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Council members
Chair - Dr Anne Wright CBE
Dr Wright is an experienced Chief Executive and Chair, with a strong regulatory background. Her most recent appointment was as Member and Lay Vice-Chair of the Nursing and Midwifery Council.
Background
Dr Wright was Chair of the National Lottery Commission for eight years until 2013, and a Member of the Bar Standards Board from 2012 to 2017. Her career in higher education led to appointment as the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sunderland from 1990 to 1998. She was awarded the CBE in 1997 for services to higher education.
Dr Wright’s other non-executive roles have included the School Teachers Review Body and the Armed Forces Pay Review Body.
Kathryn Foreman
Kathryn Foreman is a member of the General Pharmaceutical Council’s (GPhC) Assurance and Appointments Committee, a non-executive director at Primary Care 24 Ltd, a social enterprise delivering NHS services in the North of England, and sits on police misconduct panels.
Background
A qualified lawyer, Kathryn followed a career as a solicitor in local government before moving to become the first female non-operational deputy chief officer in the country at Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service, where she worked extensively in local, regional and national organisational development. Her non-executive career to date has included a six-year term at the Health and Care Professionals Council (HCPC) where she also chaired registration appeal panels.
Josie Forte
Dr Josie Forte lives in Devon. A qualified optometrist, she started her optometry career in hospital practice. Josie practised briefly in New Zealand before returning to the UK to run her own successful independent practice for five years. She is currently a Specsavers Optical and Audiology Joint Venture Partner.
Background
- Graduated from Cardiff University in 1997 with a BSc Honours in Optometry and Vision Science
- Graduated from Aston University in 2016 with a Doctor of Optometry
- Head of Enhanced Optical Services for Specsavers and an inaugural member of the Specsavers Professional Leadership Council
- Visiting lecturer at Plymouth University
- Lead Assessor for WOPEC (Welsh Optometric Postgraduate Education Centre)
- Former elected committee member of Devon Local Optical Committee
Mike Galvin
Mike Galvin is a professional Telecommunications Engineer, living in Bedfordshire with his partner and four grown-up children.
Background
He was the Managing Director at BT plc for Future Broadband Networks and IT Security, a role which he left in 2017. Mike has over 15 years of experience working at board level in technology research and innovation and in telecommunications. Mike has led in providing the internet in the UK for the last 20 years and has extensive experience in leading large technology programmes and working with both customers and the public sector. He is currently working on a number of telecommunications projects in the UK and is the digital lead for the Swansea Bay City deal. BEng in Electrical Engineering and a MSc in Telecommunications Engineering. Member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology and Fellow of the Institute of Telecom Professionals. Technology specialist with BT and formerly the Ministry of Defence. Former Head of Research at BT. Formerly held non exec positions with the UK Council for Child Internet Safety and with Nominet. Former Officer Territorial Army.
Lisa Gerson
Lisa Gerson is a qualified optometrist and currently supervises student clinics at Cardiff University. She has more than thirty years’ experience of working in optometry in Wales, having worked in both independent and larger multiple practices for most of her professional career.
Lisa joins the General Optical Council after more than two years as Chair of Optometry Wales. She has significant experience in optometric regulation with the GOC, previously serving as a registrant member of the fitness to practise panel, member and Acting Chair of the Investigation Committee, as well as being a member of the Education Visitor Panel.
Background
Lisa has been a Council Member for Wales for The College of Optometrists, Vice-Chair of the Lay Advisory Panel and a previous Trustee of The College of Optometrists & Association of Optometrists’ Benevolent Fund.
She also previously served as a Patient Representative for the NICE Patient Access Scheme and a previous member of NICE Technology Appeals Panel.
Lisa has also been a Lay Member of Medical Training Application Service (MTAS) and Lay Member of the Graduate Entry Medicine Programme for Swansea University.
Ken Gill
Ken is a chartered accountant and the vice chair of the Board at the Countess of Chester NHS Foundation Trust.
Background
Ken has held non-executive positions at the General Medical Council, Council of the Inns of Court, Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, and Study Portals and has significant senior experience in the education sector, including as CEO of the Northern Consortium United Kingdom. He is also a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Clare Minchington
Clare lives in London and Bath. She works as a strategic consultant for professional bodies and universities and is a non-executive director of BPP University and Policy Connect, the leading not-for-profit network of Parliamentary groups and research commissions.
Background
Clare is Chair of the Audit and Risk Assurance Committee. Until March 2015, Clare was Executive Director for Strategy and Development at the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) responsible for ACCA's intellectual capital, from the overall strategy to talent, brand, policy and qualifications. A qualified Chartered Accountant, she trained with PwC and was a senior lecturer and Chair of the MBA Financial Strategy course at the Open University Business School prior to joining ACCA in 2000. Previous posts include; member of IFAC’s International Accounting Education Standards Board; member of the CISI Examination Board; member of the Advisory Board of the Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Business, Management, Accountancy and Finance; Chair of the Dean’s Advisory Board for Oxford Brookes University Business School. Former trustee of the Terrence Higgins Trust and Chair of their Finance, Audit and Risk Committee.
Frank Munro
Frank is a practising optometrist in Glasgow and Lanarkshire, with a keen interest in optometric service development, the management of acute and emergency eyecare, chronic eye disease, low vision, myopia control and complex contact lens design.
Background
Frank qualified as an independent prescribing optometrist in 2011 and recently achieved the NHS Education for Scotland glaucoma qualification, which enables the autonomous management of glaucoma by optometrists in the community.
Frank has held various roles in professional and Government bodies, including Chair of the UK optometric therapeutic steering group, President of the College of Optometrists, and Chair of the Scottish Committee of Optometrists. He is also co-founder of the Glasgow Integrated Eyecare Service, Lanarkshire Eye-health Network Service and of Optometry Scotland, where he also served as Chair.
Dr Hema Radhakrishnan
Hema is a qualified optometrist with over 20 years of experience in academia. She works as an academic and is a member of the Board of Governors and Senate at the University of Manchester. In addition to teaching optometry students, Hema conducts research on various aspects of myopia, physiological optics and anterior eye.
Background
Hema has leadership expertise in Equality, Diversity and Inclusion and has been passionately working towards reducing health inequalities, nationally and globally. She has held various leadership positions including being the Associate Dean for social responsibility in the faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health at the University of Manchester. Hema is also a qualified management coach who takes pride in working collaboratively with senior leaders to improve experience for professionals and service users. She serves on editorial boards of leading vision science journals and was a member of the editorial board for The College of Optometrists, Optometry in Practice journal from 2015-2023.
Tim Parkinson
Tim lives in Nottinghamshire and is the Director of his own board-level consultancy business. He holds a BSc and is a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute. Tim has over 20 years of senior leadership experience in highly regulated service industries such as water/wastewater and green energy from waste, with over half of this time being spent leading the provision of outsourced operations services entailing complex contractual, commercial and stakeholder relationship aspects. His experience includes over eight years in board director roles in both executive and non-executive capacities.
Background
Prior to current role, was an executive board director of Kelda Water Services Ltd (a provider of outsourced water and wastewater plus green energy services across the UK) plus a non-executive director of multiple of its subsidiary companies. As an executive board director, held a number of specific positions including being the Managing Director of the subsidiary business that produced roughly half of Northern Ireland’s drinking water. Earlier senior leadership positions consisted of a succession of executive roles which entailed: setting up from scratch and developing to maturity an outsourced service provision water retailing business; leading a 24/7 service producing and distributing drinking water to about half a million people; and leading all customer-facing functions of a business supplying water to around 100,000 people as part of the Managing Director’s top team (later going on to jointly lead the business in the absence of the Managing Director).
Roshni Samra
Roshni has undertaken a range of different roles within the optical professions including practice management, pre-registration trainee supervision and mentoring. She also has significant experience as a refractive surgery optometrist, in addition to which she had a regional clinical support role that focused on the professional development of her peers Roshni’s current role is as the Professional Clinic Manager for City Sight, City, University of London. She is responsible for coordinating the running of the optometry clinical services. This includes the promotion and expansion of the clinic which serves the general public and provides training for final year optometry students. Roshni played a key role in organising the recent relocation of the entire City Sight Clinic to the main university campus site.
Background
- Graduated from City, University of London in 2003 with a BSc (Hons) and completed pre-registration period in community practice
- Previously Lead Optometrist for a leading provider of refractive surgery in the UK
- Significant experience working in high street and independent community practice including managerial positions
- Currently completing an MSc in Clinical Optometry with City, University of London
- In 2014 she was awarded the College of Optometrists Professional Certificate in Glaucoma
William Stockdale
William is a contact lens and dispensing optician with 30 years’ clinical and business experience in Northern Ireland.
Background
William is the former chair of Optometry Northern Ireland and has also held a non-executive position with FODO, The Association for Eye Care Providers. He is also the founder of three successful optical businesses with clinical and commercial experience of large multiples, smaller high street practices and start-ups in both fixed practice and domiciliary care.
