Meet St John Ambulance’s Board of Trustees 

The Prior - Stuart Shilson LVO GCStJ DL 

Stuart Shilson is Prior of the Priory of England and the Islands of the Order of St John, and Chair of St John Ambulance. He is a Bailiff Grand Cross of the Order and was previously a member of its worldwide governing body. As Sub-Prior of the Order internationally, he helped establish an innovative maternal and neonatal care programme in sub-Saharan Africa. He retired as Trustee of British Red Cross recently and is a serving Deputy Lieutenant for Greater London. 

In his professional life, Stuart is a senior partner at global consulting firm McKinsey & Company, focusing on economic and social infrastructure. During a long and illustrious career, he has worked as a commercial barrister and senior civil servant in the Cabinet Office – and spent three years as Assistant Private Secretary to HM Queen Elizabeth II.

The Dean - The Reverend Canon Dr Paul Williams CStJ

Paul was born in Chatham, Kent and has attended the universities of St Andrews and Cambridge. He trained for the ordained ministry at Westcott House.

After being appointed Assistant Chaplain at Selwyn College, Paul served a curacy at St Stephen, Chatham and an incumbency at St Augustine, Gillingham, before becoming Personal Chaplain to the Bishop of Rochester. He moved to Tewkesbury in 2003, where he was Vicar of the Abbey, Area Dean and Honorary Canon of Gloucester Cathedral. Paul was appointed Rector of the Sandringham Group of Churches in September 2022.

As Vice Dean of the Priory, he is closely associated with St John Ambulance, is a Commander of the Order and Secretary to the Pro Fide Committee of Grand Council.

Paul is a published author, and is married to Catherine, who is also a priest. They have two adult children, Alice and Harry.

Chief Commander Carole Lawrence-Parr CStJ 

Carole is our Chief Commander,  Director /Trustee and lead volunteer:  her role is to ensure that the voice of our volunteers is heard at the highest level.

Carole joined St John Ambulance in 2009 as an Area President and was then County President until her appointment as Chief President in 2020. As Chief President, Carole led a network of Presidents across the country and worked closely with senior colleagues to promote the work of St John Ambulance and the Priory, including as a member of Chapter. 

Carole spent her career in healthcare as a Director in the NHS with responsibility for GPs, pharmacists, dentists, community hospitals and community nurses, and latterly healthcare in prisons and police custody. She won a bursary to explore prison healthcare in the USA and received a number of local and national awards for her work in prisons and primary healthcare.  Her published work includes a Quality and Outcome Framework in Prisons toolkit, and she has lectured and presented on many occasions including the International Prison Conference held in Bulgaria.  She has held directorships in private healthcare and is currently a management consultant with a particular speciality in start up businesses supporting them to obtain regulatory requirements, develop organisational structures and obtain contracts.

Ingrid Waterfield 

Ingrid Waterfield is an HR executive and is currently Chief People Strategy & Culture Officer for KPMG EMA (Europe, Middle East & Africa). Prior to this, she was the Executive HR Director responsible for implementing the people strategy and the change management programme for KPMG South Africa. In 2017 she spent a year working with KPMG’s Global Leadership on the most important strategic questions facing the global firm at that time. 

Ingrid originally trained as a Chartered Accountant and has over 20 years of experience both as an external HR adviser, and as part of KPMG’s HR leadership, on interventions to increase organisation performance and improve employee motivation and engagement. An important aspect of her work has been focussed on diversity and inclusion strategies and developing agile workforces to enable businesses to adapt to the fast-moving world around them. 

Ingrid is passionate about supporting young people to enable them to belong, contribute and thrive in their communities, in education and in the work place. She is Vice-Chair of YMCA Downslink Group, part of the International YMCA Federation across Surrey and Sussex that supports over 15,000 young people every year. 

Harpreet Kondel 

A senior fundraiser with nearly 30 years’ experience within the charitable sector, Harpreet Kondel has acquired her experience within agencies and charities. During her career she has provided strategic and practical leadership to grow income for a number of organisations, including the British Red Cross and Barnardo’s. She has managed income in excess of £35 million per year and teams of up to 100. 

Since 2017, she has been providing interim fundraising support and consultancy to a range of charities, including Diabetes UK, Christian Aid, Mencap, Age UK, Thames Valley Air Ambulance and Animals Asia. 

Dr Annette Doherty OBE FRSC

Annette joined the St. John Ambulance Board as a Trustee in January 2023. She has 35 years of international experience working within the pharmaceutical sector, including at Warner-Lambert, Pfizer and most recently GSK where she was Senior Vice President, Global Head of Product Development and Clinical Supply. She has been directly involved in the research, development and launch of over 30 new medicines in respiratory, infectious diseases, and inflammatory conditions.

She is currently Senior Advisor at Frazier Life Sciences, a team investing in and building companies developing and commercializing novel therapeutics. She has served on the Boards of various research, educational and charitable organizations. She currently holds various non-executive positions including at the Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, the Addenbrookes Hospital Charitable Trust (ACT), The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) charity and Member of the Tonbridge Grammar School Academy Trust.

Annette has a BSc and PhD in Chemistry from Imperial College London.

She has recently been elected as the next President of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a charity focussing on education and research in chemical sciences.

In 2009, Annette was awarded an OBE in recognition of her services to the pharmaceutical sector.

Julie Gooderham CIIA

Julie Gooderham became a St John Ambulance Board Trustee in 2023 and is Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee. She joined St John Ambulance as an independent member of the Audit and Risk Committee in 2021. Julie has over twenty five years experience leading, advising and transforming enterprise risk management, internal audit, governance, compliance, operational and crisis management teams working across Europe, the Americas and Asia Pacific.

Julie is currently Director, Internal Audit and Risk at the John Lewis Partnership in the UK. Prior to joining the Partnership, she worked in professional services across telecommunications, manufacturing and consumer products, energy, chemicals, utilities, financial services industries and in government.

Dr Peter Holden

Peter Holden joined the St John Ambulance Board as Clinical Trustee in January 2024. In 2023, after 38 years, he retired as senior partner of a teaching and training rural general practice. He has held many senior posts representing the UK medical profession and has 30 years’ experience as trustee of a national charity. He is Vice President of UEMO an EU organisation based in Brussels frequently taking him all over Europe and to the European Medicines Agency in Amsterdam.

Clinically, his major interest has been in the provision of, and teaching, the acute care of the ill and injured outside hospital and was instrumental in initiatives culminating in PreHospital Emergency Medicine becoming a GMC recognised subspecialty in 2012. He is an accredited Consultant in PreHospital Emergency Medicine.

Peter spent 20 years as a HEMS physician on both the Lincs-Notts and MAGPAS Air Ambulances and now is Trustee with responsibility for Clinical Governance Oversight at the CQC Outstanding MAGPAS Air Ambulance in Cambridgeshire. He is Treasurer of The Faculty of Pre-Hospital Care of The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. Peter is one of very few with real major incident experience at all four command levels ranging from the Hillsborough disaster, the Tavistock Square bus bombing in 2005, and co-authoring the primary care response to pandemics in 2008/9. He has been a member of the government’s Emergency Preparedness Resilience & Response Clinical Reference Group since 2012 and was part of its Frontline Clinical Cell during the Covid 19 Pandemic.

Peter maintains clinical currency as Strategic Medical Advisor to East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust, responding in a critical care car for East Midlands Immediate Care Scheme (EMICS) and working on the GP out of hours service.

Tara-Bella Halai

Tara-Bella Halai joined St John Ambulance as a Cadet in June 2015. She was elected Chair of the Young Responders Youth Advisory Group, representing the initiative on the National Youth Forum and advocating for youth involvement in strategic discussions. Tara was appointed as an International Youth Ambassador for the Priory of England and the Islands advocating for the needs, experiences, preferences, and achievements of young people in St John globally through St John International. As Regional Student Volunteering Officer, Tara helped develop a transition programme for student volunteers, building connections across the organisation. The combination of these roles meant that she gained experience in representing young people at a regional, national and international level.

Tara has also gained experience in championing youth voice outside of St John Ambulance in her previous role as a national representative for the British Medical Association Medical Students Committee. Tara has completed an intercalated BSc degree in Prehospital Medicine from Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry.

Ben qualified at KPMG and developed a career in property where he became the Finance Director at M&G Real Estate. He then chose to move into an Interim Career in 2007 to refocus his career within organisations going through significant change. This has given him very varied experience that has included working as the CFO within several Housing Associations, Charities and Property organisations. Sometimes these roles will focus on rebuilding the finance team and on other occasions he will support an organisation through a significant change such as a merger or an IPO.

Ben’s last role was COO within CDP, an international Global Climate Change Organisation which was
going through a significant turnaround.

Ben previously worked at St John Ambulance during the Covid pandemic in 2020. At this time, training had stopped trading completely and Ben worked with the Executive Committee to navigate the Board and Finance Team through this period.

Ben is married and lives in Surrey with three children.

Kevin is currently Commissioner Young People where, as well as supporting the development of our youth programmes, he has led our Unit Futures Commission and supported the development of our new Community Networks. He brings 30 years of St John experience, including as a Regional Youth Manager and District Manager and across a range of functions including operations, training and safeguarding.

Kevin's background is as a qualified community worker and further education teacher. He is currently the Chief Executive of City Year UK, an education and social action charity that supports 18 to 25-year-old volunteers to undertake a year of community service in schools. Prior to joining City Year, Kevin was the founding Chief Executive of ThinkForward, a programme providing young people with long term and intensive support to ensure that they make a successful transition from school to work. Kevin also previously worked in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, where he was Deputy Head of Youth Services and then Head of 14-19 Education.

I joined St John as Chief Business Officer in December 2020. My role involves leading the Education and Enterprise Network, while focussing on all our commercial activity as a charity. I lead the Training Operations, Education & Products, Sales Marketing & Business Development, Supplies, Events and Customer Services teams. 

Before joining St John, I was the Chief Executive Officer of St John Ambulance in South Africa. I have a well-developed track record in humanitarian aid development whilst also having served as a Digital Transformation Executive for several blue-chip companies in both South Africa and the United Kingdom. I have also taught and tutored for several years at two universities in South Africa and, more recently, as a guest lecturer at the India School of Business in Hyderabad. 

I’m here because my twin life passions of adding exceptional value and leaving a lasting, positive legacy by continuously applying my commercial, entrepreneurial, networking and strategic management skills in professional practice across the globe. 

I have been a volunteer with St John for a number of years and continue to do so within St John Ambulance in England. I am currently finalising my Doctorate in Post-Pandemic Business Recovery models. 

I joined St John in April 2022. My role is to provide senior strategic leadership across our Engagement & Experience Network to deliver a shared experience for all of our people, supporters and customers and inspire a deeper connection to our mission and values.  

I joined St John from Nesta, a charitable foundation that supports innovation for social good, where most recently I was Chief Partnership Officer with responsibility for building Nesta’s programmes in the four nations of the UK and establishing and spinning out commercial ventures. Before that, I was Nesta’s Executive Director of Programmes, overseeing the distribution of £70m of grants to charities and social enterprises to prototype new ways of working and supporting the best to scale up nationwide. 

Joanne joined St John in September 2022. She looks after all the digital estate, and the data that's associated. She leads the Digital & Intelligence network and our Digital, Technology, Continuous Improvement and Data & Impact teams.

Before St John, she worked for the NHS Business Services Authority, an Arm’s Length Body of the Department of Health and Social Care. They manage over £35 billion of NHS spend annually, delivering a range of national services to NHS organisations, NHS contractors, patients, and the public.

She is also a Non-Executive Director for North Star Housing Group in Stockton.

When she is not working, Joanne loves to spend time on the Northumberland coast, enjoying the beach and the local cafes/pubs.