Our Executive Team

Prior to being appointed as CEO in 2015, Ann joined St Margaret's Hospice Care sixteen years ago as Director of Nursing, becoming Clinical Director and Deputy CEO during her tenure. Over the years Ann has played a significant role in strategically expanding the charities clinical services; commissioning the second In-Patient Unit in Yeovil; expanding the community service; commissioning a respite care centre and more recently the Central Referral Centre (CRC) and 24 hour advice line culminating in re-engineering the whole service to deliver 24 hour care in the community.

Ann is passionate about delivering responsive, patient focused care across Somerset. In 2014 she arranged a Rod Stewart concert for 18,500 people raising a net profit of £150,000!

Ann has over 33 years of clinical experience originally working in elderly care, neurological and surgical nursing. She then specialised in trauma, working in a variety of accident and emergency units in London.

In 1989 Ann was appointed at Surrey University as a Director of Post Graduate Education at the European Institute of Health and Medical Sciences, focusing on Critical Care services and gained a B.Ed (Hons) at Sussex University. Prior to joining St Margaret’s she was appointed as Assistant Director of Nursing and Clinical Governance, responsible for managing the Specialist Palliative Care services at Frimley Park NHS Trust and completed her Masters in Health and Medical Sciences at Brighton University.

Hilary trained at St. Thomas’s Hospital in London from 1979-1982. Post–registration she specialised in renal nursing before getting married and moving to Taunton. She worked in a school for physically disabled children for four years and then lived in a boarding school, supporting her husband to run a boarding house, mentoring and supporting 75 teenage boys as well as looking after her own 3 children. She completed a Return to Nursing course in 1995 and worked at Musgrove Park Hospital on an orthopaedic ward before joining St Margaret's Hospice Care in 1998 as a registered nurse. She was appointed to a team leader position in 2002, Deputy Director in 2005 and Director of Governance in 2015. This entails co-ordinating and managing complaints, incidents and accidents, safeguarding and all aspects of clinical governance.

Hilary is the link with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) as Registered Manager and led on two 100% complaint inspections in January and February 2014. She has a BSc (1st class honours) in Health Studies and Diploma in Management Studies.

A Registered Nurse since 1990, with a BA (Hons) in Management and Business Studies and MSc in Nursing, Joy has worked predominately in oncology and palliative care for 25 years, across a number of health systems. She has worked at a senior level in different organisations and has been operationally and strategically involved in planning and commissioning new services. She has led on generic projects including nurse education and workforce planning, and within and across organisational boundaries in the voluntary sector, private sector, acute Trusts, and cancer networks.

Joy’s career has included roles in teaching hospitals, district general hospitals, private and charitable sectors, covering wards with both affluence and social deprivation in Northern Ireland, London, New Zealand and more locally in Somerset.

Joy has worked for St Margaret's Hospice Care for 5 years, appointed initially as Head of Nursing and Patient Services for the West of the County and most recently as Clinical Director. She strongly believes that patients and families must remain at the heart of what we do and that her work in different environments, understanding the challenges facing every part of the health care sector, has helped to prepare her for this role.

Married with two teenage boys, she and her family love the Somerset countryside and exploring the South West as a whole.

After joining St Margaret's Hospice Care in 2005 as the IT Manager, he then went on to oversee the delivery of several key projects including the organisation’s change to a full multi-disciplinary electronic patient record. During this time Nick has also delivered IT consultancy services to several hospices within the South West including Hospiscare, Weldmar, Weston and The Children’s Hospice SouthWest.

In May 2015, Nick was appointed as the Director of IT Services to ensure St Margaret’s can continue to find innovative ways to reach more people, whilst identifying new ways that technology can be used to improve income generation, and deliver better integrated care.

Sabina has over 25 years’ experience in Finance and Commercial Director roles, in both the private and third sector. She is driven by achieving growth, often utilising best practice from the private sector within third sector environments.  Her experience comes from both senior management and board appointments in a variety of industries, as well as consultancy work with communities, charities and social enterprises. She has recently completed an MBA and was awarded a Distinction from Warwick University.

Sabina is committed to working with organisations that have a high level of social/environmental impact and as well as recently joining St Margaret’s, Sabina currently holds Directorships with Lemon Gazelle Community Interest Company, Jigsaw Thornbury CIC and is a Non-Executive Director with Real Ideas Organisation. These organisations are small and entrepreneurial, contributing high levels of social impact, whether by assisting communities, supporting families and children with additional needs or enabling community groups to achieve their aspirations. Sabina is also the Treasurer and Welfare Officer of Chagford Youth Football Club.

Lisa joined St Margaret's Hospice Care in March 2017 as Director of People and Organisational Development.

Joining us from Capita, Lisa has worked primarily in the area of delivering high quality assessments of need and support services to disabled students and employees within the workplace as part of government funded schemes. Lisa has overseen the development of these people-focused, supportive services across the UK, leading multidisciplinary teams often based in remote locations.

A qualified teacher and HR specialist, Lisa is committed to ensuring our most critical resource, our people, are valued, motivated and given opportunities to develop professionally in order to achieve their own potential and in turn bring value and benefit to St Margaret’s.

Lisa has been part of the Taunton community for nearly 20 years; living only a stone’s throw from the hospice, she enjoys running with her Spaniel, Bailey, in the surrounding fields of Longrun and Netherclay. Having had close personal experience of the difference hospice services can make to patients and their families, Lisa is looking forward to making a positive contribution to this outstanding organisation.

John has worked for the majority of his career for Pizza Hut and KFC. Latterly as Market Growth Officer across 27 countries, spanning from Iceland to Israel, but also in UK board roles covering Development, Legal, Operations, Estates and Franchise, and championed their extensive UK charity work. Many hundreds of stores have opened under his leadership, both with existing and new partners. He is also a chartered accountant, but prefers development and operations to finance.Over the years John has supported and developed many people to become leaders and coaches in many different entities, fields and countries.

He is really excited to be joining St Margaret's Hospice Care as Retail and Commercial Director, and is keen to combine his learning and considerable breadth of experience from the hospitality and franchise sector with all the great work that St Margaret’s Hospice undertakes and is committed to driving forward sustainable income generation.

John is from North Somerset and is particularly pleased to be able to be doing something for the communities close to home. He has two grown up children and spends much of his spare time with his wife and two dogs walking in the Somerset countryside.

Jo has spent the last 20+ years helping a wide range of charities raise funds and deliver impact. From setting up lucrative corporate partnerships for national causes such as Help the Aged (now Age UK) and Action for Blind People, to developing and launching a local membership scheme for the Bishop’s Palace in Wells, Jo has conceived and delivered numerous fundraising successes for the organisations that she has worked for.

An experienced leader, and senior management team player, Jo is an all-round fundraising professional, having worked across a variety of income streams. Most recently Jo led the strategic growth of an international development NGO, called Motivation. Here she worked alongside the UK government’s Department for International Development to initiate and oversee the charity’s three UK Aid Match public appeals, scaled up corporate engagement resulting in a grant of £500K from Google, and developed a new voice and identity for the charity.          

In addition Jo is an experienced communicator having worked in consumer public relations prior to moving into the not-for profit sector. She has therefore also led integrated fundraising and communications teams, and been responsible for growing brand awareness, creating publications and collateral, as well as managing media relations and website development.

A mum of two, Jo lives locally to St Margaret’s site in Taunton, and joined the team in September 2019. Away from work, she is a keen but reluctant runner, football fanatic and loves spending time at the coast pretending to be a surfer!