We are delighted to be introducing you to Nicola Haines, a recent addition to our Board of Trustees.
Although Nicola has no personal connection to the brain tumour cause, her family has a rare inherited health disorder which meant that her mother suffered with a chronic kidney disease while Nicola was growing up. It has made her very aware of the holistic impact that diseases have on individuals and families and how isolating this can be. As a result, Nicola is very committed to giving patients and their families a voice so that they are the focus of all research end goals.
A Senior Partner at the Wellcome Trust, Nicola began her career in developmental genetics and held a number of post-doctoral positions in the USA, Canada and Switzerland and is now an experienced research leader and manager, having held professional appointments at major public research institutions across four countries.
Nicola is keen to promote translational outcomes from discovery research, ensuring that research gets out of the lab and into health situations, bringing direct benefits to human health. Nicola advocates looking at the whole ecosystem to cut out time-wasting, unnecessary cost and reduce the chance of projects falling through the gaps. Nicola is particularly interested in improving the system for researchers so that they are not just individuals working in the lab, but have the right kind of support to develop their careers and also ensuring there is diversity and inclusion within the research world.
Dan Knowles, our Chief Executive, said: “We are very fortunate to be able to tap into the extraordinary wealth of experience and skills that our Trustees bring to the table. We offer Nicola a warm welcome to our brain tumour family and look forward to benefitting from her incredible research expertise.”
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