Board of Directors

Claire Gillis - Chair of the Board

Claire Gillis is the Chair of the Board at OCA. The Board Chair provides strategic leadership to the Board, guiding effective governance, supporting strong decision-making, and ensuring the charity stays focused on its mission and goals.

Claire is a pharmacologist, health economist, and award-winning business leader, brings extensive experience and a deep commitment to health equity to this OCA. Her leadership has been widely recognised: including awards in Management Today, The Women in Marketing, and on the HERoes women role models list. She also holds an MSc from Oxford University in Experimental and Translational Therapeutics. She is also CEO of VML Health, the world’s fastest growing and largest global health network.

With an academic foundation in pharmacology, in the late 1990’s she set up one of the first health consultancies to specialise in HEOR and co-chaired an early oncology asset discovery company. With an objective of using clinical and health economic data to drive access to medical innovations, her successful company, WG Consulting, was brought by the global advertising group, WPP in 2016. Since then, Claire has spearheaded many programmes that have changed pathways and improved health outcomes. From launching the campaign that led the UK government to introduce free access to HPV vaccines for girls resulting in a dramatic decline in cervical cancer rates in Britain to the world’s first mobile diagnostic canine unit for breast cancer patients in remote areas.

Claire is a member of WPP STELLA and a supporter of Women in Creative Healthcare, a global program to promote women in creative fields. She’s the co-founder of NOON – an online platform for midlife women challenged by key life transitions – and has been a Non-Executive Director for InMed, a US charity supporting disadvantaged families.

Claire is passionate about using communications to promote better access to healthcare and is a regular industry commentator for access and health equity across the media – including CNBC, Euro News, Creative Review, PMLiVE, Adweek, MM&M and The Drum.

Dr John Anson

John has spent over 30 years working within the Life Science commercial sector and has a broad range of experience in both technical and commercial leadership.

He was appointed as CEO of Oxford Gene Technology in 2018, having worked for the company since 2006.  In that time he was responsible for overseeing the development of a range of innovative genetics research solutions to advance molecular medicine across the company’s product portfolio. 

Prior to joining OGT, John spent sixteen years at Amersham Biosciences/GE Healthcare where he held a number of senior positions in R&D and business development.

Professor Richard Hunt

Richard Hunt is Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Gastroenterology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada and a faculty member of the Farncombe Family Digestive Health Research Institute.

He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London, Edinburgh and Canada, and American Gastroenterology Association. He is a Master of the American College of Gastroenterology and a Master of the World Gastroenterology Organization.

Richard has been recognized with many prizes and medals for his work in Gastroenterology including the Gilbert Blane Medal and the Bockus Medal.

Richard is currently a Director and Vice President of the Canadian Digestive Health Foundation of which he was also a founding member.

Angharad McKenzie

A career fundraiser and executive leader, Angharad has overseen high growth strategies for a range of International non-profit organisations, including WaterAid, charity: water and Practical Action. With 25 years of experience leading and consulting on global mass market campaigns and market development initiatives through to supporting philanthropists and global corporates in their impact-investments, Angharad brings a portfolio approach to enhancing the performance of purpose-driven organisations and individuals. Angharad joined Hope and Homes for Children in 2017 to lead its organisational positioning and global fundraising efforts as it seeks to spearhead the progressive elimination of institutional care of children globally. She is currently Director of Fundraising at Comic Relief. Angharad holds a first class degree in International Development & Politics and cherishes her role as a daughter, sister, wife, mother and friend.

Jacqui Owens

Jacqui is a senior commercial leader with 20 years of experience in sales leadership, digital transformation, and talent management, through director and senior leadership roles for Google and News Corp in EMEA and APAC.

Jacqui is now Director at Google, leading the Retail business across Google's largest customers across health, beauty, sports, fashion and luxury.

Previously she was the Head of Health & Beauty for Google, where she had been for nine years, initially across Retail in Australia, prior to moving to the UK six years ago. 

Jacqui is passionate about Women's Health and leads Wellbeing and Mental Health for the large customer sales teams at Google UK.

For the past four years, Jacqui has been an Executive Board Member for Cosmetic Executive Women (CEW) UK.

Sally Williams

Sally is a chartered accountant with over 30 years of experience. She is a non-executive director at Close Brothers Group plc, Lancashire Holdings Limited, and Family Assurance Friendly Society Limited (OneFamily).

Sally chairs the audit committees at Lancashire Holdings and OneFamily.  Prior to becoming a non-executive, she held senior roles at Marsh, National Australia Bank and PwC. 
Sally sadly lost her mother to ovarian cancer and is passionate about OCA’s ambition to make ovarian cancer a survivable disease.