of NHS mental health and community services in Berkshire.

Helen qualified as a nurse in 1979 and has held various clinical and managerial roles in the provision and commissioning of local NHS services.

Peter joined the trust in April 2022. He is the Chair of the Audit & Risk Committee. Peter also has current similar roles at Reading University, British Rowing and Reading Buses.

Peter qualified as a Chartered Accountant working for KPMG working on a wide range of public sector and private clients. After KPMG Peter moved to Shell where he did a range of finance and sustainability roles which included several years working abroad.

Parveen Yaqoob joined the Trust in January 2023. She has 30 years of experience in the higher education sector and is currently Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Reading. She works across a broad portfolio, leading on the University’s research strategy and playing a key role in equality, diversity and inclusion. She leads on the strategic partnership between the University and the Trust and brings experience of developing and supporting health-related education, research and innovation.

Parveen has served on a number of national and international research funding panels, particularly in the area of diet and health, and has a national role in supporting gender equality in higher education as Chair of the Athena Swan Governance Committee. She was appointed OBE for services to higher education in 2022.

Dom Hardy joined the Trust in December 2019 as Chief Operating Officer. Previously he held the position of Director of Primary Care and System Transformation at NHS England and Improvement. Dom’s previous roles at NHS England include Director of Commissioning Operations for Wessex and Regional Assurance and Delivery Director for the South of England. Prior to that, he held posts in central Government, with PricewaterhouseCoopers, and in South Central Strategic Health Authority.

Before moving to the NHS, Dom worked in central government in a range of roles including working alongside Professor Lord Ara Darzi as project director for the NHS Next Stage Review at the Department of Health and Social Care, Principal Private Secretary to John Reid and Patricia Hewitt and policy advisor to Tony Blair. He also worked at the management consultancy Price Waterhouse Coopers.

Will Orr has been a Consultant Cardiologist at the Royal Berkshire Foundation Trust since 2001 and has been part of the team that has delivered one of the UK’s leading heart attack services over the last 15 years. He is a graduate of the Royal London Hospital Medical College, and trained in Cardiology at Guy’s, Battle Hospital, Reading and in Oxford between 1993 – 2001.

He was a British Heart Foundation Junior Research Fellow in the University of Oxford Department of Cardiovascular Medicine from 1996 – 1998 and was a Visiting Cardiac Interventional Fellow at Green Lane Hospital, Auckland, New Zealand in 2002.

Will was Clinical Director of the South Central Cardiovascular Network and Thames Valley Cardiac Network from 2005-2016, Cardiology Training Programme Director for the Oxford Deanery and a member of the Royal College of Physicians Specialist Advisory Committee for Cardiology from 2011-2016. He was appointed Care Group Director for Urgent Care at the Royal Berkshire Foundation Trust in 2016.

Eamonn joined the Trust in May 2021. Prior to his current appointment, Eamonn was Chief Nurse at The Royal Marsden Hospitals in London.

In 2020 Eamonn was seconded from the Royal Marsden to be the Director of Nursing at the Nightingale Hospital London, and later as the first Chief Nurse (Testing) at NHS Test and Trace. His previous appointments include Deputy Chief Nurse at University College Hospitals London and Deputy Chief Nurse at Guys & St Thomas’ Hospitals.

Eamonn’s clinical background is Critical Care and he holds a Masters in Adult Critical Care from Kings College London. In addition to his NHS role, Eamonn is a Nursing Officer in the Army Medical Services Reserves and a veteran of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Eamonn has lived in West Berkshire for nearly ten years, with his wife who is an NHS Therapist and their two young children. He is passionate about serving our local community and improving the health and well-being of patients and staff across our services.

In May 2021 Eamonn was honoured to be awarded an MBE for his services to Nursing.

Nicky Lloyd joined the Trust as Chief Finance Officer in January 2019 and is also the Trust Senior Information Risk Officer (SIRO). She was Acting Chief Executive for eight months between August 2020 and March 2021, leading the Trust during the second wave of the Covid 19 pandemic.

She is the Senior Responsible Officer for the ‘Building Berkshire Together’ hospital redevelopment programme and oversaw the completion of the Strategic Outline Case submitted in December 2020. Her portfolio also includes Financial Management, Contracts, Payroll, Costing, Treasury, Procurement, the Trust Charity, and Estates & Facilities. 

She is also the Trust Board lead for Health & Safety and Net Zero Carbon. Nicky is the Chair of the Healthcare Finance Management Association (HFMA) South Central Branch, as well as Chair of the National HFMA Governance and Audit Committee, a thought leadership panel which draws together experts from the accounting firms, National Audit Office and the NHS to advise on accounting policy in the NHS.

A Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales, and experienced executive director, for over 2 decades she has held Board positions in  the commercial sector and the NHS, in the UK and overseas,  including Assistant Chief Executive and Chief Finance Officer.

She was selected to be part of the first cohort of the Aspiring Chief Executive Programme, completing this in 2017. In a voluntary capacity, she also held a Board position at Birmingham City University for seven years, chairing Audit Committee and Charity Trustees and chaired the governing body of a secondary school in the West Midlands for six years.

Don was appointed to the Director of Workforce role at the Trust in May 2016.

He has been a Director of HR since 1997 so has over 20 years Board level experience. Don has worked primarily in provider organisations, mainly in and around Greater London.

Since joining the NHS in 1987 he has come to be regarded as a professional’s professional. Don has a proven track record of delivery having worked successfully at a senior level in HR in various contexts including: acute, community, mental health, primary care, Health Authority, Region and the Department of Health.

In addition to his technical and tactical skills, Don is a qualified mediator with the Professional Mediator’s Association, an accredited MBTI (both Step I and II), WAVE and 16PF practitioner.

Don has a Master’s degree in Strategic Human Resource Management, a post-graduate Certificate in the Psychology of Organisational Development and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.