Our Trustees
Professor Danny Altmann
Danny is Professor of Immunology at Imperial College London, where he heads a lab.. During the pandemic he has advised policymakers including the House of Commons and House of Lords Science Committees, the APPG on Coronavirus, the Cabinet Office, Sir Keir Starmer and the Shadow Cabinet, the Welsh Assembly, the EU, The Scottish Parliament, WHO, NICE and the Department of Health. For over 20 years Danny has edited medical journals including Oxford Open Immunology, Immunology, and Vaccine. He is a trustee at the Medical Research Foundation and a board member for the African Research Excellence Fund. He previously headed strategy on infection, immunity and population health at the Wellcome Trust. His research interests focus on the immunology of infectious diseases including severe bacterial infections, SARS-CoV-2, Zika virus and Chikungunya virus. He also has a long record in autoimmunity research. Danny’s SARS-CoV-2 research is published in journals including the Lancet, Nature and Science. He heads an NIHR-funded research programme to look at mechanisms of pathogenesis and development of new diagnostic tests in a large cohort of individuals with Long Covid.
External website: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/d.altmann
Jo Dainow
Jo has lived experience of Long Covid and is a founder member of Long Covid Support. She is one of the administrators of the Long Covid Support Facebook group and co-facilitates the charity’s peer support work, managing wellbeing activities for members. Jo is experienced in coaching and mentoring, is a volunteer walk leader for Walk Wandsworth and a Director of a Vintage VW Campervan hire company. Her previous professional experience was within the creative operations area of the entertainments industry and marketing agencies.
Margaret O’Hara
Margaret is a founder Trustee of Long Covid Support. She co-facilitates the charity’s work with researchers, and runs an associated Facebook group called Covid-19 Research Involvement Group. As a person with Long Covid, she has worked with organisations such as NHSEI and NIHR, as well as academics and clinicians. She has co-authored peer reviewed articles on Long Covid, presented at international and national conferences and has co-created research with professional academics and health practitioners. Margaret’s previous patient involvement and advocacy experience is in Hyperemesis Gravidarum (HG) and she is deputy Chair of Trustees of the charity Pregnancy Sickness Support (PSS). She has conducted, published and presented patient-led research, and has co-authored clinical practice guidelines and a James Lind Alliance Priority Setting Partnership. She is a scientist by profession and is currently a Patient Involvement in Research professional in the NHS.
Monique Jackson
Monique Jackson is an artist and has personal experience of Long Covid.
Monique created The Still Ill Corona Diary, an online graphic journal illustrating her experiences with Long Covid. A selection of these drawings are hosted on the London based museum The Wellcome Collections website.
Monique twice worked as a public panel member for the UK’s National Institute of Health Research funding call into the longer term effects of Covid-19 in non-hospitalised individuals, as a result of which £18.5 million and a further £19.6 million was awarded to new research projects in 2021.
Natalie Rogers
Natalie is a founder member of Long Covid Support and is herself a person with Long Covid. She has contributed to the organisation's advocacy work, campaigning for accessible and equitable health and welfare services for people with Long Covid and other long term chronic health conditions. Natalie has worked with organisations including NHSEI, NICE and the ONS sharing lived experience expertise. She also advocates for equitable access to services at regional level as the patient voice representative for the NHS North West Health Inequalities steering group. Natalie has been actively involved in co-designing research priorities, has collaborated in research and co-authored journal articles on Long Covid. Her background is in education leadership.
Laura Evans
Laura is the CEO of Glass Ceilings® Change Management, a HR and Management Consultancy which also undertakes policy and research to remove systemic barriers to growth, development and opportunity in employment. Laura combines over 15 years’ leadership in Operations, Policy, and HR across the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors, including developing equalities and hate crime legislation, health and safety, civil contingencies, EU and charity regulation. She is a confident and articulate public speaker on a wide range of issues. Throughout the pandemic, she has been raising awareness of the need for long term strategic planning for the impacts of Covid on societal health and wellbeing, employment and labour markets, and the economy, whilst warning of a rise in ableism. Laura has been advising organisations and individuals on strategic workforce planning and employment relations, to enable people living with Long Covid to remain in employment and education. Laura is a Chartered Fellow with the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and Chartered Management Institute, and holds Fellowship with the Australian HR Institute, Institute of Leaders and Managers UK, and Institute for Managers and Leaders ANZ.
Aimie Cole
Aimie has personal experience of Long Covid and has worked for over 20 years within the public and charity sectors. She is the Director of her own consultancy practice, offering a range of services to individuals and organisations committed to positive change. In the last seven years she has specialised in health and care with roles focused on developing and supporting partnerships, community-based approaches and system change to improve the lives of people with multiple, chronic or complex health conditions. Aimie's other experience includes working in the UK Treasury, for a philanthropic trust in the Middle East and on innovative finance and business mechanisms for social benefit. Aimie lives in Dorset, is a trustee of her local voluntary sector infrastructure organisation, and can often be found enjoying the sea or the countryside with her family.
Temitope Oyefuga
Temitope is a Biochemist and Chartered Accountant with a passion for helping people. With 15 years’ experience in finance, business strategy and change management, she has worked with different organisations in healthcare, energy, and other sectors. Temitope has served as a strategic partner to boards of directors and has led finance teams to develop operational processes that improved efficiency.
In addition to her professional career, Temitope has volunteered informally with non-profit organisations for many years. In 2018, she registered a charity called the “Hand of Love Africa Initiative”, coordinating teams of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and laboratory scientists to provide medicines and diagnoses, in addition to raising funds for food and supplies to rural communities in Nigeria.
Larry Mindel
Larry is living with Long Covid, having succumbed early in 2022. Larry has been a business executive, consultant and qualified executive coach to organisations from start-ups to the Boards of FTSE-100 companies, and worked in a dozen countries across Europe and the Americas. His speciality was helping companies set their business strategies, transform their business models, and realise them through multi-year programmes. Larry retired in 2016. Since then, he has followed his life-long passion for writing and making music: recording albums, making short music films and videos, and - before the pandemic and Long Covid - performing anywhere in the world that would have him! Larry looks forward to getting back on the road someday soon!
Dr Ian Frayling
Ian has lived experience of Long Covid and was a founding member of Long Covid Wales. He is an expert in hereditary cancer and retired from NHS Wales in 2019. He now holds honorary appointments at St Mark’s Hospital, Harrow and St Vincent’s, Dublin, and is also President of the Association of Clinical Pathologists (ACP) and an Honorary Senior Clinical Research Fellow at Cardiff University. Ian has sat on many advisory committees to the Welsh and UK Governments, the Departments of Health in England and Wales and council of the Royal College of Pathologists. He holds many other positions, including being on the WHO editorial board for the Classification of Tumours (‘Blue books’) series.
Ian is a Member of the Council of the International Society for Gastrointestinal Hereditary Tumours (InSiGHT), the UK Cancer Genetics Group; and an Honorary Medical Advisor to Lynch Syndrome UK & Lynch Syndrome Ireland. He is a recipient of both the ACP’s Dyke Foundation Medal for his “eminence as a member of the pathology community” and the Pathological Society of Great Britain & Ireland’s Goudie Medal for his “seminal contribution to the science of pathology.” Ian helped establish NICE Diagnostics Guidance DG27 and later DG42, that bowel and endometrial cancers must be tested to see if they are due to Lynch syndrome., Suffering from Long Covid since April 2020 he has provided input as an informed expert patient into both NICE and WHO Long Covid guidance, as well as participating in numerous research studies.
James McGoldrick
James is an Entrepreneurial Finance professional with lived experience of Long Covid. He was most recently Chief Financial Officer for an Anglo-Swedish, e-mobility start-up. Prior to this James worked in M&A with the Investment Bank at JP Morgan, and as an auditor for Deloitte. He holds an MBA (dist.) from INSEAD Business School, Paris/Singapore, and was a Deloitte Scholar for Physics at the University of Durham. James is a keen amateur chorister and enjoys rock climbing.