Claire's first months as our new CEO

Tell us about yourself

I’m a born and bred Londoner with 2 children, who both currently live in Edinburgh, one at university and one who's working there. 

I’m one of 3 sisters, and my youngest sister Katie was diagnosed with breast cancer a few days after I was offered the CEO role. It's been an extraordinary induction into the charity having someone so close to me go through the process of diagnosis, treatment and now finding her new ‘normal’ after breast cancer treatment.

Outside work, I keep busy by going to the gym, seeing friends and travelling as much as I can. I love to cook and entertain.

What did you do before joining Breast Cancer Now? 

Originally with an events background, I've spent over 25 years working in the charity sector. I had nearly 6 years at Macmillan Cancer Support where I was on the executive team leading on fundraising, marketing and innovation, and all our strategy work. Before that I spent 13 years at Cancer Research UK working across the fundraising division. 

I feel the Breast Cancer Now CEO role gives me an amazing opportunity to bring together everything I know about cancer research and support and really focus it on people living with breast cancer. 

Whether you complete a survey, join an online focus group or sit in a room to help us make decisions, it’s only with voices like yours that we can make the biggest difference to people affected by breast cancer.

It’s you that pushes us forward every day and will help to improve the outcomes for future generations who receive a breast cancer diagnosis.

What are you working on now? 

It’s been an exciting time to join Breast Cancer Now, just as we’re starting to develop our new strategy. The strategy will be our long-term plan of action for the next 5 years.

We know we can’t tackle everything in this strategy period and so are planning on focusing on the things we think will make the biggest difference, with a longer-term view of some of the tougher nuts to crack.

I’ve had the pleasure of working with Voices already though the strategy development process. Thank you for your contributions, however you’ve been involved! Whether that’s been through surveys, strategy ideation, goal groups or the strategy steering groups, it’s all been so helpful in getting us to where we are with the new strategy.

I’ve been blown away by the commitment and expertise of Voices who have helped us in so many ways. By both sharing your experience and bringing in your wider life experiences, you're helping us look beyond our 4 walls and think big for the future.

How else have people affected by breast cancer contributed to the new strategy? 

Coming into the role, and leading in the development of our new strategy, it’s been essential to understand the needs of people with breast cancer and how it impacts their lives.

Last September, we launched the Big Breast Cancer Survey. We’ve been using the insight from the survey, along with other insights we have, to inform the development of the new strategy and our wider work. 

We received nearly 3000 responses from across the 4 nations of the UK. Teams across the charity are already using the findings to inform their areas of work. We’ll be looking to replicate input from Voices in a more meaningful way going forwards as we’ve learnt just how valuable it is. 

We’ll be sharing our findings from the survey at the start of May, and we look forward to sharing our final strategy in the Autumn.