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Trustees

Trustee members

Mr Jeremy J. B. Skinner (Chair of Trustees)

Jeremy Skinner joined Linklaters & Paines, the City Solicitors, in 1962, becoming a partner in 1967. His specialist interests included corporate tax planning and subsequently general corporate work, advising many major UK and international public companies and the Corporation of Lloyd's. He retired as a senior partner at the end of 1996 and held a number of directorships for the following several years.

Jeremy was one of the founding members of the Institute for Fiscal Studies and remained on its council until very recently. Jeremy was also a member of the Governing Body of Rugby School for many years and was Deputy Chairman for his last ten years.

Jeremy has been a Trustee of the Peart-Rose Trust since its establishment in 1984 and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Foundation since its incorporation in 2003.

Dame Mary Richardson

Following fifteen years as a headteacher in a state school in London, in 1999 Mary was invited to join HSBC to set up the HSBC Global Education Trust, a post she held for eight years. Mary continues on a number of grant making trusts including the Dulverton Trust, and Vitol Foundation. Mary is also a trustee on several boards including Shakespeare's Globe, and is a school governor at City of London School, Thornton College and Royal Alexandra and Albert state boarding school. Mary is Patron of Four Pillars, a group specialising in good governance; chairman of the English Speaking Union; President of SOS Children's Villages; and was DCSF Ambassador for the Boarding Pathfinder for Vulnerable Children. Following from her first career as an officer in the Women's Royal Army Corps, she currently Chairs the DFE/MOD London Challenge Cadet Partnership Pilot Project Steering and is a trustee of the Marine Society and Sea Cadets. Mary also chairs the advisory committee on education to HRH Prince Seeiso, High Commissioner for Lesotho.

Mary holds honorary doctorates from City, Brunel and Richmond Universities. Mary is a Companion of the Chartered Management Institute, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, and is a Founding Ambassador of Teach First.

Dr Rodney Foale

Rodney Foale is a graduate from Melbourne University (MBBS (hons) 1971). Rodney's post-graduate training was spent at St Vincent's Hospital Melbourne and in rural areas in the states of Madras and Kashmir in India. In 1979 he trained in Cardiology at the London, Hammersmith and the National Heart Hospitals and then became a senior research and Clinical Fellow at Harvard University and MIT at the Massachusetts Hospital. In 1985 he was appointed Consultant cardiologist, St Mary's Hospital London where he developed the interventional programme of coronary angioplasty and latterly coronary stenting. In 2002 Rodney was appointed as Clinical Director of Surgery and Cardiovascular Sciences, overseeing the merger of west London services at Imperial College NHS Trust. Rodney's specialty is adult Clinical Cardiology and is an expert in a wide range of clinical cardiovascular practice and recognized as a senior national leader in Coronary angioplasty techniques for the treatment of coronary disease.

Professor Peter Sever

Peter Sever is Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics at Imperial College London and Honorary Consultant Physician at the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. Peter is co-Director of the International Centre for Circulatory Health and Head of the Disease Prevention Section of the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London. In 2009, he was appointed as a Senior Investigator of the National Institute for Health Research.

After graduating from the University of Cambridge, Peter completed his training at St Mary's Hospital Medical School in London. He became an Honorary Consultant Physician and Senior Lecturer in Medicine at St Mary's Hospital in 1976. In 1980, Peter was appointed Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics at St Mary's Hospital Medical School, which was subsequently incorporated into the Imperial College School of Medicine.

Peter Sever is Joint Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Renin-Angiotensin-Aldosterone System. Peter is a past President of the British Hypertension Society and the European Council for Blood Pressure and Cardiovascular Research and past Chairman of the Fellowships Committee of the British Heart Foundation. Peter is also a Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology. In 2010, Peter was presented with the AstaZeneca Award from the International Society for Hypertension for his contribution to the clinical pharmacology and therapy of arterial hypertension. Peter Sever's research interests include the pathophysiology of vascular disease, the evaluation of antihypertensive drug therapy and the impact of multiple risk factor intervention for the prevention of cardiovascular disease.

Professor Neil Poulter

Neil Poulter is Professor of Preventive Cardiovascular Medicine and co-Director of the International Centre for Circulatory Health, Imperial College London, UK. He is also Honorary Consultant Physician and Epidemiologist at the Peart-Rose Hypertension Clinic, St Mary's Hospital, London. Neil gained his medical degree from University of London in 1974, later becoming Reader at University College London. He was President of the British Hypertension Society from 2003-2005, and among over 250 publications in peer-reviewed journals he was co-author of the 1998 and 2005 Joint British Recommendations on Prevention of CHD and CVD; the 2003 World Health Organisation/International Society of Hypertension Statement on Management of Hypertension; the 2003 European Society of Hypertension—European Society of Cardiology guidelines for the management of arterial hypertension; and the 2004 British Hypertension Society (BHS) guidelines for management of hypertension.

Neil was Director of the WHO study of CVD and oral contraceptive use, the UK and Ireland half of the ASCOT Trial, and the North European region of the ADVANCE trial. Other research activities include the optimal investigation and management of essential hypertension and dyslipidaemia; the association between birth weight and CV risk factors; the cardiovascular effects of exogenous oestrogen and progesterone; the prevention of type 2 diabetes; and ethnic differences in cardiovascular disease. In 2008, Neil was elected as one of the inaugural 100 NIHR Senior Investigators in England and Wales.

Lord Dan Brennan QC

Lord Brennan is a life peer and member of the House of Lords. In 1999 he was Chairman of the Bar of England and Wales, the organisation that represents 10,000 practising barristers, specialist advocates and advisers in litigation. In 2000, he was voted Barrister of the Year and in 2010 he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Lord Brennan is also Chairman Emeritus of the Caux Round Table Global Governing Board, Chairman of Juridica Investments Limited, Chairman of Omega Business Solutions Pvt Limited and Vice Chairman of AJ Prospect Capital Limited. Dan's special interests include international development and financial and corporate governance, in particular in connection with the recent financial crisis.

Professor Jamil Mayet

Jamil Mayet was appointed Consultant Cardiologist at St Mary’s Hospital and Honorary Senior Lecturer at Imperial College in 2000. Following the merger of St Mary’s, Hammersmith and Charing Cross Hospitals with Imperial College in 2008 he was appointed Chief of Service for Cardiovascular Medicine for Imperial College NHS Trust. In 2011, he was promoted to Professor of Cardiology at Imperial College. Jamil graduated in medicine at the University of Dundee in 1989. He completed a research fellowship in Cardiovascular Medicine at St Mary’s Hospital, Imperial College London in 1994 and was awarded an MBA at the Edinburgh Business School in 1997. He trained in Clinical Cardiology at St Mary’s Hospital and The Royal Brompton Hospital between 1994 and 2000.

Jamil’s clinical interests are in the assessment of chest pain, shortness of breath, the cardiovascular evaluation of patients with high blood pressure, the assessment of the heart in pregnancy and the assessment of the heart in athletes. He also has a specialist interest in cardiac imaging and in particular echocardiography. Jamil’s research interests are in the clinical development of new technologies for assessing and treating the heart and arteries and understanding how we can fine-tune current treatments to improve outcomes. Specifically he has interests in the physiology of coronary flow and blood pressure as well as the factors associated with the development of atherosclerosis. He has a longstanding interest in cardiac structural and functional variations in health and disease, particularly in hypertension and athletic training.

Professor Darrel Francis

Darrel Francis is a Professor of Cardiology at the National Heart and Lung Institute and Consultant Cardiologist at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. He specialises in using quantitative techniques, derived from mathematics, engineering and statistics, to problems that affect patients with heart disease.

He trained in Medical Sciences at Cambridge University and trained as a Junior Doctor in Oxford Radcliffe Trust, and developed a strong interest in understanding mechanisms, diagnosis and treatments in quantitative terms. Darrel moved to Imperial College London for his thesis funded by a British Heart Foundation Junior Research Fellowship, which developed mathematical techniques to analyse phenomena in cardiac dynamics and cardiorespiratory interaction where purely qualitative approaches may be misleading or confusing. He completed his Clinical Specialty training in Cardiology in London while setting up his research group.

Supported by the British Heart Foundation and the European Union, Darrel is now leading on a 10-year programme of research tackling a series of mechanistic and practical problems in clinical cardiology. The group takes special care to try to use measurement methods with verifiable reliability so that results can be trusted to not have arisen by chance or inadvertent exaggeration.

Dr Justin Davies

Justin Davies is a Walport Clinical Lecturer and Hononary Consultant Cardiologist at the National Heart and Lung Institute. His main research interests include the development and application of pioneering technological developments in engineering to aid understanding of disease mechanisms, and in the diagnosis of pathological disease states. Justin has used mathematical modelling to aid understand of the mechanisms which lead to increased blood pressure which accompany ageing and pathological disease states, and in the development of non-invasive and invasive techniques to assess the interaction between the coronary microcirculation and the aorta to aid diagnosis of myocardial, valvular and coronary disease states.

After completing his undergraduate training at Imperial College, he was awarded a British Heart Foundation research fellowship to undertake a PhD in 2003. Since then, he has trained in interventional cardiology with a specialist interest in physiological and structural assessment of coronary disease states. In 2008, he was appointed as a Walport Clinical Lecturer to support his research activities alongside his ongoing clinical commitments.

Professor Simon Thom

Simon Thom is Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine & Pharmacology at Imperial College London. He is a Consultant Physician at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington and Co-director of the Peart-Rose Cardiovascular Disease Prevention Clinic based in the International Centre for Circulatory Health. He is also co-director of the NW London Diabetes Research Network – part of the UK national Clinical Research Network.

Simon trained at St Mary’s Medical School and subsequently in Bath, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and London. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, holds an MD from the University of London and was recently a member of the Executive Committee of the British Hypertension Society and the national hypertension guidelines group.

His clinical interests include general medicine, hypertension, cardiovascular disease prevention and hypertensive complications in pregnancy. Research interests include vascular pharmacology and physiology, structure and mechanics of the circulation and haemodynamics in relation to vascular disease. He leads clinical trials of cardiovascular treatments – currently the multi-centered UMPIRE trial evaluating a “cardiovascular polypill” that includes collaborators and participants in India, Australia, the Netherlands, Ireland and UK. Research support comes from the British Heart Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, the European Commission, the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council and the pharmaceutical industry.

Contact: Eric Stevenson   59-61 North Wharf Road   London   W2 1LA   info@ffch.org