A charity which is the voice of cancer patients in the North East and North Cumbria is delighted to announce the appointment of a new chair Claire McClean, AND a new trustee Raj Mair, to their board thanks to the support from Experience Bank Group.
Tori Bradison, CEO of Northern Cancer Voices, met Peter Neal earlier this year having heard about his service on the grapevine. Her initial thought was to bring in a new chair to relieve the interim chair of the role and advance the charity into its next stage of growth. However, upon seeing the shortlist and conducting interviews, the charity also ended up with an additional trustee who brings a new tech dimension to the skills set based board. Tori said:
“We are a small community grassroots charity who advocates for anyone affected by cancer. We go into communities and listen to honest conversation and input into cancer care in our region. Sponsored by Northern Gas Networks, we signpost into services and find ways to secure help for bills and hospital travel costs.
“We are now connected at a senior level and we can feed into the National Cancer Team on how it feels going through a cancer diagnosis. Essentially though our charity is built from a network of carers and patients, and we only registered as a charity in 2023 so it was important that anyone joining our board had lived-in experience of cancer as well as skills that can help us help more people.”
Peter worked with Tori on the brief and search, taking into consideration the excellent specific skills that the current five trustees already brought to the table. Claire McClean from Gretna is joining as chair and brings with her experience as a non-executive director. She is also a cancer survivor; a HR, people and culture expert, and an award-winning CEO at Realise HR Ltd. She said:
“I am very happy to be supporting this amazing charity on its mission to represent the voice of cancer survivors, friends and families to the government and NHS trusts across the north and drive positive change.”
Raj Mair has joined as a trustee focusing on his tech experience and is already making positive change for the charity on can be more technically strategic.
Tori concluded:
“I feel fortunate to be connected with Peter as it opened us up to a whole network – changing and growing the board was a long-standing challenge which thanks to Peter’s targeted approach was solved in a matter of months. We are already benefitting from Raj’s ideas and feel really reassured bringing Claire in as she will bring structure and calm.
“I would recommend Peter to any charity needing new high-level recruits – his process was calm, smooth and easy and I like his approach and support – he was always in the background and did the heavy lifting. It was a breath of fresh air for us!”
Peter said:
“Having been touched by cancer in my family, I fully appreciate the importance of what Northern Cancer Voices do. It was a pleasure to work with them and I am delighted they have ended up with the support of not one, but two, new trustees!
If you’d like to donate to the charity then you can do so here: https://www.justgiving.com/page/tori-bradison-5?newPage=true
If you have a recruitment need in the senior levels of your charity, then do get in touch with Peter on peter@theexperiencebank.co.uk