Speakers
Read about our chair and the variety of speakers that will be at our annual conference on 30 April 2025.
Chair
Pennie is an award-winning freelance journalist and broadcaster who specialises in health and care issues. A passionate promoter of innovation, she was BBC Scotland’s first Health Correspondent and has also worked on the news desks of a number of national newspapers. A former Head of Communications for a large NHS Trust, Pennie has inside knowledge of how public services work, giving her an informed perspective from which to approach and stimulate debate.
Speakers
Neil Gray was appointed as Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care in May 2024. He was born and brought up in Orkney and was educated at Kirkwall Grammar School. He graduated from the University of Stirling in 2008 with a first-class Bachelor of Arts Honours degree in politics and journalism.
He was elected to represent Airdrie and Shotts Constituency at the 2021 Scottish Parliament election. He had previously won the Airdrie and Shotts Westminster seat in 2015 and held it on two subsequent occasions before resigning to stand for the same area in the 2021 Scottish Parliament election. Prior to becoming an MP, Mr Gray worked for former Scottish Government Health Secretary Alex Neil MSP as his Airdrie and Shotts constituency office manager.
Neil Gray was appointed Minister for Culture, Europe and International Development in January 2022. In March 2022 he additionally became Minister with special responsibility for Refugees from Ukraine. He was appointed Cabinet Secretary for Wellbeing Economy, Fair Work and Energy in March 2023, and Cabinet Secretary for NHS Recovery, Health and Social Care in February 2024.
Read more about Neil Gray on the Scottish Parliament website.
Nuala Watt lives and works in Glasgow. Her poems have appeared in anthologies including Stairs and Whispers: D/Deaf and Disabled Writers Write Back (Nine Arches Press 2017), and A Year of Scottish Poems (Pan Macmillan 2018). Poems have been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 Words and Music .‘Important Information Enclosed’ appears in the Poetry Archive’s Poetry Archive Now Worldview 2023 collection. Work is forthcoming in Versus Versus 100 Poems by Deaf, Disabled and Neurodivergent Poets (Bloodaxe Books 2025.)
Current interests include visual impairment as a creative context and the relationship between disability and parenthood. Her collection The Department of Work and Pensions Assesses a Jade Fish was published by Blue Diode in February 2024 and shortlisted for Saltire Society First Book of the Year Award.
Jane-Claire is CEO of Scotland’s largest health charity, Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland. She is also a board member at Public Health Scotland and Children in Scotland. Jane-Claire has previously held roles at Diabetes UK, the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body and NUS Scotland and was a Commissioner at the Scottish Human Rights Commission. She holds an MA, MBA and is a Health Foundation fellow. Jane-Claire has a strong belief that elevating the voices of people most affected by policy decisions is critical to designing actions and informing the policy decisions that will improve population health outcomes overall. In her spare time, Jane-Claire enjoys spending time with her husband and young daughter, often by the coast or the shore of a loch.
Joanna MacDonald commenced her role of Interim Chief Officer for Clackmannanshire & Stirling Health & Social Care Partnership in December 2024.
Joanna’s previous role was Deputy Chief Social Work Adviser at Scottish Government where she was responsible for leading a wide-ranging portfolio including the portfolio for children and families, supporting the Chief Social Work Adviser with development and implementation of national policy, provision of professional social work advice within Scottish Government and nationally and advising on the development of the National Care Service and National Social Work Agency.
Joanna joined Scottish Government in April 2021 coming from her previous role as Chief Officer in Argyll & Bute HSCP.
Joanna has a 30year career working in both Local Authorities and NHS Board. She has held a number of senior positions including Director of Adult Social Care in NHS Highland and chaired a range of national groups including Social Work Scotland’s Adult Social Care Committee.
Margaret Moncrieff worked as a social worker for over 25 years and is now the IJB Lived Experience Representative for South Lanarkshire. She has personal experience caring for family members and advocating for them, giving her insight into the needs of people who access services and their families.
She has used her role to strengthen the voice of those with lived experience and ensure their voices and views are heard.
Shabir Beg OBE, an inter-faith practitioner, engages in outreach work across various sectors of society, with a particular emphasis on advocating for health, wellbeing and humanitarian dialogue. He collaborates with prominent organisations, including the SPFL trust, Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland, St. Andrew’s First Aid, NHS and Police Scotland, to promote the principles and values of diversity and inclusion that reciprocate with everyone.
Sir Michael Marmot is a leading expert on health inequalities and social determinants of health and has authored several books and reports, including ‘The Health Gap’ (2015), ‘Status Syndrome’ (2004) and the Marmot Review, an independent review to propose the most effective evidence-based strategies for reducing health inequalities in England from 2010. He has been Professor of Epidemiology at University College London since 1985, and is the Advisor to the WHO Director-General on social determinants of health in the new WHO Division of Healthier Populations.
He has accepted honorary doctorates from 18 universities and has led research groups on health inequalities for nearly 50 years. He chaired the Commission on Equity and Health Inequalities in the Americas, set up in 2015 by the World Health Organization’s Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO/ WHO). He was Chair of the Commission on Social Determinants of Health (CSDH), which was set up by the World Health Organization in 2005, and produced the report entitled: ‘Closing the Gap in a Generation’ in August 2008. At the request of the British Government, he conducted the Strategic Review of Health Inequalities in England post 2010, which published its report ‘Fair Society, Healthy Lives’ in February 2010. This was followed by the European Review of Social Determinants of Health and the Health Divide, for WHO EURO in 2014, and in 2020 Health Equity in England: Marmot Review 10 Years On, and Build Back Fairer: the COVID-19 Marmot Review.
Further speakers to be announced soon.
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