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Carol Ramsey
Carol Ramsey took up the post of Director of Strategic Planning Division in December 2015 in Department for Infrastructure. She is a chartered Town Planner with over 33 years experience working in both the private and public sector, including posts in the NIHE, the former DOE Planning Service and in Belfast Regeneration Directorate in what was then the Department for Social Development.
During her tenure in DSD Carol notably was responsible for spearheading the comprehensive redevelopment scheme at Victoria Square in Belfast City Centre. She was also responsible for drafting and implementing Regeneration Policy in Belfast City Centre over a 13 year period.
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Danny McQuillan
Danny joined Start 360 as CEO in October 2022. Start 360 is an innovative contributor of support services to young people and adults at risk, including their families, across Northern Ireland. Start 360 provides a range of services and interventions targeting the health, justice and employability needs of our service users. Danny was previously CEO of Social Justice charity Extern and CEO of Positive Life - Northern Ireland's only voluntary sector organisation providing dedicated support to all people affected by HIV. Prior to leading Positive Life his roles included Head of Development for the Multiple Sclerosis Society NI and Area Manager with the Alzheimer’s Society.
For 30 years Danny has worked in the community and voluntary sector holding a variety of positions both voluntarily and in paid capacities. In his current role, Danny draws on his areas of expertise which include service development and delivery, service commissioning and quality assurance, policy development, public relations, fundraising and social media development. He has considerable experience of delivering services to people affected by homelessness, Mental ill health, Refugees, individuals engaged with the criminal justice system, living, and affected by dementia, older people services, training and employment services and services for young people and young adults.
Danny is an enthusiastic believer in the positive impact of the community and voluntary sector and is particularly interested in getting young people interested in politics.
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Dr Elizabeth Mitchell
As a medical practitioner, Dr Mitchell's career in public health spanned over 30 years and covered all three domains of public health. She was Deputy Chief Medical Officer (Public Health), DHSSPS, until January 2014 when she was appointed to the Institute of Public Health in Ireland (IPH), initially as a Consultant in Public Health Medicine, and from March to November 2016 as Interim Chief Executive. she retired in November 2016 but came out for retirement during the COVID pandemic to work as the Director of the NI Contact Tracing Service.
Elizabeth is a trustee on the Management Council of Camphill Community Glencraig.
Elizabeth graduated with Second Class Honours from Queen's University Belfast in 1980. She is a Fellow of the UK Faculty of Public Health, a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (Edinburgh) and a Member of the Faculty of Public Health Medicine, of the Royal College of Physicians Ireland.
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Alistair Beggs
Alistair Beggs was appointed Director of Strategic Planning, Department for Infrastructure. in February 2018, and his Directorate is responsible for processing planning applications deemed to be of regional significance or those which may be ‘called in’ from the local councils. In addition, the Directorate carries out a plan scrutiny role as part of the two-tier planning system and oversees the regeneration of both Crumlin Road Gaol, Belfast and the former barracks at St Lucia, Omagh.
A graduate of Dundee University, Alistair is a Chartered Town Planner with 30 years’ experience working in a wide range of planning posts, including 13 years with the Planning Appeals and Water Appeals Commissions. Prior to that he worked with Dundee City Council, Angus Council and Fife Council. Alistair is a member of the Royal Town Planning Institute’s Northern Ireland Executive committee.
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Professor Ruth Hunter
Professor, Centre for Public Health, Queen’s University Belfast, Ruth’s work primarily involves investigating how we can improve our urban environment for better population health, including evaluation of natural experiments (such as large-scale urban regeneration programmes).
Ruth has particular expertise in the application of systems-thinking and complexity science methods. She has secured research grants from the NIHR, MRC, ESRC and GCRF-British Council.
Ruth is a member of the Public Health Research funding panel for the NIHR and recently held a Career Development Fellowship from the NIHR on public health interventions for health behaviour change.
She is a member of the WHO expert panel on urban green space interventions, Non Communicable Disease prevention, Health and the SDGs and other aspects of urban environment and health, and an executive board member for WHO Belfast Healthy Cities.
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Michael Boyd, Chair
Michael Boyd works at the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission in a Senior Engagement and Communications role leading on Sport and Human Rights, Business and Human Rights, Climate Change and Human Rights, and international relations with the Commonwealth Forum of National Human Rights Institutions.
Michael is a volunteer Board member of the charity Street Soccer NI that uses sport as a hook to help homeless and disadvantaged people. Michael previously worked for the Irish FA for more than twenty years where he was part of the senior leadership team for sixteen years. His Football For All campaign is credited with transforming NI football, making the sport more fun, safe and inclusive. In 2016 Michael set up the Irish FA Foundation, a charity with a focus on how sport can promote:
- Peace and Reconciliation
- Crime Prevention
- Positive Mental Health
- Employability and Education
Michael has set up numerous multi-sport programmes which use sport to help empower young people and promote positive mental health. In 2018 Michael received the prestigious Ulster University Outstanding Graduate of the Year Award for his services to sport and community relations across Northern Ireland. Michael has a wealth of experience working in the Sport sector, Charity sector, Business sector and promoting Human Rights both here in NI and internationally. His main areas of expertise include developing strategy, international relations, sport and community development.
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Professor Ian Montgomery, Treasurer
Ian Montgomery is Professor of Design and Director of Brexit & Sustainability at Ulster University. Previously he was a member of the University’s Senior Leadership Team and Pro Vice Chancellor for Global Engagement following a Deanship of the Faculty of Art, Design and the Built Environment. He is Ulster University’s representative on Belfast Healthy Cities.
He was previously Head of the School of Art and Design and Director of the Research Institute for Art and Design at Ulster University. His main research interests are in the areas of design theory, knowledge transfer, and design perception and has supervised PhD students across and beyond the art and design disciplines.
Ian obtained his first degree in Design and following a period in industry, a DPhil in Design while working as an academic on Ulster University’s Belfast campus.
Ian completed two terms on the Board of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. He was a Management Board member of the Higher Education Academy’s Art Design and Media Subject Centre and a member of the Executive Committee of the Council for Higher Education in Art and Design (CHEAD). He also served on the British Council’s Northern Ireland Advisory Committee and its Going Global Steering Committee.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a member of the International Society of Typographic Designers and the Design Research Society. Ian has been Chief External Examiner, external examiner and chaired international panels in the UK, Ireland, mainland Europe, Mauritius, and the Far East and has established numerous international academic partnerships in the US, the Middle East, China, Hong Kong and Europe. He was awarded an Individual Excellence Award by the Chinese Cultural Confucius Awarding Body and holds an Honorary Professorship from Hubei Normal University, Huangshi (China). He is currently a Board Member of two Northern Ireland grammar schools.
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Linda Armitage, Vice Chair
Linda has 36 years of community development experience and 14 of these years have been dedicated to health improvement, health promotion and early intervention, in local neighbourhoods using a community development approach.
Linda’s current role as Health Development Director at East Belfast Community Development Agency, is to manage the Health Development Unit. To play a key role in supporting East Belfast communities via multi-agency and community partnership working, to achieve and fully implement the East Belfast Health Framework which contains the following themes: Healthy Hearts, Healthy Minds, Healthy Relationships, Healthy Bodies and Healthy Neighbourhoods.
Linda is also an active member of the Belfast Local Commissioning Group and brings a community sector perspective to this work.
The past 3 decades of leadership development has provided Linda with a continuous learning curve on how to lead in different ways with all ages and situations. Her career to date has included many great opportunities to implement community development values in local communities in NI, England and USA. These roles have included play development, family support, social justice, restorative work, youth and community work and health development.
She has a BA in Youth and Community Work and Applied Theology, ILM level 7 Leadership and Management and Level 5 Chartered Management Certificate. Linda is also a qualified coach with ILM Level 5 Mentoring and a member of the Association for Coaching.
Linda is an outgoing people-person, who embraces life optimistically, listens well, is creative and organized. Reading, art, appreciation of the outdoors, family, food and friends, laughter and adventure, are all important in her life equation.
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Dr Lizzy Pinkerton
Dr Lizzy Pinkerton works for the Belfast Hills Partnership and as Scheme Manager oversees day to day operations of the organisation along with developing plans and securing funding for new programmes of work.
Lizzy graduated from Queen's University Belfast with a degree in Environmental Biology and a PhD in Plant Science. She has worked within the Northern Ireland Environmental sector since 2005 and is a Board Member of Northern Ireland Environment Link.
Lizzy has a particular interest in increasing community engagement in local green spaces as a means of improving health & wellbeing as well as biodiversity/habitat improvements and climate mitigation measures which make up part of the vision for Greening the City.
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John Tully
John Tully is Director of City and Organisational Strategy at Belfast City Council, with responsibility for overall coordination and portfolio management of Belfast’s city strategy “The Belfast Agenda”.
John is also responsible for the Council’s Climate Team, Strategy & Policy, Performance Management and Continuous Improvement / Service Design.
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Jonathan Wallace
Professor Jonathan Wallace is Professor of Innovation within the Faculty of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment at Ulster University. His excellence in both Knowledge & Technology Transfer and lecturing has been recognised by his being awarded a Distinguished Business Fellowship and Distinguished Teaching Fellowship.
He has led the development of numerous software systems in diverse market sectors and has attained broad experience of managing successful research projects at both a local, national and international level. Jonathan has a significant track record in the field of Digital Health & Wellbeing and is recognised as an innovator in the co-creation of user-centred Digital Health product and service solutions. He is a founder member of the TRAIL Living Lab based at the Ulster University as well as the BCS Health NI Special Interest Group. He is a founder member and Deputy Chair of the Northern Ireland Science Festival which has just has just completed its 10th Anniversary Festival. Professor Wallace is a member of the All-Party Advisory Group on Science, Engineering, Technology and Maths for the local devolved Government Assembly. Jonathan is a member of the BCS NI Committee and EDI Lead for BCS NI. He is a board member of the Northern Ireland Trusted Research Environment (NITRE) Strategy Board for the HSC in Northern Ireland and a member of the BSI CH/210/1 – Quality Systems for Medical Devices standards committee working group.
He currently has a leading role in a number of regional, national and international Digital Health research projects where he is particularly applying his expertise in Co-creation, UX & Usability Engineering, Data Science and Business Model Development. Jonathan is a judge on a number of UK national awards competitions for Innovation in Digital Health and Wellbeing. Jonathan led the Ulster University academic team which successfully completed Phase Zero for the EC-funded H2020 MAGIC PCP Project for Stroke Rehabilitation and he was also Dissemination and Exploitation Workpackage Leader and Chair of the Policy Board for the successfully completed EC-funded H2020 MIDAS Project for ‘Big Data Supporting Public Health Policies’. He is currently Leader for WorkPackage 1: “Human-centred and Trustworthy AI Solutions” for the 4 year €12.5M LUCIA Horizon Europe Project on AI for multi-omic, socioeconomic and epigenetic risk factors for Lung Cancer.
A champion of developing entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial skills and knowledge in Ulster’s students, Jonathan has also been a judge on the UUSU’s Shark Tank Awards and is on the Steering Committee for the annual Catalyst Inc. INVENT Awards as well as a judge for INVENT. The ‘engage’ service solution which Jonathan has led the development and commercialisation of, has been significantly used as a real-time stakeholder engagement tool to gain strategic consensus across government, industry, academia and service users, (PPIE), including for the HSC NI Workforce Strategy 2017 to 2026; including all the sub-specialisms for the AHP Workforce Strategy. Most recent engagements have been both sides of the border in Ireland, identifying user needs as part of our North South HEA funded project AIM4HEALTH which focuses on AI approaches to reducing mental health inequalities in Ireland, as well as the establishing the User Requirements and KPIs across partner members states for the LUCIA project.
With over 108 peer-reviewed publications, Jonathan lectures on the University’s innovative M.Sc. Digital Marketing Communication and Leadership, as well as their undergraduate and postgraduate Computing degrees.
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Martin Cunningham
Dr Martin Cunningham has been a doctor for almost 40 years (Qualified from QUB 1985) and started his training in General Practice in 1989. He was a GP Partner in Kilkeel for 9 years before returning to Belfast in 2003 to take up a partnership at the University Health Centre at Queen’s. He has recently retired from general practice but continues to work for the Belfast Health & Social Care Trust in 2 roles (Orthopaedics ICATS triage and as a sessional practitioner with the Mental Capacity Act Team). He also does sessional work for the WHSCT MCA Team.
His medical interests include Sports and Exercise Medicine (and Orthopaedic triage); Mental Health (particularly in young adults); Travel Medicine; Diabetes and Population Health including as it relates to Health Inequalities. He became a Fellow of the Faculty of Sports and Exercise, Ireland in 2003 and a Member of the Faculty of Sports and Exercise Medicine, UK in 2006. He was a member of the GP Local Medical Committee (LMC), initially with the Southern LMC when he worked in Kilkeel and then the Eastern LMC when he moved to Belfast (from 2005 until 2021). He represented GPs on the SBNI Board when he sat on Eastern LMC. He was a member of the Belfast Local Commissioning Group (LCG) for about 5 years until he took up the role of Chair for the South Belfast Integrated Care Partnership (ICP) in January 2017. He continued in this role until the ICPs were stood down in March 2023. During his time as ICP Chair he worked with clinical staff from the Belfast Trust to enhance the community services for care of type 2 diabetes in Belfast. He was the treasurer for the Federation of Family Practitioners of South Belfast (GP Federation) from its inception in 2015 until 2022. For the past 2 years he has been interim Chair of the South Belfast GP Federation. He has a strongly committed belief in prevention and early intervention to enhance the health and well-being of individuals and the community. As part of this he advocates the need for regular physical activity for all ages and he, himself, endeavours to walk, run and “gym” as often as he can manage! He was convinced of the risks of climate change for health and the need for us to live sustainably as far back as the 1980s. However, he admits he has not always been careful enough of his carbon footprint and that this continues to be a work in progress!
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