Chair of the HENRY Board

Samantha is the Deputy Director for Social Work Reform within the Department for Education (DfE). She is responsible for advising, designing and implementing social work reform to secure policies, promote pilots, commission accredited assessment standards, and create a new social work regulator, Social Work England. She chairs the department’s disability group, focusing on improving inclusion and diversity.

She is a passionate skier and supporter of her kids playing rugby, cricket and hockey, and loves to cook.

Dr Anne Coufopoulos is an experienced senior academic having worked in Higher Education for over 20 years. She has held a number of senior leadership roles, including Executive Dean at University College Birmingham, leading the School of Health, Sport and Food. Prior to this she was Associate Dean (Enterprise & Commercial) at Coventry University, Faculty of Health & Life Sciences. Earlier in her career, Anne has been employed in a number of academic roles across the course of her career in nutrition and public health.

Anne is also a registered dietitian and an accredited workplace dietitian with the British Dietetic Association. Over recent years Anne has also been focussing upon workplace health and has been working closely with the rail industry in the North-West of England to improve the nutrition related health of employees. This work has been recognised as an example of good practice in managing railway workers’ health by the independent regulator, the Office of Rail and Road (ORR).

Following a sixteen year career in the finance industry, Dawn spent the following four years as a senior finance consultant, predominantly within the charity sector - including consulting for HENRY - and has now returned as a Trustee. She is currently the Chief Finance Officer for The Bell Foundation.

Janice has 15 years senior leadership experience as Head of Public Health (Children and Families) at Leeds City Council. Passionate about promoting wider understanding of the value of investing in the Early years, and as lead for Leeds Best Start Plan, she commissioned and helped develop Leeds antenatal education offers, Infant Mental Health Services, Breastfeeding Support, Health Visiting, School Nursing and School Health and Wellbeing Services .

Working with a wide range of partners she led the development of Leeds Child Health Weight Strategy. She has worked alongside the HENRY team since the programme began and is proud to have led the development of the extensive Leeds HENRY offer which she believes was central to enabling Leeds to be one of the few cities to buck the trend by reducing Child Obesity rates.

Treasurer

Nigel is a qualified accountant with wide-ranging financial, commercial and operational experience working for large private and public-sector organisations. He has operated at board level for the last 11 years, including six years for two large charities.

Pinki is Emeritus Professor of Nutrition and Childhood Obesity at Leeds Beckett University. Her key interests are in the development, implementation and evaluation of interventions to improve child nutrition and reduce health inequalities across a range of settings. She has over 20 years’ experience as a Registered Dietitian (RD).

Pinki is past Chair of The Association for the Study of Obesity (ASO), contributed to NICE guidance on Managing overweight and obesity among children and young people (PH47), led the Nutrition and Obesity theme within the Better Start Bradford programme and developed HAPPY, an early years obesity prevention programme. Pinki was co-investigator for the Whole Systems Obesity programme funded by PHE which led to the development of a toolkit to address obesity in local authorities.

She loves to cook whilst listening to her eclectic collection of music!

Tracey Chong has been Head of Boys’ Prep at Surbiton High School since January 2020. She is responsible for the learning and teaching of over 200 boys aged 4-11 and 35 staff. Her heart lies in watching the individual thrive and still lives by the motto ‘Every Child Matters’.

She lives in Hampton Hill with her husband and two children, albeit that they are 24 and 21. She loves reading, film watching and travelling.