Yvonne is currently the Director of the Workforce Race Equality Standard Implementation in NHS England. She is a member of the Equality and Diversity Council at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) in the United States where she helped develop the inclusion strategy.

Yvonne has delivered lectures on inclusion and diversity at Harvard University and Johns Hopkins Hospital. She work closely with many international experts on health and race, equality, diversity and inclusion.  She has been voted by colleagues in the NHS as one of the top 50 most inspirational women, one of the top 50 most inspirational nurse leaders and one of the top 50 BME pioneers and in December 2017 she was included in the HSJ top 100 influential leaders list.

Yvonne was awarded an OBE for services to healthcare in 2010 and was appointed to the position of Director for WRES implementation in June 2015. Yvonne has been awarded a Fellowship of the Royal College of Nursing, a CBE in the Queen’s birthday Honours list, an honorary fellowship from Kings College University, and honorary doctorates from The Middlesex and Buckinghamshire Universities. She is Deputy President of the Royal College of Nursing.

Dr Habib Naqvi has a background in public health, and healthcare policy and strategy development. Habib is the Policy Lead for the NHS Workforce Race Equality Standard, and is leading on the national strategy for this programme. He previously led the development of the national equality and diversity policy at the Department of Health. He managed development of the Equality Delivery System for the NHS, the establishment of the NHS Equality and Diversity Council, and led on the health sector’s response to the Ministerial review of the Public Sector Equality Duty. 

Habib currently sits on several national advisory boards including the Advancing Mental Health Equality Board, the Windrush Day Advisory Panel, and the NHS Disciplinary Advisory Group. Habib is an Ambassador for the Mary Seacole Trust. He has experience in academia and research and has a strong portfolio of healthcare research and publications.

Jeremy Dawson is Professor of Health Management, working jointly between the Institute of Work Psychology (within the Management School) and the School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR) at the University of Sheffield. He has worked in the fields of work psychology, management and healthcare since 1998.

Jeremy’s research focusses on team working, human resource management, climate and culture, interventions to improve workplace well-being, diversity and discrimination in the workplace, work group diversity, work engagement and safety. He was also director of the Institute for Health Services Effectiveness (IHSE), at Aston University, leading several large-scale projects including running the NHS national staff survey for its first eight years between 2003 and 2010. He gained his PhD from Aston University in 2011.

Yves Guillaume is Professor of Organisational Behaviour at the University of Liverpool Management School. He is a Chartered Psychologist and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society. He received his PhD from Aston Business School. Prior to joining the University of Liverpool Management School, he held a lectureship at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and a readership at Aston Business School.

His research focuses on diversity, leadership, innovation, effectiveness and well-being in teams and organisations. His research has been published in leading academic journals and has been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and industry. He works as a practitioner with businesses and organisations in these areas. He led the ESRC Seminar Series on Making Diversity at Work Effective between 2014 and 2016.

Lilian Otaye-Ebede is an Associate Professor of Human Resource Management (HRM) at Liverpool University. Her research explores the influence of HR strategies, practices (including Equality & Diversity and High Performance Work Practices) knowledge and capabilities on employee wellbeing and performance, and has appeared in leading academic journals, scholarly book chapters and practitioner publications. Prior to joining Liverpool University, she worked at Liverpool John Moores University and as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate with the Centre for Performance-Led HR at Lancaster University. She also previously worked at Aston University, Birmingham as a Research Associate on a project sponsored by the British Safety Council with the Aston Centre for Human Resources. 

Lilian is an Associate Member of the Higher Education Academy and an Academic Member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development. She is currently an editorial board member of the Journal of Organizational Effectiveness: People and Performance, the International Journal of HRM and the African Journal of Management. Lilian has also gained experience in the commercial world having worked in industry undertaking various HR practitioner roles before becoming an academic.

Michael West is Professor of Work and Organisational Psychology at Lancaster University Management School, Visiting Senior Research Fellow at The King’s Fund, London, Senior Research Fellow at The Work Foundation, Visiting Professor at University College, Dublin, and Emeritus Professor at Aston University. He was formerly Executive Dean of Aston Business School.

He has authored, edited and co-edited 20 books and has published more than 200 articles in scientific and practitioner publications, as well as chapters in scholarly books. He is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, the American Psychological Association (APA), the APA Society for Industrial/Organisational Psychology, the Academy of Social Sciences, the International Association of Applied Psychologists and the British Academy of Management. He is a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. His research focuses on team and organisational innovation and effectiveness, particularly in relation to the organisation of health services.

He lecturesvery widely, both nationally and internationally, on the results of his research and on his solutions for developing effective and innovative organisations. He advises governments nationally and internationally on health care policy and practice.