I work for One Gloucestershire Integrated Care System and from 2022 I am in a new role convening our Improvement Community, bringing together partners across health and social care. We are on a mission to create a vibrant improvement culture, connect as colleagues and use the power of QI to boost our collaborative work.

I started my professional life as an engineer working in electricity supply, industry and manufacturing in the North East, sparking an early interest in Quality Improvement. I then moved into service development and undertook an MBA with research into Service Innovation, with a focus on the strategic advantage of user co-design. Then, inspired by my own involvement as a user representative on a local review of maternity services, and made a radical career change to join the NHS. I started in Bristol as a project director for patient experience, and then led a range of pathway redesign projects and worked as a primary care locality lead. I moved to Gloucestershire CCG Transformation Team in 2013, and was the programme lead for our cancer clinical programme, working across primary, secondary and community care, VSCE organisations and with service users. Working with amazing colleagues during a time of significant change, this was a great insight into the benefits and challenges of system team working, and the value of us having a collective QI capability. I built on this interest by becoming a QSIR Teaching Associate and now also co-ordinate our ICS Teaching Faculty.