Health Strategy Officer, Galileo Global Education, France

Dr James Mountford is Health Strategy Officer for Galileo Global Education. Based in France, Galileo runs a network of universities and colleges internationally spanning many disciplines (from creative arts to business to health professions). Galileo’s mission is to bring higher-and vocational-education within everyone’s reach, and to equip people to have rewarding careers in areas which matter to society. James qualified in Medicine at Oxford and has a Master’s in Public Health from Harvard. He worked initially as an NHS doctor, then in consulting. From 2005 to 2007, he was a Commonwealth Fund/Health Foundation Harkness Fellow based at Massachusetts General Hospital, and at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), both in Boston. James was Director of Quality at UCLPartners and then at the Royal Free London hospital, during which he led a multi-year programme to embed improving quality into routine practice and to put greater focus on what matters to staff, patients and families. James has also worked centrally in the NHS as Director of National Improvement Strategy for NHS England. In 2020 he was Chief of Quality and Learning at the NHS Nightingale Hospital, a field ICU hospital built in London’s ExCel conference centre to treat patients with COVID19. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal BMJ Leader, and serves on the International Advisory group of PAQS (the Belgian national improvement body) an is Associate at the Advancing Quality Alliance (AQuA). During 2022 James volunteered with Solidarité Ukraine, a grass-roots organisation based in St. Omer, France set up to support people displaced by the war to find safety, employment and to rebuild their lives in northern France until it is safe to return home.