Our Team
Trustees and Board members
As a relatively new charity to the UK allow us to introduce our dedicated and knowledgeable team:
Joe Tooma – Trustee and Chair
Joe believes that Cervical Cancer should be entirely preventable and he has worked tirelessly since 2008 to make this a reality. Joe is passionate about women’s health and making health care available to women wherever they may live be it in UK, Australia, South Pacific and developing countries.
Since beginning the Australian Cervical Cancer Foundation in 2008, his vision has enabled over 150,000 girls to be vaccinated in Nepal, Bhutan, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Kiribati and over 94,500 women to be screened for Cervical Cancer in Nepal, Philippines, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Vietnam. With Joe’s leadership, thousands of school students have taken part in ACCF’s Cervical Cancer Program for Schools (CCAPS) since its inception in 2009, a program that began with one school presentation in Brisbane in 2008 and now reaches students throughout Australia.
Joe is an engaging and passionate advocate for women and has given key note speeches at conferences in Australia, New Delhi and Japan and is a key influence for Cervical Cancer prevention and awareness.
Ms Denise Lee – Trustee and Director
Ms Denise (Nicky) Lee is a professional charity fundraiser manager who has worked with numerous charity organisations successfully over 17 years. In addition to her fundraising work, Nicky also has over 20 years’ experience in business management.
Before pursuing fundraising as a professional career, Nicky undertook various activities for her local New South Wales community organisations such as Surf Lifesaving and the Bush Fire Brigade. She even brought the Oxfam “Walk against Want” fundraising event to her local area of Coffs Harbour.
Many charities have benefited from Nicky’s tireless enthusiasm and skill demonstrated in excellent fundraising results and improved public profile.
The Master of Teaching Degree Nicky earned in 2005 includes a major in working with intellectual and physically challenged children. Nicky grew up with an understanding of disability and how it affects individual’s experience of life. Her mother contracted polio as a child and Nicky saw first-hand how disadvantage impacts acceptance in society and the difficulties people face every day.
Nicky has lived and worked in the United Kingdom and currently resides in Sydney, Australia.
Dr Geordan Shannon – Trustee and Director
Dr Geordan Shannon is an Australian medical doctor and Research Fellow at the Institute for Global Health, University College London. She completed her Doctoral research in gender and health metrics, exploring the construction of an individualised gender equality measure in Peru using existing household survey data. Prior to commencing her PhD, she attended the University of Cambridge (Master of Philosophy in Public Health (Hon.) 2011) the University of Geneva (Advanced Certificate in Health and Human Rights, 2011) and the University of Newcastle Australia (Bachelor of Medicine (Hon.) 2008). Geordan is affiliated with the UCL Economics of Global Health and UCL Gender and Global Health Groups. She is engaged with a participatory action research project against gender violence led by a network of community health volunteers in the Peruvian Amazon, coordinated a large cluster RCT exploring the impact of cash transfers on continuity of maternal and child healthcare in rural Kenya, and also contributes to the Wellness Support Pathway, a hospital-based, wholistic intervention in Katherine Hospital to improve the quality of life for homeless and frequently-presenting patients.
As a medic, she has worked in various settings including remote Indigenous Australia, post-Tsunami Sri Lanka, the UK NHS and the Peruvian Amazon. In Australia, she maintains a close connection to Katherine Hospital in the remote Northern Territory, returning from the UK annually to work as a rural medical officer in the Emergency Department. In Peru, Geordan works as the Medical Director of the NGO DB Peru, leading health programmes to improve the wellbeing of Amazonian communities in the Napo River. She recently established a screen-and-treat programme for the prevention of Cervical Cancer, the first of its type in the region, and is now working with the local government to transition it into the public service.
Based on her field experiences, Geordan co-founded two global health organisations. The first, Global Health Disrupted, takes academia off the beaten track to tell stories about humans and health. Global Health Disrupted brings together the worlds of academia and art to challenge the status quo and enhance communication around pressing global health issues. The second, Stema, is building hospitals that work in low-resource settings. It is a fusion project between academic, private, government and non-profit sectors that hopes to coordinate health technologies using a patient-centred design approach that works for individuals and communities when resources are scarce. In the context of the Sustainable Development Goals, these two organisations work in creative and disruptive ways to improve the health, regardless of the context or environment.
Melvyn Hill – Trustee and CEO
After seven years of teaching as a Head of Department and House Master in Secondary Modern and the largest Comprehensive School in the UK he returned to Bath University and obtained an Economics Degree. He followed this up with a period of lecturing and research at Oxford University where he worked with key Trades Union and Government Activists in further development of the UK Strategy for State Pensions and the Minimum Wage.
After his time at Oxford, Melvyn decided to enter the world of Commerce at a very opportune time with the introduction of the 1974 Employment Act and over a period of twelve years he served as Employment and Personnel Director of several key blue-chip companies. During this time, he concentrated on the development of HR and Payment Systems based on performance and equity along with strategic approaches to Operations and Distribution. The experience he gained with these important companies enabled him to become a consultant and director working with a number of SMES and larger Blue Chip organisations.
Retiring some fifteen or so years ago, he believed in giving something back for what he had benefited from and started to work with Charities, raising funds for them as well as establishing new Charities. In order to do this, he set up an organisation that raised many millions of pounds for many large and small Charities, mainly involved with medical and children’s care activities in the UK and overseas. During this time, he became a Director and Treasurer of The Lotteries Council and assisted in the development of new Charities.