Our Trustees

Appointed 2023. Simon is Chair of Cancer Research UK. He is an independent member of the House of Lords and was Chief Executive of NHS England for seven years before that. He is also Chair of the UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency, and Chair of Council of King's College London. He previously led health services in a number of countries internationally and was the UK Government's Health Adviser at the Department of Health and 10 Downing Street. Simon is also a director of the Commonwealth Fund of New York and has been a trustee of the Kings Fund and the Nuffield Trust. 

Simon is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of General Practitioners, and of Balliol College Oxford, with honorary doctorates from the universities of Birmingham and Strathclyde. He was educated at Oxford and Strathclyde universities, was a Harkness Fellow at Columbia University, and a visiting professor at the London School of Economics. In 2020 he was knighted for services to health and the NHS and became a crossbench peer in 2021. 

Appointed 2016. Peter Chambré is a Trustee of Cancer Research UK and Chair of Cancer Research Horizons, the commercialisation arm of Cancer Research UK.  He is also Chair of Immatics N.V., a company developing new cancer immunotherapy treatments.  

Peter has been a director of a number of public and private healthcare and life science companies and was Chief Executive Officer of Cambridge Antibody Technology plc from 2002 until its acquisition by AstraZeneca in 2006.  Peter is a Director of Our Future Health. 

Appointed 2022. Gerard gained his BA in Biochemistry at Oxford, his PhD in Molecular Immunology at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge and then an MRC post-doctoral Fellow at University of California San Francisco (UCSF), where he developed his abiding interest in the molecular biology of cancer.  He returned to the UK to take up a Research Fellowship at Downing College, Cambridge and an Assistant Professorship at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research.  

In 1988, he joined the Imperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratories in London as a Senior, then Principal Scientist, and from 1996-9 concurrently held the Royal Society’s Napier Research Professorship in Cancer Biology at UCL.  In 1999, he relocated to San Francisco as a Distinguished Professor of Cancer Research at UCSF, returning to Cambridge UK in 2009 as Sir William Dunn Chair of Biochemistry.  In May 2022 he moved to the Francis Crick Institute as a Principal Group Leader and appointed Professor of Cancer Biology at Kings College, London.  

Gerard’s research focuses on defining the molecular aberrations that underpin genesis and maintenance of cancers, with particular (although not exclusive) emphasis on cancers of pancreas, lung and liver.

Appointed 2020. Professor Nic Jones is currently Director of Strategic Initiatives at the Manchester Cancer Research Centre (MCRC), a partnership between Cancer Research UK, the Christie NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Manchester.  He was Director of the MCRC for 12 years from its inception in 2006 and oversaw its development into one of the foremost comprehensive cancer centres in Europe.  In addition, from 2011-2016, Nic was the CRUK Chief Scientist with responsibility for overseeing the scientific strategy of the organisation.  

Nic was also previously the Director of the CRUK Manchester Institute and led a research team investigating specific signalling pathways implicated in cancer development and growth.  

Appointed as Trustee in 2021, Pam Kearns is Emeritus Professor of Clinical Paediatric Oncology at the University of Birmingham. She retired from her roles as an Honorary Consultant Paediatric Oncologist at Birmingham Women and Children’s Hospital and Director of the University of Birmingham’s Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences in September 2024. She was Director of the University of Birmingham’s Cancer Research UK Clinical Trials Unit (CRCTU) from 2011-2023.

She is currently President of the academic consortium ‘Innovative Therapeutics in Childhood Cancer’ (ITCC) and is a Founding Board member of the International multi-stakeholder platform ‘ACCELERATE’.  Her research interests are focussed of drug development and innovation of design and delivery of clinical trials for childhood cancers.  Pam was President of the European Society of Paediatric Oncology (SIOP Europe) from 2019 -2021 and continued to serve on the SIOP Europe Board until December 2024.  

Pam was also a Senior Clinical Advisor to Cancer Research UK from 2015 to 2020 and is currently Chair of the Board of Trustees of a Child of Mine, a charity dedicated to supporting bereaved parents. She is also a Scientific Advisor to Children with Cancer UK and a Trusted Advisor to the Little Princess Trust.  She chairs the Research Assessment Panel for Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity and is a member of the NIHR Invention for Innovation Product Development Awards Selection Committee. She was the chair of the Bone Cancer Research Trust’s Independent Scientific Advisory Panel until December 2024.

Appointed 2024. Nancy was President & Vice-Chancellor of the Manchester University from July 2010 to July 2024, the first woman to lead the University. She is also Professor of Physiology, and has previously held an MRC Research Chair, as well as holding University positions as Vice-President for Research and as Deputy President & Deputy Vice-Chancellor. 

Nancy’s research in the field of neuroscience has contributed towards major advances in the understanding and treatment of brain damage in stroke and head injury.  She was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in June 2004 and made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in June 2005, in recognition of her services to science.  She was the founding President of the Royal Society of Biology, and is currently a Deputy Lieutenant for Greater Manchester, and a member of the Oxford Road Corridor Board, the Northern Powerhouse Partnership Board, the UK Biobank Board and the Innovation Greater Manchester Board.

Nancy takes a strong and active interest in public communication of science and regularly gives talks to schools and the public and contributes to television, radio and press, particularly on sensitive issues in science

Appointed 2024.  Kate is a Senior Partner and the Global Leader of Technology & AI at McKinsey & Company, where has dedicated over two decades to guiding consumer-focused enterprises through digitally enabled strategies, marketing, operational, and organisational transformations. She is the co-author of WSJ-bestseller Rewired, a guide to outcompeting in the age of digital and AI; and has been on McKinsey's global since 2019. Prior to joining McKinsey, Kate worked in the investment-banking division of a Chase Manhattan and latterly JP Morgan, advising on mergers, acquisitions, and debt restructuring in the technology sector.

A polymath at heart, Kate initially pursued her academic interests in history, earning her degree from the University of Durham. Over the last decade she has also been a passionate trustee of Tommy’s, the children’s charity, at the heart of scientific research into baby loss.  

Appointed 2020. Professor Dame Moira Whyte is the Sir John Crofton Professor of Respiratory Medicine at the University of Edinburgh and from 2017-2023 Vice-Principal and Head of the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine. Her research interests are in basic mechanisms of immunology, including innate immunity in the context of chronic lung diseases. Moira was formerly Director of the MRC/University of Edinburgh Centre for Inflammation Research and Head of Edinburgh Medical School. She was a member of MRC Strategy Board (2017-2023) and Chair of the MRC Training and Careers Group and was Chair of Sub-panel 1 (Clinical Medicine) for the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021.