Our Cynefin Champions

Professor Isabel Oliver is the Chief Medical Officer for Wales, providing independent clinical leadership and expert advice to the Welsh Government on public health and healthcare. Appointed in 2025, she works with organisations across Wales to improve population health, reduce inequalities, and strengthen the NHS.  

Professor Oliver trained initially in acute hospital medicine in England before specialising in public health. She has held a number of senior national roles, including Director General for Science and Research and Chief Scientific Officer at the UK Health Security Agency. Previously, she was Director of the National Infection Service at Public Health England and led major programmes in epidemiology and health protection.  

Alongside her leadership roles, she has a strong academic profile, serving as an honorary professor and co-director of a National Institute for Health Research unit. Her work focuses particularly on infectious disease, prevention, and improving health outcomes through evidence-based policy and collaboration 

Dafydd held a long career in the television industry both as a producer of content and as a broadcaster. He started his career with HTV Wales before moving to the independent sector. He has also held posts as a Commissioning Editor at S4C,and was the channel’s Director of Content until October 2016, before taking up the post of Director at the Aberystwyth Arts Centre and Chair of AM, the art sector's digital app in Wales 2021/22.

Hanan is a Welsh-Iraqi writer, filmmaker, and artist. Her work spans multi-disciplines including poetry, essay and prose, theatre, film, and animation. Her publications include her debut poetry collection My Body Can House Two Hearts that won Burning Eye Books’ 2019 pamphlet competition, Welsh Plural: Essays on the Future of Wales (Repeater Books), her children’s poetry anthology And I Hear Dragons (Firefly Press) and Chronic Women (Honno Press). In 2025 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Bangor University. She is the current National Poet of Wales until 2027.

Philip Daniels is the Executive Director of Public Health at Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board, where he leads the strategic direction for improving and protecting population health across the region. He has a broad background in public health practice, encompassing health protection, health improvement, and addressing the wider determinants of health. 

Philip undertook specialist public health training in the West Midlands and gained extensive international experience before returning to Wales in October 2019. During the COVID‑19 pandemic, he played a key role as a health protection consultant, contributing to the national and regional response. He subsequently joined the Cwm Taf Morgannwg public health team, where he led programmes focused on health improvement and reducing health inequalities 

Kathrin has combined careers as a General Practitioner and a Consultant in Public Health. She has focussed on tackling health inequity, both working as a family doctor in the most deprived communities in Liverpool and the South Wales Valleys, and in a variety of strategic public health roles. She is Public Health Lead for Deep End Cymru, a Bevan Commission Senior Fellow and an Honorary Research Fellow, Division of Population Medicine, Cardiff University. All these focus on maximising the health sector contribution to tackling health inequities. She is a member of the Royal College of General Practitioners Health Equity Special Interest Group and was until recently a Co-Chair of the UK Faculty of Public Health Special Interest Group for Primary Care and Public Health. She also has an interest in global health, as past Chair of the Wales and Africa Health Links Network.

Diane is a Professor in Exercise and Health at the Cardiff Metropolitan University, Director of the Centre for Health, Activity and Wellbeing Research. Her expertise lies in the design, delivery and evaluation of health promoting interventions in primary and secondary health care, and in the community. She has a particular interest in the role of art and creative activity for health and wellbeing promotion. She has published internationally on arts on prescription programmes in primary care, and health and wellbeing interventions, including mental health first aid, and programmes based in the natural environment (ecotherapy). She has worked and led extensively on numerous EU and UK wide evaluation projects over the past 25 years. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Public Health and the University’s institutional lead in the EU public health network, EuroHealthNet and is a steering group mental for the Wales School of Social Prescribing Research.

Kathryn is the lead for Arts and Health at Hywel Dda University Health Board. She brings with her over 20 years of experience of working in the arts sector and nearly 5 years in healthcare. Kathryn led the co-creation and publication of Hywel Dda’s groundbreaking Arts and Health Charter; a public pledge to integrate the arts into the work of the Health Board to improve health and wellbeing and promote healing and recovery, which is a Wales first.

Kathryn is part of a national team of Arts and Health leads, one in each health board in Wales, which is supported by a Memorandum of Understanding between the Arts Council of Wales and the Welsh NHS Confederation with a commitment to putting the arts at the heart of service transformation.

Dr Britt Hallingberg is a Reader in Public Health at Cardiff Metropolitan University and Research and Innovation Lead for Public Health and Wellbeing within the Centre for Health, Activity and Wellbeing (CAWR). Her work focuses on improving health and wellbeing across the life course, with particular expertise in adolescent health. 

Britt’s research explores how everyday contexts - such as leisure activities, community environments, and social relationships - shape young people’s health behaviours and outcomes. She also specialises in the development and evaluation of complex public health interventions, including adapting evidence-informed programmes for different settings. Working collaboratively with partners across research, policy and practice, Britt is particularly interested in generating practical, real-world insights that support healthier and more equitable communities. 

Cathy is the Principal Private Secretary and Public Health Policy Advisor in the CMO team in Welsh Government.  Before that, she was Head of the Health and Sustainability Unit in Public Health Wales, where she helped to raise the profile of the benefits of the arts to health through working with the Wales Arts Health and Wellbeing Network and publishing in the WHO EU Panorama special issue on Arts and Health (March 2020).  She was inspired and motivated to embark on a career in public health, after working in community development including helping to initiate and support intercultural community arts projects in Cardiff and the South Wales valleys.

Dr Durre Shahwar is an interdisciplinary writer, researcher, and artist. She is co-editor of Gathering: Women of Colour on Nature (404 INK, 2024) and Just So You Know (Parthian Books, 2020). Durre has a PhD in autofiction and Pakistani-Welsh identity from Cardiff University and was the recipient of a Future Wales Fellowship. Her solo photo exhibition and accompanying pamphlet on archives, seeking sanctuary, and documentation, One of the Good Ones, was exhibited in Ffotogallery, Cardiff, 2026.  

Her work deconstructs established frameworks to present counternarratives that capture the complexities of lived experiences when situated within social, cultural, political, and geographical landscapes. Durre divides her time between Cardiff and South London and is currently working on her debut non-fiction book, Words I Was Taught, which was Highly Commended for the Morley Lit Prize in 2022.