Yesterday (31 July 2023), Dr Nicole Mather will be officially stood down as one of the Non-Executive Directors (NEDs) at the HRA.
Nicole joined us on 1 January 2019, bringing a wealth of knowledge and previous experience, from working on the development of the first Life Sciences Industrial Strategy and Sector Deal, and collaborating with organisations to support life science investments into the UK. Previously, she’s also developed policies to increase the testing and use of innovation in the NHS, including responsibility for the delivery the 100,000 Genomes Project.
During the time that Nicole has worked for the HRA, she’s been a champion for the acceleration of our processes and building stronger links with the commercial sector. She has been a trusted advisor across a number of HRA initiatives, supporting the organisation to focus on human-centred design, programme delivery and stakeholder engagement as well as integration across the NHS research ecosystem. She has been an active member of the Nominations and Pay and Remuneration committees.
Professor Sir Terence Stephenson, Chair of the HRANicole has been an invaluable member of the HRA Board. She has a background in research, in the public sector and also the private sector and brought excellent insights from a range of perspectives.
Nicole has supported individual members of the Executive Committee and also brought to the Board a first-hand knowledge of Whitehall from her time at the Office for Life Sciences and more latterly, through her work at IBM, experience of customer experience, technology and the commercial sector. These insights have helped the HRA in thinking about its engagement strategy and to be an organisation ‘designed with users, for users’.
Nicole has also been an advocate for the HRA to form stronger links with the commercial sector and retain connectivity into key non-NHS stakeholder groups across the healthcare and life sciences research system. I’d like to thank Nicole for her contribution to the HRA and wish her well for the future.
Dr Nicole Mather, former Non-Executive Director at the HRAIt’s been a privilege to contribute to the HRA, enabling UK research for patients and protecting patient data. It was fantastic to witness the way the organisation transformed through the challenge of COVID, accelerating permissions for life-saving NHS research such as the RECOVERY trial and it has been a pleasure working with the teams within the HRA.
Working with commercial trials organisations, I understand the importance of responsivity and pace in trials set up for the attractiveness of the UK Life Sciences and clinical trials ecosystem. As the Lord O’Shaughnessy report recently indicated, the work of the HRA is well respected across the health research ecosystem and I look forward to seeing the review’s recommendations implemented, further reducing the time to trial set up.
Nicole retains her roles as a Partner leading IBM’s life science and health data work and as a Non-Executive Director at Wellcome Sanger Genome Research Ltd.
We’d like to thank Nicole for all her contributions and wish her the best of luck for the future.