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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.
Raymond Curran
Raymond Curran is Head of Ophthalmic Services within the Strategic Planning and Performance Group of the Department of Health Northern Ireland.
Background
Trained as an optometrist in Birmingham and London, Raymond combined general ophthalmic services practice with sessional hospital positions in Western HSC Trust. In 1997 he was appointed Northern Ireland’s first (sessional) HSC Board ophthalmic adviser (Western) leading to his current substantive HSC appointment in 2013, where he is regional lead for contracting General Ophthalmic Services, and commissioning of secondary care Ophthalmology. Raymond is a former Councillor and Trustee of The College of Optometrists and former member of Senate, Ulster University
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.
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 was previously 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.
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.
Ros Levenson
An independent researcher, evaluator and policy consultant on health and social care issues, Ros has worked for a range of statutory and voluntary organisations and published widely on health and care.
Background
Ros has previously held many public appointments including as: Member of the Architects Registration Board; Non-executive director of the NHS Litigation Authority; Member of the National Research Ethics Advisors Panel; Member of the General Medical Council (GMC); Chair of the GMC Standards and Ethics Committee; Member of Ethics and Confidentiality Committee; Member of the Health Professions Council; and Non-executive director, and later deputy Chair, of Whipps Cross University Hospital NHS Trust. She has also served in a voluntary capacity as Chair of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges’ Patient and Lay Committee and Chair of the Royal College of Surgeons of England’s Patient and Lay Group.
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).
Poonam Sharma
Poonam Sharma has practised since 1996, as a community optometrist, a hospital clinician, diabetic eye screening practitioner, and visiting tutor at City University. She is currently the Lead Optometry Adviser for NHS England (London), providing clinical advice and professional leadership to NHS England and to the wider health and care systems. She leads a team of clinical advisers in ensuring primary care optometrists deliver safe and high-quality care.
Background
She has served on several NHS committees regarding eye care service-redesign and supported Local Optical Committees (LOCs) in procuring and implementing extended primary eye care services as a Local Optical Committee Support Unit (LOCSU) Optical lead. She also led on a large-scale ophthalmology service transformation as the ophthalmology clinical lead for Waltham Forest Clinical Commissioning Group.
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.
Cathy Yelf
Cathy Yelf is a former CEO at the Macular Society, a leading UK vision charity that funds medical research and supports people affected by any form of macular disease. She is a trustee of the charity Action Against Age-related Macular Degeneration, a collaboration of charities aiming to stop early-stage macular disease from developing to the blinding form.
Background
Cathy has also served as a trustee of the Association of Medical Research Charities and has been a member of numerous NHS, NICE and industry committees, working groups and clinical trial steering committees. Before joining the third sector in 2008, Cathy was a senior journalist at the BBC where she spent more than 25 years in news and documentary making.
