The Brain Charity

The Brain Charity is pleased to announce that it has appointed Pippa Sargent as its new CEO.

Pippa has 25 years’ experience working in the health, voluntary, social, public and private sectors, leading programmes and campaigns to improve and save lives.

In a career focused on public health, mental health and wellbeing, she has also led behaviour change and strategic communications initiatives that have brought about health policy improvements, worked to ensure people have a say in change programmes, and led the development of new innovations that prevent ill-health.

This includes senior roles in the NHS, local and national government, the third sector and in commercial settings. Pippa has held director level positions with men’s mental health movement the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM), the Tobacco Free Futures regional tobacco programme, and as a senior advisor on Public Health England’s first digital mental health resource, Every Mind Matters.

Pippa said: “I am pleased and excited to be taking on this role and am very much looking forward to building on the inspirational work of The Brain Charity to date.

“The team at The Brain Charity have achieved so much, but there is more work to do to support people with neurological conditions and to change the environment they experience for the better.

“From the outset, it was clear that kindness is a value at the heart of The Brain Charity, and I was encouraged to apply for this role by that word alone.

“One of my strengths is bringing multiple and diverse people and organisations together and making things happen and I will be looking to collaborate with partners to achieve the charity’s aims.

“My priority will be to build on The Brain Charity’s many amazing successes, to grow the charity sensitively, leading the strong, capable and talented team to bring about positive change for people living with neurological conditions.

In addition to a career working to improve people’s lives, Pippa has direct family experience of supporting relatives living with neurological conditions and who are neurodivergent.

Pippa’s personal values include kindness, curiosity, gratitude, courage and laughter. Her approach to building the charity’s future will be to review and reflect on work and achievements to date and to engage with our community of clients, volunteers and staff to build a realistic but ambitious strategy, with our core values at its heart.

She added: “I will be focused on leading The Brain Charity to a place where we see increased funding to provide more services, and higher visibility for the issues that are important to us, to reach more people living with neurological conditions who can benefit from our services.

“I also hope to ensure that all staff and volunteers are happy and supported in the brilliant work they do, with inclusivity and wellbeing key.”

Pippa will take up the post in August.