Best Beginnings
Currently Lead Professional Officer, Strategy, Policy and Equality for Unite the Union in the health sector which incorporates all professional groups including the Community Practitioners’ and health Visitors’ Association. She trained as a nurse, midwife, health visitor and nurse practitioner. She left clinical work and moved into locality management in two London Healthcare Trusts before her current post.
Her current role involves taking the strategic lead on professional issues and supporting professional activity across the UK and internationally. She works with the UK Governments and other stakeholders on health policy development and supporting on industrial relations and other campaigning activity.
She lobbies at governmental level, representing member’s issues and influencing the development or changing of health and care policy and in order to ensure diversity and inclusion is incorporated into national policy in a meaningful way.
She has international reach and maintains relationships with like-minded organisations across the globe. She has spoken at international events.
She has been core to the recent national work on ending the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) editing the document Tackling FGM in the UK: Intercollegiate Recommendations for Identifying Recording and Reporting and speaking and educating both parents and health professionals on how to end this practice. She was one of the authors for the eLearning for Health modules on FGM.
She is an active member of the Nigerian Nurses Charitable Association UK, a charitable organisation which seeks to support Nigerians both in the UK and the Diaspora. She holds the post of General Secretary, supporting members with professional and developmental issues as well as representing member’s issues to other key organisations.
She is a Trustee of the Charity Best Beginnings, which is working to give every child in the UK the best start in life. She also sits on their editorial board for their award winning Baby Buddy app.
She values the knowledge of others and understands the power of networking, she belongs to a variety of networks and has created her own networks to help and link others.
She is passionate about reducing inequalities in health and promotion of the diversity agenda. “We all have a vital role to play in shaping and delivering health improvement to our population and both I and the organisations I work for are committed to support practitioners to do this”
In 2014 she was voted one of the Health Service Journals BME Pioneers and in 2013 was awarded a Health and Social Care BME Award for services to the NHS.
