Meet our new Chief Executive, Tom Abell

Today we welcome Tom Abell who join EEAST as our permanent chief executive. Prior to joining we interviewed Tom to find out more about him, his goals and aspirations for the Trust. 

Q: Whereabouts do you live?

A: I currently live in east London but I’ve recently got a place in Brentwood that we’re currently doing up and hoping to move there in the next few months.

Q: What attracted you to EEAST?

A: The thing that I care most about is making a difference to the communities we serve. There’s a lot of opportunity in this role to do that for our people and everyone who lives in the East of England. I aim to work with our people, stakeholders and partners to develop and improve the service we provide a big part of which will be through creating a better environment for our people.

Q: What are you most looking forward to about your new role?

A: I’m looking forward to seeing more of the great work the teams do and meeting our communities so that I can understand more about the practical steps we can take to better meet their needs and make a difference.

Q: What are your immediate priorities for your first few months in post?

A: Making sure our people have the right support in place to do their jobs and develop their careers.  A big part of this support will be continuing the work to change our culture to make EEAST a great place to work for everyone.

I also intend to take steps to strengthen leadership at the Trust and continue the good work which has already started around engagement so that we can make sure we are building high quality and trusted relationships with our communities.

Q: What do you feel are the biggest challenges facing the Trust?

A: Changing our culture so that we can make sure our staff have a consistently good experience at work and our leaders feel supported to be able to drive positive change.

Alongside this – responding to the incredible demand we are seeing for our services and ensuring we continue to meet these needs as we approach the winter period.

Q: What are the greatest opportunities?

A: There are huge opportunities for us. If we make positive progress on culture, ensure we reliably deliver our services and build good quality relationships with our communities, this will give us the opportunity to lead the design and delivery of emergency care across the region. Some great initiatives are happening at a local level, such as our mental health and falls cars – we need to scale up those new models to improve the care we deliver and sustainably tackle some of the demand pressures we are facing.

We have to make our own future and by working together there is the potential for us to be a bolder and stronger, which is really exciting.

Q: What do you enjoy outside of work?

A: I’m a big fan of cycling. Buying a turbotrainer during lock down has turned out to be a great investment. I have also recently got back into Formula 1 which I think is shaping up to be an exciting season.

I’m the Vice-Chair of National AIDS Manual (NAM) Aidsmap which is a charity based in London. The charity is a HIV/AIDS information service for clinicians and for people living with HIV and provides much of the coverage of major HIV international conferences and events.

Q: Tell us a fun fact

When I was a kid I was on the Really Wild Show on the BBC!

Tom will be holding a number of virtual sessions to give you a chance to ask him your questions, read here for more details.

Published 2nd August 2021