I was delighted to join the BSRA at the beginning of October as a new Chief Executive for the organisation. I’ll be working in a part-time capacity to help the board of trustees develop their vision for the charity and carry out its objectives, and it’s an exciting opportunity to combine my experience in the charity sector with a keen interest in healthy ageing.
My own career path has been somewhat unorthodox. Following a degree and an MA in history of art (at Cambridge University and then the Courtauld Institute), I started in the charity sector with a role at a national adoption and fostering agency. After moving to a regeneration charity in London as project manager of the UK’s first ‘Floating Classroom’ – an electric barge delivering an education programme to local primary schools on the Regent’s Canal – I ended up as the charity’s chief executive.
Life events then saw me moving to Washington DC for a time, before eventually settling in south west France with two young children and working for the last 12 years as a qualified French to English translator. However, as the Covid pandemic brought with it the potential for remote working, I saw an opportunity to combine my life in France with my passion for the charity sector, and now have a happy combination of two part-time roles with UK-based charities and translation.
In these next months I hope to help the BSRA raise its profile, expand its membership and further its reach. By supporting the vital research that helps us understand the processes of ageing, the BSRA is ideally positioned to contribute to the debate around ageing well and improving human healthspan. I would like to see us build our network of researchers in the field, increase our support for them, and help bring the results of their work to the attention of a general public that has a growing awareness of its importance.
I was fortunate to see my own parents move into their eighties in good health, but then witnessed the realities and complexities of ageing as my dad developed, and then recently died with, Alzheimer’s. Research that can help us understand how the passage of time affects an organism, and increases the risk of developing disease, has such potential to impact us on a personal as well as a societal level. The BSRA can do so much to support it, and I really look forward to making my contribution.