Cherise Gyimah

Cherise Gyimah, strategic lead for screening, education and training at NHS England, has long been a “selfless advocate” for diverse pharmacy professionals, creating networks to help like-minded people lift themselves up.

Even when starting out as a community pharmacist in 2003, Gyimah had a particular interest in learning and development. She supported her dispenser to take on accredited technician training in one of the first cohorts. From public health campaigns to additional services, building new skills was always top of her agenda.

Not wanting to go too far down the management route, in 2009 Gyimah moved to Kensington and Chelsea Primary Care Trust as a support pharmacist. Then a couple of years later in 2011, she moved to a similar role in Croydon where she led a project to improve pharmacy services within care homes. 

She was soon working simultaneously with care homes and at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, where she started in 2012, promoting high-quality, safe and cost-effective prescribing. Sharing her work, she wrote a series of bulletins for the NHS on medicines management in care homes and medicines optimisation.

Her drive to push herself to the next level led her to the chief pharmaceutical officer fellowship in 2017/2018, where she was based at the Care Quality Commission. Just back from maternity leave, she decided her project would be setting up the England Deprescribing Network with Emma McClay, now public health specialty registrar at Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council. To keep this going after the fellowship ended, she publishes a monthly newsletter on LinkedIn to share topical work happening in the field, and she hopes to get a series of webinars off the ground.

Gyimah says: “I’m not patient-facing at the moment but I have this network of contacts that I want to bring together and to showcase the work being done in deprescribing.”

It is a difficult ask alongside her current role, which is to oversee the training required for the workforce to effectively implement England’s 11 national screening programmes. She is creating the pipeline of professionals to ensure screening is fit for purpose.

It has not been a linear career or what she had expected to be doing. “I like to gather knowledge and to develop myself, so I take any opportunity that comes my way, providing I can fit it in,” she says. 

However, she says the link between all the roles she has taken on is “developing people, and sharing knowledge and best practice”. It has led her naturally to being a mentor, which was not intentional but fits very squarely with her values. Since 2019, she has also been a clinical mentor for the Centre for Pharmacy Postgraduate Education (CPPE). Our judges were wowed by her “genuine interest in supporting those she mentors”. 

Gyimah has started a peer support group for women in healthcare, inspired by the American concept of ‘Lean In’ circles, which provide a secure space for women to discuss workplace challenges, such as imposter syndrome, work–life balance and mental health. Her aim is to build a supportive network, where members can grow and potentially establish their own circles to expand the initiative’s reach.

Growing up in the Caribbean, Gyimah was raised with a strong emphasis on education. She moved to England during her sixth-form year on a scholarship after a volcanic eruption in her home country, Montserrat, led to mass evacuations. It was a difficult time for her family, with her father remaining in the Caribbean for work, her mother and brothers settling in London and Gyimah, moving to Ipswich, Suffolk, for a scholarship at a boarding school.

By the time she moved to the University of Bath, one of the few universities that would accept her as a British overseas territory citizen, she was resilient, adaptable and used to being away from home. “Looking back, I realised the scholarship was a golden opportunity, so I just made it work,” she says.

Her biggest advice for those in the networks she supports is to identify opportunities that align with their personal and professional goals, to build diverse skillsets that prepare you for future roles without compromising your wellbeing. In the past, she has faced organisational resistance to pursuing further training, often having to self-fund or take annual leave to complete courses, but she wants better for the next generation.

 “Sometimes, organisations apply rules around learning and development with a broad-brush approach, and don’t look at the individual and see the journey that they personally want to go on. I don’t mind putting in the hard work but, sometimes, I would have liked more support. Not everyone has to fit into the same career.”

Taking her own advice and now with two young children, Gyimah’s current role was a change of pace to accommodate her young family’s needs but still allowing her to engage with meaningful healthcare projects. She has plans to train in professional coaching to build on the mentoring she has already done.

“I think it’s really important for women to come together to work and elevate each other,” she adds.

• Meet the rest of The Pharmaceutical Journal’s Women to Watch 2024 here