Panel of Judges

Patrick Vernon is recently appointed Independent Non-Executive Director of Birmingham and Solihull ICS, leading on inequalities and Non-Executive Director for Hertfordshire NHS Trust and Associate Director for Connected Communities for the Centre for Ageing Better and Chair of Citizenship Partnership for HSIB.

In 2012, Patrick was awarded an OBE for tackling health inequalities among the UK’s ethnic minority communities. In 2018, he was selected as one of London’s 1,000 most influential people by the Evening Standard.

In 2020, he established the Majonzi Fund, which provides small grants to families and community organisations to organise commemoration events for individuals from BAME communities who have died of COVID-19 over the last 19 months.

The same year, he was named by British Vogue as one of Britain’s top 20 campaigners and was included in the 2020 Power list of 100 influential Black People in Britain.

He is also a Clore and Winston Churchill Fellow, Fellow of Goodenough College, Fellow at Imperial War Museum, Fellow of Royal Historical Society, and former Associate Fellow for the Department of History of Medicine at Warwick University.

In August 2021, Patrick was appointed by Wolverhampton University as Honorary Professor of cultural heritage and Community Leadership for the Department of Community Development.

Shera is a GP and is the former Chief Medical Officer at NHS Digital. She started the award-winning Shuri Network in 2019 as she is passionate about increasing diversity, innovation and safety and to encourage other women from minority ethnic groups to lead and engage with digital transformation. 

She is an advisor to the NHS Race and Health Observatory and is an experienced Medical Director who has worked in leading primary care, commissioning, acute and community health organisations including Barts Health NHS Trust from 2010-16 as the Director of Primary Care.   She has developed and implemented health policy as a national advisor on new models of care and Integrated Care Systems with NHS England and advised ministers as a member of the NHS Independent Reconfiguration Panel from 2013-19. She is a member of the Sciana Network for European health leaders. 

Shera has volunteered as a clinician in Sudan, Laos, Indonesia and Greece with NGOs working in war and disaster zones. She studied at the Kennedy School of Government and the Harvard School of Public Health, focusing on quality improvement, community engagement and leading change. She has completed an M.B.A., M.A. in Inter-professional Education and a Nuffield Trust Fellowship on cross-organisational learning.

In 2023 Shera was awarded the international Richard von Weizsäcker Fellowship by the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin in 2023 to examine the German digital health strategy and help develop new insights and perspectives that will help both health systems deliver more equitable and innovative care. 

Celestine Laporte is a national officer in the health team at UNISON, the UK’s largest trade union, representing almost half a million members working in healthcare.

She leads UNISON’s Race for Equality campaign, which aims to tackle racism against staff in the NHS. She is the strategic lead for the union’s work to ensure UNISON workplace representatives are able to use the Workforce Race Equality Standard to improve race discrimination in the NHS.

Celestine is the national lead for UNISON’s Science, Therapy and Technical occupational group committee, overseeing the union’s policy agenda for allied health professionals and scientific staff across the NHS.

She is a member of the NHS Staff Council’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Group and is committed to promoting this agenda across the NHS.

Nurse Lead – Islington Care Homes

Joint Director of Race Equality, Diversity & Inclusion.

Tina was born in North London at Whittington Hospital to Nigerian parents who came to the UK in the 1960s. She trained as a nurse and midwife. Tina has worked in several clinical and management roles, specialising in Sickle Cell Disorder, care home care provision, racism and health inequality. Tina has a postgraduate management degree and an MSc in Health Education and Health Promotion at Kings College, London University.

Tina was awarded an MBE and Queen’s Nurse Title for her contribution to the care sector’s engagement and her work around developing new care models and promoting integrated care locally and internationally.

 Tina considers equality a fundamental human right and is passionate about promoting fairness, justice, anti-racism/discrimination, reducing health inequalities to achieve improved health outcomes for Black, Asian and other minoritised groups, and supporting social innovation, research and equity.

Diana Belfon has acquired decades of experience in business and administration and has held various management and leadership roles since joining the NHS. She is currently Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Specialist at Northamptonshire Health and Care Partnership.

Previously, she was the Equality & Engagement Manager for Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust. Before joining the National Health Service in 2003, Diana worked for an international company in the commercial industry.

Diana has a wealth of experience, including expertise in workforce race equality and is the co-chair of the Visible Leaders Network for NHS Midlands and Life-Long Learning.

She is also the Director of Central and East Northampton Citizen Advice and the Director of Northamptonshire Rights Equality Council.

In addition to these impressive roles, she is also a board member of the nationally recognised Health Service Journal (HSJ) Advisory Board and an HSJ Judge, focused on advocating and promoting best practices. 

Diana’s current roles have a clear focus on promoting and driving forward the equality, diversity and inclusion agenda at local, regional, and national levels, focusing on advocating and promoting best practices. As a healthcare professional, her ultimate goal is to help effectively deliver quality service to the communities of Northamptonshire.

Dr Farah Jameel is a GP in Camden, a Non-Executive Director at Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health NHS Trust, Trustee of Medical Womens Federation and the first female Chair of the General Practitioners Committee in England.

Farah is a multi-award-winning leader with over 15 years of industry experience. Having lived in UAE and India, she has experience in national and international healthcare systems. She draws on her clinical experience to influence health policy, strategy, and implementation. She is passionate about the use of technology and data to improve patient outcomes.

Farah is mum to a three-year-old and is currently on maternity leave with her second child. In her spare time, she enjoys gardening.

Anthony Robinson, Assistant Director of Casework Presentation and Preparation

 Anthony is a dual-qualified solicitor and barrister with more than 35 years of practice. He joined the NMC in 2018 where he is an Assistant Director.

He was previously the Legal & Enforcement Director of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE). Anthony was always interested in human rights, and as the Legal Director of the CRE, he worked with the EU on developing European legislation and was one of the founders of Euroneb (the umbrella body for equality and human rights bodies now renamed Equinet.

He also worked with the then government on setting up the Equality & Human Rights Commission (EHRC). On the abolition of the CRE he transferred over to the EHRC to be the Director of Casework & Litigation with responsibility for key area functions such as its Casework and Representation Function – bringing human rights and equality cases on behalf of victims of these abuses; he ran the Equalities Mediation Service – a national mediation service for equalities disputes; the Programme of funding for Law Centres and CABx, and the Air Travel Complaints Process.

 Anthony has written and edited a number of publications, including Blackstone’s Guide to the Equality Act 2010, which is in its 4^th edition.

Anton Emmanuel obtained his medical degree from London University. He is A Professor of Neuro-Gastroenterology at University College London and Consultant Gastroenterologist at University College Hospital at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery (Queen Square). His current clinical and research work is focussed on providing specialist gastroenterology service for patients with neurological illness, and he currently supervises three postgraduate research fellows.

He was appointed as editor in chief of Clinical Medicine and Commentary (the journals of the Royal College of Physicians) and is their Medical Director of Publishing.

He was Lead of the Workforce Race Equality Standard in NHS England and joined Welsh Government to lead the newly established service in mid 2023. December 2020. The focus of the WRES is towards embedding local accountability with organisations for their own data. A key component is to develop WRES metrics which reflect on the individual experience of staff in trusts and systems in order to implement evidence-based actions.

On a personal basis: father of four, immigrant of African-Asian origin, Londoner, multiple amateur (guitarist, homebrewer, record collector).