Mental health & wellbeing

Lucy Harper

Chief Executive

After completing a BSc in Medical Biochemistry at Birmingham University, Lucy worked in hospital laboratories and university departments across the West Midlands. In 2003 she completed a PhD entitled: "Renal Dopamine and Salt-Sensitive Hypertension" and continued her research career, completing several postdoc projects. During this time, Lucy also taught molecular biology practical classes to final year BSc students and spent her spare time writing articles for various publications. Through this experience she decided that her passion for science came from talking about it rather than doing it. She was offered the honorary Editorship of The Microbiologist magazine and when her postdoc contract ended, she took the position of Communications Officer for Med-Vet-Net, the EU FP6 project on zoonotic disease. Lucy began working as Communications Officer for AMI in June 2006. Since then, she has developed AMI's Communications remit and in June 2009 she was promoted to Communications Manager. In 2010 Lucy was awarded a MBA with distinction, which she completed part-time at Aston University. After a period of maternity leave, Lucy returned to the Society as Deputy CEO, and was then appointed as Chief Executive in November 2014. 

Lucy’s key achievements for the organisation since then:

• Strategy - defining the purpose of AMI including rebrand and name change

• Growth of reserves by 53% from 2014 to 2021

• Diversification of investments into ESG

• Strategic relocation to London and then remote working

• DE&I focus

• Growth of core team

Leading AMI through change to operations, governance, and strategy, Lucy takes a collaborative approach, listening to all stakeholders to ensure integrity and openness in communication and decision-making.

Twitter:

@lucyharper

Lucky Cullen

Head of Policy, Community and Scientific Advancement

Lucky completed her undergraduate degree in Medical Biochemistry at Kingston University in 2014, where her passion for microbiology originated through summer research internships and a research scholarship funded by the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (BSAC). A recurring factor in all of her research was antimicrobial resistance including next generation sequencing techniques to identify antimicrobial resistance within the nasopharyngeal niche, Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilm formation and the bacterial profiling of mastitic cows. Lucky progressed onto a PhD at Kingston University, where she developed an experimental evolution tool to explore the phenotypic and genotypic mutational pathways underlying the emergence of antimicrobial resistance in Escherichia coli. During her PhD Lucky attended many ECS and AMI conferences, as well as events such as Parliamentary Links Day. Lucky presented her research at the ECS Research Symposium in 2016, and was given the opportunity to present at the AMI Antimicrobial Resistance Meeting. Lucky was then awarded the AMI (then SfAM) presidency fund to present at the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) conference in New Orleans. 

Twitter:

@LuckyCullen

Kofo Balogun

Associate Director of HR

Kofo oversees the Society's Strategic HR and Operational Development portfolio. Ensuring best practice is maintained, Kofo ensures effective people management processes are in place, handles all HR issues and oversees the implementation of up to date at employment law practices ensuring the Society is legally compliant.

Ikenna Abani

HR and Operations Officer

Ikenna provides support with the HR Information & Data systems and Recruitment requests for the Society. In addition, Ikenna looks after the onboarding process and inductions for new starters whilst working closely with other teams in the Society to provide support with HR activities and queries.

Tumi Ladele

HR Manager

Tumi manages the development of AMI's Recruitment, Training and Payroll activities providing an employee-oriented and collaborative culture. Furthermore, she supportsthe Associate Director of HR, EDI and Tech in implementing policies and programs that aim to assist colleagues with HR issues to further the Society’s strategy.

 

Daisy Neale

Policy and Diversity Manager

After completing a Biological Sciences undergraduate degree at the University of Exeter, Daisy worked in the antimicrobial resistance (AMR) policy team at the Veterinary Medicines Directorate, focussing on coordinating the UK’s national AMR surveillance programme in livestock and supporting the production of the annual UK-VARSS report. After three years at the VMD, Daisy decided to pursue a career with a wider microbiological and One Health focus, which lead to joining the policy team at AMI.