Our trustees and senior staff are dedicated to leading the fight against lung disease across the UK.
President
Professor Sir Michael Marmot
Our trustees
Chair of the board of trustees – Peter Dolphin
Peter has enjoyed a 40-year career in advertising and marketing. He joined an international advertising agency in 1971 before leaving after five years - with his bosses' blessing - to start an independent, specialist recruitment advertising company with two colleagues. That business, Moxon, Dolphin & Kerby, grew over the next 20 years to become one of the leading agencies in the UK.
In 1996, they sold the business to American advertising group TMP and Peter was kept on as CEO. Over the next five years he led the way in acquiring similar businesses across Europe, extending TMP’s network into 13 countries with 750 staff.
In 2001, Peter took responsibility for developing, from scratch, the internet brand Monster.com throughout Europe. He helped turn Monster into the continent’s leading online recruitment business. By 2006, sales turnover had reached US$500 million and the company employed more than 1,500 staff.
Peter decided to retire from full-time work on his 60th birthday. He has spent the last two years working with the British Lung Foundation, alongside developing his own small businesses and relaxing at his house in the south of France.
Vice Chair – Professor Stephen Spiro
Stephen is a professor of respiratory medicine. He was Head of Department at University College London Hospitals (UCLH) until retiring from the NHS in December 2008. He is now an honorary consultant physician at UCLH and the Royal Brompton Hospital, London.
Stephen started his consultant career with a joint appointment at the Brompton and UCLH in 1977. He moved full-time to UCLH in 1993 to become Clinical Director of Medicine and then Medical Director.
He has a long-standing interest in lung cancer. Stephen helped form the London Lung Cancer Group, which has run clinical trials for more than 30 years. He also received a large Cancer Research UK grant to look at improving screening in people with a high risk of lung cancer.
Stephen has also done a lot of research into respiratory physiology and sleep disordered breathing. He is now working on improving undergraduate teaching at UCLH, continuing research, seeing private patients and working for the BLF.
His outside interests include tennis, fly fishing and hoping Arsenal will do better. He and his wife enjoy classical music, theatre and opera as well as supporting the arts. They have three sons and three grandchildren.
Treasurer – Sabah Zubaida
Sabah's career in investment banking has spanned more than 30 years. He has a particular interest in risk management and corporate governance, and has been involved in running trading operations and building banking operations’ infrastructure.
He started as a graduate trainee at Wood Gundy Inc in 1976, rising to become a board member and Head of Fixed Income Operations in Europe. He moved to Mizuho International plc in 1989 to do the same job, later becoming Chief Operating Officer there.
Sabah is now Chief Operating Officer of Aladdin Capital Management UK LLP. As well as being on the BLF board, he is also a trustee and treasurer of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue.
Trustees
Ralph Bernard CBE
Ralph Bernard’s media career began more than 30 years ago in newspaper journalism, before he moved into commercial radio. He was responsible for the UK’s first commercial radio merger, which ultimately created GWR Group, the country’s largest radio group until 2008.
In 1991, Ralph had the original idea to launch Classic FM, Britain’s most successful commercial radio station. Ralph led the GWR Group for more than 25 years, stepping down as Chief Executive in 2008. He received a CBE for services to broadcasting in the 2002 Jubilee Honours.
He is also Chairman of the Central School of Ballet and Chairman of Classic FM.
Ralph is married with four daughters. He regularly runs marathons and is a keen five-a-side footballer. In quieter moments he collects copies of Wisden, the cricketing yearbook.
Lord Borwick of Hawkshead
Jamie is an entrepreneur with interests in property development, investment and the vehicles industry. He is a director of investment trust company Hansa Trust, Managing Director of Love Lane Investments and Chair of the Federated Trust Corporation. Previously, he has been CEO of Manganese Bronze Holdings, which is best known for manufacturing London taxis. He is also Deputy Chair of the Low Carbon Vehicles Partnership.
His work with charities extends beyond his trusteeship of the British Lung Foundation. He also sits on the board of trustees of The Ewing Foundation, a charity that promotes inclusive education for deaf children, and the Ewing Borwick Charitable Trust, which funds research into the causes of congenital heart problems.
A director of the corporate trustees of the Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals Charity, he became Lord Borwick of Hawkshead in 2007.
Jamie is married to Victoria, a London Assembly member and Deputy Mayor of London. They have four children.
Richard Chappell
Richard graduated with a BA (Hons) Degree in Retail Marketing from Manchester Metropolitan University and started his career in food retailing, eventually becoming Regional Director with Lidl and overseeing the opening of their UK operation and their first 65 stores.
He joined the Carlisle Group in January 1998 within the staffing business before being appointed as Managing Director of Recruit in February 2001. Over the next three years he gained responsibility for further brands within the Industrial, Office, IT and Education staffing sectors.
In September 2004 Richard took over as Managing Director of Carlisle Security which, at the time was part of Carlisle Facilities Services Ltd.
Following the creation of the Impellam Group PLC as a result of the merger of the Carlisle Group with the Corporate Services Group in May 2008, Richard become the Chief Executive Officer of Carlisle Support Services.
Richard oversaw the rebranding, reorganisation and expansion of the business. As CEO of the group Richard managed the creation of the Carlisle CCTV and Carlisle Managed Services brands, as well as the development of Carlisle Europa, the first Carlisle business specifically created to operate in mainland Europe.
Richard’s early experience in retail has left him with strong views about the importance of the customer and the need to become and stay engaged with customers. He has written several articles for the trade press espousing the cause of greater customer focus in Carlisle’s markets which have a history of commodity buying.
Professor Duncan Empey
Duncan is Emeritus Professor in the School of Postgraduate Medicine at the University of Hertfordshire. He is a consultant respiratory physician and was Director of the London Chest Hospital Adult Cystic Fibrosis Centre for 16 years. He was also Medical Director of Barts and The London NHS Trust from 1994 until 2001.
From 2002 until 2005, Duncan was Associate Director of the performance development team, part of the national clinical governance support team at the NHS Modernisation Agency, and Honorary Professor in the Centre for Health Planning and Management at Keele University. From 2005 to 2009, he was Foundation Professor and Dean of the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Postgraduate Medical School.
He has been Editor of the British Journal of Diseases of the Chest and was formerly Secretary General of the European Society for Clinical Respiratory Physiology. Duncan has published more than 50 papers on respiratory and medical management topics and was co-author of Lung Function for the Clinician. He has been Group Medical Director of BMI Healthcare since 2008.
Dr Patrick Flood-Page
Dr Flood-Page qualified from Edinburgh University and completed postgraduate training in London. He works at Newport Chest Clinic and at the Royal Gwent Hospital , in South Wales where he has a subspecialty interest in Chronic Airways Disease and Interstitial Lung Disease.
Dr Flood-Page has published research papers in Asthma, COPD and Tuberculosis and has contributed to review articles on Asthma management. His MD thesis studied the importance of Eosinophillic Inflammation in Asthma. He has written book chapters on Asthma and on Bronchopulmonary Aspergillosis.
Dr Flood-Page is the chair of the British Lung Foundation in Wales. He is the Training Programme Director for Respiratory Medicine at the Wales Deanery and sits on the Royal College Specialist Advisory Committee for Respiratory Medicine. He is a lecturer at Cardiff University.
David Gill
David has a vast business experience; he currently runs his own publishing consultancy and, in a distinguished career spanning 35 years, he has held a number of senior management positions including at The Economist newspaper.
He began to work with the British Lung Foundation (BLF) eight years ago after he experienced some serious lung problems. David currently sits on the BLF’s communications sub-committee and he is also a member of the editorial board for Breathing Space magazine. In the autumn of 2012 David also joined the BLF’s Board of Trustee’s and became chair of the communications sub-committee.
Professor David A Lomas
David received his medical degree from the University of Nottingham in 1985 and undertook his PhD at Trinity College Cambridge. He was elected to the tenured Professorship of Respiratory Biology at the University of Cambridge in 1998 and he has been an Honorary Consultant Physician at Addenbrooke’s and Papworth Hospitals since 1994. He was appointed Deputy Director of the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research in 2002. David is the Director of the Wellcome Trust PhD programmes for clinicians at the University of Cambridge and Director of a 4 year basic science PhD programme at the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research.
He is Chair of the Population and Systems Medicines Board at the Medical Research Council (UK), Chair of the Grants Advisory Committee of the Alpha-1 Foundation and Chair of the Research Committee and Trustee of the British Lung Foundation. David’s research interests are focused on the pathobiology of alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, the serpinopathies and COPD.
Richard Pettit
Richard's career as a solicitor began in Baker Street in his family firm and then spanned thirty years as a partner of Clifford Chance LLP, based in the City. In 1981 he founded and for the ensuing seven years managed the firm's office in Singapore. He is now a consultant with Thorp Alberga, an offshore law firm.
Outside the practise of law, he was a non-executive director at a subsidiary of Mizuho Corporate Bank for over four years; and he spent five years as an original trustee of Sparrow Schools Foundation, a Dulwich based charity which funds schooling for disadvantaged children living in Johannesburg townships.
Richard is a member of The Honourable Artillery Company. He plays golf and real tennis and cycles regularly.
Richard Pinckard
Samantha Prigmore
Sam qualified in Oxford in 1987 and pursued her career in cardiothoracic nursing at the Royal Brompton Hospital, London. She moved to St George’s Healthcare Trust in 1990. Sam was involved in creating one the first respiratory nurse specialist posts there, taking up the position in 1993. She became a nurse consultant in 2003.
Sam has worked closely with local primary care trusts to provide seamless care for respiratory patients from diagnosis through to end-stage disease. She is also a lecturer at Imperial College and Royal Brompton Hospital for the MSc cardio-respiratory nursing and cardio-respiratory critical care courses. She has a special interest in self-management in respiratory conditions and palliative care.
Dr Gary Ruiz
Gary was born into a medical family of mixed heritage (South American, European and Oriental) in 1958. He was educated at Island School, Hong Kong, and qualified from London's King’s College Hospital Medical School in 1982. He followed a career in paediatrics and received specialist training in paediatric respiratory medicine in London and Birmingham.
He was appointed Consultant Respiratory Paediatrician at King’s College Hospital in 1994. His main work interests are in respiratory infections and cystic fibrosis. He instigated and has led the paediatric bronchoscopy and tuberculosis services at King’s and is head of the general paediatric service.
Gary plays with Lambeth Orchestra as a violinist and is an opera enthusiast.
Chair, scientific committee
Professor David A Lomas
Chair, support subcommittee
Sam Prigmore
Chair, communications subcommittee
David Gill
Chief Executive
Dr Penny Woods
Chief Operating Officer (interim)
Caroline Stevens
Director of Fundraising and Marketing
Charlotte Guiver
Director of Communications
Clare Cox
Director of Services and Projects
Steven Wibberley
Dr James Cant
Head of BLF Wales
Chris Mulholland
Head of National Projects
Kath Leach
Head of Research
Ian Jarrold
Mike McKevitt
Honorary Medical Advisers
Professor Mark Britton
Dr John Moore-Gillon
Dr Keith Prowse
Professor Warren Lenney (Honorary Paediatric Adviser)
Chris Fehrenbach (Honorary Nurse Adviser)