Director – Aleisha Murray

Aleisha is an Australian-qualified lawyer, who practised in Sydney prior to moving to London in 2018. Aleisha’s background in legal practice, as well as her unfortunate and unpleasant past experiences with end of life care, has fuelled a passion for advocating assisted dying laws in England & Wales that respect personal autonomy and alleviate unnecessary suffering.

aleisha.murray1@mydeath-mydecision.org.uk

Campaigns and Communications Manager – Nathan Stilwell

Nathan is a History graduate as well as a communications and technology aficionado. He joined My Death My Decision at the start of 2022 after spending two years working for the Jo Cox Foundation and two years in Brussels at a political communications agency.

nathan.stilwell@mydeath-mydecision.org.uk 

Director of Diversity – Carmen Sumadiwiria

Carmen began working as a policy and advocacy professional in the humanitarian sector with NGOs such as Médecins Sans Frontières and the British Red Cross before retraining as a registered nurse. She qualified during the first wave of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and has worked in various NHS Trusts across London since.

She is interested in more open and honest conversations about how we can live and die well, with dignity and choice, and how we can include more people from every background in this important dialogue.

carmen.sumadiwiria@mydeath-mydecision.org.uk 

Director – Jan Whitby

Jan is a medical microbiologist / molecular virologist with expertise in health and disease, infection control, molecular genetics and research.  She has clinical expertise, gained from many years of active involvement in the NHS, research and biomedical research funding.

Her career involved working as a senior level national Government official in the Chief Scientist’s Group and as Head of Rabies, U.K.  She then transferred these skills to funding research for a global charitable organisation.

Jan has been a lifelong believer in the right to die well and of the need to change the law to enable choice and dignity in the dying process.  This was strongly enforced when she watched both her mother and her best friend die in terrible pain / anguish.  

jan.whitby@mydeath-mydecision.org.uk

Public Affairs Officer – Jamal Baloch

Jamal has an undergraduate degree in Politics and Government, and a master’s degree in Constitutional Politics, Law and Theory. Before joining My Death My Decision, he worked for human rights organisations, political movements and as a freelance geopolitical consultant.

jamal.baloch@mydeath-mydecision.org.uk 

Medical Group Coordinator – Colin Brewer

Colin Brewer formerly directed the Westminster Hospital’s alcoholism unit and the Stapleford Centre. In 2015 he co-published the book “I’ll See Myself Out, Thank You”, in which he described conducting mental capacity assessments for six British citizens hoping to end their life in Switzerland. His forthcoming book “Let Me Not Get Alzheimer’s Sweet Heaven”, explores the dilemma of dementia and assisted dying. He has previously served as a committee member for the Voluntary Euthanasia Society (now Dignity in Dying).

colin.brewer@mydeath-mydecision.org.uk

Lead Campaign Commentator– Phil Cheatle

Phil worked as a research scientist before getting involved with the assisted dying campaign. The unpleasant end of life experience of his mother and aunt, who both suffered from dementia and other conditions, convinced him of a need for a change in the law. Between 2015 – 2019 he coordinated the campaign which My Death, My Decision is the proud successor of. 

phil.cheatle@mydeath-mydecision.org.uk 

Campaign Director – Livi Elsmore

Livi has spent her career working on advocacy campaigns across a range of social issues. She currently manages a coalition of organisations campaigning to improve private renting.

Livi believes everyone should have the right to die with dignity, and that choice at the end of life shouldn’t be limited by a person’s wealth or resources. She has been pleased to see growing support for this issue in recent years.

livi.elsmore@mydeath-mydecision.org.uk 

Communications Officer – Kerry Hogan

Kerry comes from a charity communications background and has most recently worked on an award winning campaign to break the stigma of youth loneliness. She is passionate about human rights and doesn’t shy away from difficult but meaningful conversations.

kerry.hogan@mydeath-mydecision.org.uk 

Campaign Strategist – Carrie Hynds

Carrie works as a freelance editor and proofreader based in Brighton & Hove. She joined My Death, My Decision in 2016 and is passionate about changing the law to move assisted dying from the realm of criminality to healthcare.

carrie.hynds@mydeath-mydecision.org.uk 

Adviser on Disability – John Knight CBE

John Knight has a life limiting progressive disability and like the vast majority of disabled people in the UK wants to choose how and when he dies. He strongly believes in disabled peoples autonomy and self determination and that this should cover both how we live AND how we die. He hopes through MDMD to echo the voices of the majority of disabled people who are widely ignored, unheard and misrepresented in this urgent national debate.

His career has spanned the voluntary and statutory sectors including the Department of Health, Leonard Cheshire Disability and the Commission for Public Appointments. He held National Board level directorships of the Commission for Social Care Inspection (now part of the Care Quality Commission); the Charity Commission and the General Social Care Council. Additionally his public service has included the Magistracy, NHS Governance roles and Social Housing.

john.knight@mydeath-mydecision.org.uk 

Director of Development – Claire Macdonald

Claire Macdonald started and ran a chain of children’s nursery schools. She has been a founder trustee of a family support charity, an independent school governor and an Independent Monitor of one of Her Majesty’s Prisons. Claire believes in personal autonomy and that it is ethical and compassionate to legalise medically assisted death, for mentally competent adults whose suffering has become more than they can endure.

claire.macdonald@mydeath-mydecision.org.uk

Dr. Graham Winyard CBE

Dr Graham Winyard CBE is a public health physician whose career included six years as Medical Director of the NHS.  His commitment to legalising assisted dying began with the experience of his first wife, Sandy’s death from cancer in 2002.  He has served on the Boards of Dignity in Dying and Healthcare Professionals for Assisted Dying before joining My Death, My Decision to campaign for laws which recognise the plight of those who seek relief from intolerable suffering but who would not meet the strict eligibility criteria advocated by those organisations.

Director of Finance – Gary Marsh

Born in 1959, Preston Lancashire, Gary obtained a degree in accounting and then qualified as a Chartered Accountant with BDO in Manchester. He joined the now BAE Systems in 1986 holding financial controller and finance director roles across civil and military aerospace divisions; then Thales in 2008, a French blue chip, where he held Finance Director roles in the UK until 2018. Currently a trustee for a North West of England based charity supporting people suffering from drug and alcohol abuse and associated mental illness.

He believes that citizens in the UK have gained new rights over the years, rights that should have existed in the first instance, and the right to assisted dying when a person has an incurable condition is one such right.

gary.marsh@mydeath-mydecision.org.uk

Director of Operations – Simon Menneer

Simon Menneer spent two decades working in Corporate Finance, after which he worked for Millwall FC and the London Development Agency before moving to Cornwall where he was until recently CEO of Cornwall Cricket.  Simon has been a lifelong believer in the right to choose the manner of one’s own death. This was reinforced when he watched his close friend Tony suffer terribly with late-stage pancreatic cancer.

simon.menneer@mydeath-mydecision.org.uk

Chair – Trevor Moore

Trevor Moore spent much of his professional career as a partner in a City law firm, followed by several years as a consultant and freelance speaker. In the course of his current work as a humanist celebrant he often meets people who are approaching the end of life.  That experience, as well as meeting grieving families after someone has died, has deepened his interest in end of life matters.  He has recently co-edited Words in Pain, the letters of a terminally ill woman from the early twentieth century described by The Times as ‘a right to die pioneer’. Trevor also serves as a schools’ panel member for the Faith and Belief Forum.

trevor.moore@mydeath-mydecision.org.uk

Professor Wendy Savage

Professor Wendy Savage is a British gynaecologist and long standing campaigner for women’s rights in childbirth and fertility. She is an accomplished author having published the highly successful “Birth and Power”. She has previously served as a member of the General Medical Council and British Medical Association’s Ethics Committee, and has received the British Medical Journal’s award for an Outstanding Contribution to Health.

Dr. Martin Scurr

After several years in the NHS, Martin found that posts in general practice were over-subscribed, and he took the opportunity to migrate into private practice. This opened the way to a portfolio career, which included training in palliative care and accepting the role of medical director of a unit that evolved to become St John’s Hospice.

Martin has four decades experience of cradle to grave coverage of patients in the practice, as well as training in medical ethics and experience in alternative dispute resolution. This has underpinned his commitment to supporting the ethos of My Death My Decision.

‘Doctors Dissected’, written in conjunction with psychotherapist Jane Haynes, was published in 2015. This aimed to delve into themes that dominate the lives of doctors but which touch us all – birth, illness, despair and death.

Sir Stephen Sedley

Between 1999 and 2011 Sir Stephen sat on the Court of Appeal of England and Wales. He has also sat as an interim judge on the European Court of Human Rights and as a member of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Since retiring he has been a visiting professor at Oxford University. He was formerly the President of the British Institute of Human Rights.

Polly Toynbee

Polly Toynbee is a journalist and writer. She has been a Guardian columnist since 1998, named Columnist of the Year in 2007 by the British Press Awards. She declined the CBE in 2000.

Photo: By cooperniall (Flickr) [CC BY 2.0 ], via Wikimedia Commons

Jane Nicklinson

I am the wife of the late Tony Nicklinson who fought the legal system for an assisted death following a catastrophic stroke that left him with Locked in Syndrome in 2005. Tony died in 2012 following the High Court judgement and I carried his case to the Supreme and European Courts.

I am very passionate about this issue as Tony suffered immensely and nobody should have to suffer as he did. He was not terminal so a change in the law for the terminally ill would not have helped him. He would be very disappointed that we are still fighting for a change in the law that would have helped him end his suffering. He only wanted what able bodied people have, the ability to end their life when things become unbearable.

Professor David Nutt

David Nutt is the Edmond J Safra Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London and Director of the Neuropsychopharmacology Unit in the Division of Brain Sciences. He is currently Chair of Drug Science (formally the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs (ISCD)) and President of the European Brain Council. He previously advised the Ministry of Defence, Department of Health and Home Office on the safety of medicines.

Photo: Vicky Symonds, via Flickr

Martin Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow

Martin Rees has been Astronomer Royal since 1995. Master of Trinity College, Cambridge 2004-12. President of Royal Society 2005-10. Crossbencher in the House of Lords since 2005.

Kathleen Richardson, Baroness Richardson of Calow, OBE

Kathleen Richardson was the first female President of the Methodist Conference 1992-93. She retired from the House of Lords at the end of 2018 having served as a crossbencher for 20 years. In 2015  in a Science Meets Faith meeting she spoke openly about a Christian case for assisted dying.

John Knight CBE

John Knight has a life limiting progressive disability and like the vast majority of disabled people in the UK wants to choose how and when he dies. He strongly believes in disabled peoples autonomy and self determination and that this should cover both how we live AND how we die. He hopes through MDMD to echo the voices of the majority of disabled people who are widely ignored, unheard and misrepresented in this urgent national debate.

His career has spanned the voluntary and statutory sectors including the Department of Health, Leonard Cheshire Disability and the Commission for Public Appointments. He held National Board level directorships of the Commission for Social Care Inspection (now part of the Care Quality Commission); the Charity Commission and the General Social Care Council. Additionally his public service has included the Magistracy, NHS Governance roles and Social Housing.

john.knight@mydeath-mydecision.org.uk 

Dame Prue Leith

Dame Prue Leith is well known not only for her long-standing success in many aspects of the food and catering industry, but also for her instantly recognisable presence in the media. In recent years Prue has become a household name as a judge on The Great British Bake Off and has completed her one-woman show Nothing in Moderation, culminating at The London Palladium.

Dame Prue’s interest in the campaign for legalisation of assisted dying stems from witnessing the suffering of her brother, David, who died from bone cancer in 2012. She questions why people like David are not able to die on their own terms. Prue appeared in the recent Channel 4 documentary Prue and Danny’s Death Road Trip, in which she thoughtfully and cogently put the case for a law for the UK.

Photo by Geoff Pugh

Dr Henry Marsh

Dr Henry Marsh CBE, is a leading neurosurgeon and best selling author of “Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery” and “Admissions: A Life in Brain Surgery”, which became a number 1 Sunday Times bestseller. His work has been the subject of two major BBC documentaries – “Your Life in Their Hands” in 2003 and “The English Surgeon” in 2009 which won an Emmy. Until 2015 he served as the senior consultant at St George’s Hospital, working within the UK’s leading brain surgery unit.

Miriam Margolyes

The actor Miriam Margolyes, OBE, is known for many and varied roles, such as in Call the Midwife, Romeo + Juliet, Blackadder, and the Harry Potter films. She has appeared in nearly 175 feature films, TV Programmes and Theatre Productions. Miriam received the Best Supporting Actress award at the 1989 LA Critics Circle Awards for her role in Little Dorrit and BAFTA Best Supporting Actress award in 1993 for The Age of Innocence. Recent acclaim for Miriam came for the two-part BBC documentary Miriam’s Dead Good Adventure (2019), in which she looks at different approaches and attitudes to dealing with death.

Canon Rosie Harper

Rosie Harper graduated from Birmingham University, followed by post-graduate studies at the Royal Academy of Music. Further studies included an MA in Philosophy and Religion, She is now Vicar of Great Missenden (where her professional singing career experience helps boost the choir) and Chaplain to the Bishop of Buckingham. She is chair of the Oxford Nandyal Education Foundation, an education charity in rural India.  A member of General Synod, Rosie writes for the Guardian, broadcasts regularly, and was a panel member for Any Questions.  She is deeply committed to working for issues of justice and equality within and beyond the church, and is one of very few serving Anglican Priests to campaign for a change in the law on Assisted Dying.

Virginia Ironside

Virginia Ironside has been a journalist and writer all her life, working mainly as an agony aunt for Woman magazines, the Sunday Mirror, the Independent, and The Oldie. She has also performed her own one-woman show, Growing Old Disgracefully, for the last ten years. Her twenty books include Chelsea Bird and a series starting with No, I Don’t Want to Join a Bookclub, the diary of a sixty-year-old granny.

Dr Michael Irwin

Michael Irwin is a former GP and Medical Director of the United Nations. He held the post of Vice Chairman/ Chairman of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society from 1995-2003, (now renamed Dignity in Dying). He was a founder member of the Society for Old Age Rational Suicide (SOARS)  and served as its Coordinator from 2009-2015, (a precursor to My Death, My Decision).

Adam Kay

Adam Kay is a multi-award-winning author, comedian and former doctor. This is Going to Hurt has sold over 2.5 million copies, been translated into 37 languages, and is the bestselling narrative non- fiction title of the decade, spending over a year at number one in the Sunday Times bestseller chart. It is soon to be a major comedy-drama for BBC/AMC starring Ben Whishaw. His follow-up, Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas, sold over 500,000 copies in the last three months of 2019, and his recent anthology Dear NHS was an instant Sunday Times number one, raising over £250,000 for charity. His first children’s book Kay’s Anatomy: A Complete (and Completely Disgusting) Guide to the Human Body is published by Puffin. 

Sir Iain Chalmers

Sir Iain Chalmers is a renowned medical researcher and founder of the Cochrane Collaboration, the first global evidenced based research network in medicine. He is the acting coordinator of the James Lind Initiative and received the British Medical Journal’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014.

Jean Eveleigh

Jean Eveleigh has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a genetic, degenerative condition that is progressively robbing Jean of all her bodily functions. She could lose control of her bladder and bowels and eventually the ability to move, eat, speak and breath without assistance and support.

Jean is calling for the legal right to be assisted to end her life when living becomes unbearable to her. Her disability means that Jean needs help with all aspects of everyday living – and would need help to die.

Prof. A C Grayling

A. C. Grayling is the Master of the New College of the Humanities, London, and its Professor of Philosophy, and the author of over thirty books of philosophy, biography, history of ideas, and essays. He is a columnist for Prospect magazine, and was for a number of years a columnist for the Guardian and Times. He has also contributed to many leading newspapers in the UK, US and Australia, and to BBC radios 4, 3, 2 and the World Service, for which he did the annual ‘Exchanges at the Frontier’ series; and he has often appeared on television. He has judged the Booker Prize, in 2015 serving as the Chair of the judging panel. He is a Vice President of the British Humanist Association, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Dr Phil Hammond

Dr Phil Hammond is a physician, broadcaster, comedian and commentator, best known for his regular column in Private Eye and appearances in the hit BBC television show Have I Got News For You, BBC Radio 4’s The News Quiz, and BBC Radio 4’s The Now Show. Dr Hammond worked as a lecturer at the Universities of Bristol and Birmingham, before going on to write ‘This Has All Been Said Before’; ‘Trust Me (I’m a Doctor)’, and ‘Trust Me, I’m (Still) a Doctor’. He served as the Vice President of the Patients Association.