Chairman and Chief Executive

Chair

Colin Lynch

As of January 2024, Colin is Locala’s Chair. Prior to this, Colin has also been a Director of Locala since January 2020, and has also been our Senior Independent Director and Vice Chair. Colin has had more than 30 years of experience being on or advising Boards in the UK healthcare sector. Since 2021, Colin has been a Non-Executive Director of North East London NHS Foundation Trust, a major provider of NHS mental health and community services in South Essex, Kent and North East London, and in October 2023 Colin was appointed as their Senior Independent Director.

From 1996 to 2017 he worked as a legal advisor with healthcare specialist law firm Capsticks and was their national lead on all commercial, corporate, and major project work. For the last 10 years, Colin has worked in consultancy. He led legal teams on many of the UK’s largest and most complex healthcare transactions, many of them being firsts of their kind. Between 2018 and 2022 Colin has been running his own healthcare projects advisory consultancy. His clients include NHS providers, private sector healthcare businesses and national healthcare charities.

Chief Executive Officer

Karen Jackson

Karen Jackson has been the Chief Executive of Locala Community Partnerships CIC since April 2018. She is also a governor of a college in Doncaster and a Trustee of 2 local charities. Karen has significant leadership experience having previously acted as interim Chief Executive for Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust.

During her time at the Trust, she was responsible for delivering quality and financial improvements and driving a significantly improved culture around quality and patient safety, and staff engagement.

Previous to those roles, Karen was an Improvement Director with NHS Improvement, where she was programme manager for the West Yorkshire Acceleration Zone, reporting directly to the Secretary of State. Before that, she was Chief Executive for North Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust, a complex acute and community healthcare provider with a turnover of over £300m. Karen led a quality improvement journey that resulted in the trust coming out of special measures.