Mick Ward is a Senior Associate of Nurture Development, an associate of the Health Systems Innovations Lab at London South Bank University and a Trustee of PAFRAS (Positive Action for Refugees and Asylum Seekers based in Leeds).  

He retired in June 2020 as Chief Officer, Transformation and Innovation, for the Adults and Health Directorate in Leeds City Council. The role focused on Asset Based Community Development, Digital Health, Arts and Well-Being, Service Transformation, Equality, and Innovation in Practice.

He is from Leeds and worked for social care at Leeds City Council for 42 years, initially as a Care Assistant, before developing and managing a range of services for disabled people and then moving into commissioning for Adult Social Care, Public Health, Housing Support and the NHS, This developed into an expanded joint role as Deputy Director across the Local Authority and the CCG’s in Leeds, leading on commissioning across a wide range of health, care and wellbeing services, before establishing the transformation and innovation role.

Mick has a strong commitment to the social model of disability, citizenship, communities, innovation, culture, equality and diversity, and working in partnership.

He is a life long Leeds United fan and a member of the board of Marching Out Together – the Leeds United LGBT+ Supporters Group

Tweet @mickmodern

To hear more from Mick…

‘Proliferation’ – The implementation of ABCD in Leeds Part 1 – Nurture Development

https://www.nurturedevelopment.org/blog/abcd-practice/proliferation-the-implementation-of-abcd-in-leeds-part-2/

Mick Ward: Commissioning Through Influence

Ever since he was a child, Martin has stimulated real conversation, captured the insights of people and helped people share those insights with others. His innate curiosity led him to study and work in physics, IT, fibre optics, nucleonics, water treatment, project management and many more subjects.

His own personal quest to find out who the real Martin Wells is led him to study and work in human psychology, teaching, diversity and equality in health care and personal growth.

All of these things combined with exploring unique ways of using modern technologies continues to help him provide others with insights so that new possibilities can emerge.

Tony is a coach based in London.

His coaching interests include:

• leadership for reluctant or inexperienced leaders,
• how to avoid (and recover from) burnout and
• mental fitness and self-defence.

When he’s not coaching he can be found in the gym (post-pandemic), singing (post-pandemic) or out and about on his bike (especially during a pandemic).

I first met Tony nearly 30 years ago and this was our first proper conversation for a very long time. We explore stress and burnout and what recovery can look like among many other things.

Tony can be found at https://www.tonypiper.coach/ and on twitter as @tonypiper

And, if LinkedIn is your thing https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonypiperuk/

As Co-Founder and Managing Director of a growing social enterprise Resilience Learning Partnership, Shumela Ahmed is a teacher and educator by trade and an activist at heart.  As a real life example of the transformation education can bring to someone’s life, she has dedicated her academic and professional career to helping others realise this too.  As an adult returner to education and as someone who left school at aged 14 she knows first hand the power that education holds in providing the tools for those from disadvantaged backgrounds to succeed in life. As the leader of a Lived Experienced led organisation its Shumela’s ambition to see Lived Experience as the dominating force within public policy design across the UK.

She feels passionately that the key to achieving this ambition lies within the learning and development of staff and adopting a new approach that has Lived Experience expertise at the heart of it.  She is also a passionate advocate of the renumeration of those with Lived Experience involved in public policy design and the recognition that this expertise brings a dynamic to L&D work not currently utilised in the sector.

As a co-author of the National Trauma Training Plan, Shumela continues to target Resilience Learning Partnership’s core activities towards enhancing the learning and development of staff across local authority, 3rd and private sector organisations.  As well as being a co-author of the National Trauma Training Plan, Shumela advises Scottish Government in the continued development of the National Trauma Training Programme and the implementation of Trauma Informed Practice across Scotland.

Dr David Atkinson is both an award-winning researcher and a practitioner of enterprise and entrepreneurship in their widest sense. His monograph, Thinking the Art of Management, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2007. With a new book project nearing submission, his interest in applied philosophy accompanies 15+ years commercial, entrepreneurial and organisational leadership experience, built on an extensive career as a communications and IT & systems analyst, consultant project engineer and manager in public service. With one of his more recent ventures, he held a position in the StartUps.co.uk ‘Top 100 startups to watch’. for three consecutive years.

David is openly, and proudly autistic. In 2000, he embarked on an academic journey while engaging in business creation. Since 2018, he has been working part-time in academia, where his neuro-divergent free-thinking and curious nature have been central to what and how he achieves what he does. His focus in his new book project is on developing his past and current research and experience of embedding critical philosophical approaches to sensemaking about the reality of capitalist enterprise. This offers potential benefits to understanding our place within the moral, social and political dimensions of socio-economic organisational praxis.

In short: David thinks critically about our emergence in an uncertain world of socio-economic, enterprising work.