BIOGRAPHIES

Professor Tim Orchard, Chief executive

Tim is a consultant physician and gastroenterologist, joining the organisation as a registrar in 2000. He completed his undergraduate medicine degree at Cambridge.

Tim is renowned for his work in the field of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and has been the chair of the IBD section of the British Society of Gastroenterology and a national representative on the European Crohn’s and Colitis Organisation.

Tim is an accomplished and published author of gastroenterology research in the field of inflammatory bowel disease and is committed to teaching. He is also professor of gastroenterology at Imperial College London. He has been the director of clinical studies at St Mary’s Hospital, and chaired the Imperial College DCS Committee. He has a Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy and, in 2000, was honoured with the Ralph Noble Prize by the University of Cambridge.

Tim was appointed chief executive at Imperial College Healthcare in June 2018.

Dr Bob Klaber OBE, Director of strategy, research and innovation

In 2015 Bob set up a team who continue to drive an ambitious project to create a culture of continuous quality improvement across Imperial College Healthcare. He has worked as Deputy Medical Director and led work on the development and implementation of the Trust’s new organisational strategy. In his current, Bob also leads improvement across the Trust. This involves clinical leadership around: redevelopment, including life sciences and sustainability; improving population health; developing the Trust’s role as an anchor institution; and reducing health inequalities.

Dr Matthew Tulley, Redevelopment director

Matthew joined Imperial Healthcare NHS Trust to lead the redevelopment programme in 2020. He has nearly twenty years’ experience delivering major complex healthcare projects in London with a total value of circa £2bn. 

Matthew’s first executive role was Redevelopment Director at Barts Health delivering the £1.2bn new hospital programme creating the 750-bed major trauma Royal London Hospital and specialist cancer and cardiac centre at Barts. Matthew moved to GOSH in 2012 undertaking the master planning for the site and delivering phases 2 and 3 of the redevelopment. 

Prior to joining the NHS Matthew worked at Partnerships UK (now the IPA) working on the procurement of major government infrastructure projects.

Dr Suki Balendra, Director of strategic partnerships, Paddington Life Sciences

Suki has a wide range of leadership experience with a 20-year background facilitating, growing, and promoting health research in the UK across sectors including industry, academia, NHS, and central government. She is currently director of strategic partnerships for Paddington Life Sciences.

Suki is also life sciences lead for the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Clinical Research Network North West London, and was recently appointed director of the North West London Clinical Trials Alliance which aims to improve access to and the quality of clinical research in the region.

Suki joined Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust in 2014 and has since worked across several operational and leadership positions in the clinical research sector. In 2018 she was seconded to the Office of Life Sciences within the Department of Business and Industrial Strategy, where she attracted and negotiated new business to increase the UK’s market share of health and care research activity. During the pandemic she provided operational leadership to the NHS covid vaccine research response in Northwest London.

Suki has a PhD from the University of Warwick, and she is a passionate advocate for UK PLC as the number one destination to conduct clinical trial, in a way that they are open to everyone within the communities we serve.

Nick Fox, Commercial director 

Nick joined the Trust in November 2016 as director of Imperial Private Healthcare, and he leads the private patient activities across all of our hospital sites. Prior to joining the Trust Nick worked for BMI, the largest independent group of hospitals in the UK as an executive director.

He moved into healthcare after senior board director roles in a variety of different companies, both in the UK and internationally. His career began in marketing before moving into business management. After a stint in private equity backed organisations focusing on mergers and acquisitions he joined Nuffield Health to help redevelop one of their flagship hospitals and to work on their strategic plans for health and wellbeing. 

Professor Mark Thursz, Imperial biomedical research centre director

Mark qualified at King’s College Hospital, London and trained at St Mary’s Hospital and Northwick Park. He is professor of hepatology at Imperial College and the clinical lead for hepatology at the Trust.

Mark’s research interests are focussed on the natural history of viral hepatitis and fatty liver disease and the factors which determine chronic infection and progressive liver disease. He has a special interest in the genetic determinants of disease outcomes using genetic association and genome wide scanning to identify causative variants.

Mark is a former secretary of the British Association for Study of the Liver (BASL) and is currently vice-secretary of the European Association for Study of the Liver. In this role he has special responsibility for EU policy and advocacy in Brussels.

Erik Mayer, director of the Digital Collaboration Space

Erik Mayer leads the digital health iCARE team from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Imperial Biomedical Research Centre, a partnership between Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and Imperial College London, which is now housed in the Digital Collaboration Space, next to St Mary’s Hospital.

Erik is the Trust's transformation chief clinical informatics officer (analytics & informatics) and chairs the Imperial Academic Health Science Centre research informatics committee. He represents Imperial at the UK Health Data Research Alliance and is a fellow of the Faculty of Clinical Informatics. He is theme lead NIHR North West London Patient Safety Research Collaboration hosted at the Trust.

Erik is a clinical reader in the department of surgery and cancer at the Institute of Global Health Innovation and consultant surgeon at Imperial College Healthcare and the Royal Marsden NHS Trusts.