Dr Yansie Rolston FRSA
Programme Development

Dr Yansie Rolston FRSA has a depth of experience and expertise in health equality development. She is a practitioner as well as an academic and a skilled mental health and wellbeing trainer and facilitator. Yansie uses her knowledge and experience to create, affect and sustain change at all levels in order to improve physical, mental and social wellbeing.

Yansie offers technical expertise to various governments, businesses, civil society and agencies internationally, implementing and evaluating actionable strategies on health equality and community cohesion, and delivers culturally appropriate health and social care training for marginalised and disadvantaged communities.

She co-created and delivered the ILM Mental Health First Response Course for health care professionals and prison officers in the Caribbean. She is a founding member of the Ubele Initiative.

Helen George
Clinical Stakeholder Development

Helen is a BACP Accredited Psychotherapist, Specialist Fertility Counsellor and EMDR Trauma Therapist. She has over 10 years’ experience working within the mental health field both in the NHS and private practice, specialising in working with women.

Helen is also the founder of BME Voices Talk Mental Health. An organisation that creates platforms for Black Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) mental health therapists to share their good practice and research. The platforms she has created include conferences, workshops and hosting the yearly Trauma Conference which focuses specifically on mental health and trauma within BAME communities.

She is also the author of several articles relating to mental health, including the Windrush generation and older African Caribbean women.

Dr Patrick Vernon, OBE
External Partnership Development

Patrick Vernon OBE is social commentator, campaigner and cultural historian. He has over twenty years’ senior experience working across mental health, public health, heritage and race equality and is well known in health, local government and the voluntary sector. In 2018 he kick-started the campaign for an amnesty for the Windrush Generation.

Patrick is currently Associate Director for Connected Communities at the Centre for Ageing Better, Equality and Diversity Adviser to Lambeth Council, Chair of Citizens Partnership for Healthcare Investigation Branch (HSIB) and Senior Associate at OLMEC. Patrick is a Patron of ACCI a long-established black mental health charity in Wolverhampton and Patron of Santé a social enterprise in Camden which supports and befriends refugees and asylum seekers across London. Patrick is Vice-Chair of the Bernie Grant Trust and a board member of 38 Degrees.

Patrick is founder of Every Generation Media which produces websites, films and products on Black History. He received an OBE in 2012 for his work in race equality and health. He was award an honorary PhD by Wolverhampton University in 2018 for his campaigning and writing on culture, history and migration. In 2019 Patrick received the SMK Lifetime Achievement Award for campaigning. In 2020 Patrick was featured in September’s edition of British Vogue as one of top 20 activist and campaigners and the Powerlist of 100 most influential black people in the UK. Patrick is also co-author of 100 Great Black Britons published in 2020.