Gill Rooke

Head of Leadership Programmes 

Gill Rooke

Gill has over twenty years’ experience working in the health sector, initially in various policy roles within the Department of Health and Social Care before moving into business management with the national Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre, managing ten regional units across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.  

After having her three children and completing a Master’s in healthcare leadership, Gill moved into programme management at the Health Protection Agency (now part of Public Health England), where she led on its national workforce development programme.  

A move to NHS Digital saw her working closely with digital teams across England to improve their capability in OD and workforce development. At the establishment of the NHS Commissioning Board (now NHS England and Improvement), Gill joined the CCG Development Team, leading on the leadership development requirements of the newly formed CCGs and worked in partnership with the NHS Leadership Academy in designing and delivering bespoke and contextualised development programmes for CCG staff.  

Her role at the Academy, which she has held for over 5 years now, is to lead the delivery of all the flagship leadership development programmes, coaching and mentoring interventions, system leadership development, bitesize curated learning and apprenticeships. This includes the review and improvement of the design, delivery and accessibility of these development offers to ensure that the programmes are fit to develop NHS leaders at all levels now and in the future.