VALERIE JAMES

Valerie James is at the forefront of innovation in the UK in developing health service leaders.  A Senior Fellow in Leadership at the King’s Fund for 10 years, she worked with over 800 senior clinicians and managers on ground breaking interventions.  These included the Top and Senior Manager Programmes, Athena for executive women, Management for 500+ Specialist Registrars and, with Dr Eden Charles, the Transformational Leadership Programme for senior BME leaders in the NHS.  Professor Alimo-Metcalf independently evaluated TLP as outstanding.  As a result, Valerie and Eden were nominated by over 100 people for the national Leadership Awards 2009 and again in 2010 (Partnership Category) for enabling multiple, sustained personal and organisational improvements.

 A full time independent consultant since 2010, clients include two international order of nuns, the Department of Health and Department for Education, King Fahad Medical City - 8 hospitals in Riyadh, The Health Foundation, on patient safety and board leadership, and the national college of police leadership on partnership working. She wrote the first QI strategy in the NHS, working in partnership from Board to Ward to create demonstration projects, specialising in the human factors blocks to improvement.

Previously she has been a chief executive grade in the NHS and an academic. She has two clinical trainings, three behavioural science degrees, three postgraduate clinical diplomas and a PGCE. Accredited by CEDR International as a mediator, she specialises in mediating with doctors.  She works creatively with transformational change, inequality and conflict.  Valerie has been an executive coach to many senior figures and has taught coaching skills for over eighteen years.  She has a passion for partnership working across systems and for bridging differences. 

Visiting Senior Fellow, Kingston University

Independent Consultant: Corporate Psychologist; CEDR Accredited Mediator

Consulting Editor, International Journal of Public Leadership

Recent Projects Include:

• 2021 ISQua international conference on quality & patient safety: plenary panel plus presentation on how to co-produce healthcare with patients (the conference theme)
• Lead Faculty for both the Coaching and Application Groups for the 2012-16 London Deanery’s Darzi Fellows (Clinical Leadership) Programmes (c 200 Fellows);
• Delivered multiple whole system events on implementation of new NICE standards on Early Intervention in Psychosis for the south of England, commissioned by Oxford Academic Health Science Network, plus MDT cross service peer review training including users and carers; Clinical Fellows networks for South London AHSN (HIN);
• Convened two Communities of Practice (of 8 people each) for Directors of Public Health in London and including Local Authority Directors – these meetings co-diagnosed challenges and built skills in partnership working. Commissioned by NHS London
• Partnership Working across the Public Sector – approached to help design, and then as syndicate director for 4 cohorts of a Home Office and the national Police College leadership programme: Leading Powerful Partnerships. This is now the flagship programme at Bramshill College and participants come from across the public and voluntary sectors. It is a highly challenging, and highly rated, experiential programme;
• Co-diagnosed and provided a 2 year bespoke organisational development programme for a CCG; supported an emerging GP Federation through their start up;
• Coached over 100 SpRs individually for their consultant interviews, and directed workshops on this for more than 500 SpRs; coached many medical consultants in improving their individual and team performance;
• Consulted, as part of a team, on a year's change management programme for an inner London health visitor service with complex and multicultural pressures.