Ella Joseph

Ella joined the Charity in November 2022 from her previous position as CEO of Think Ahead, a national mental health charity, which she co-founded in 2014. As CEO, Ella led a team which contributed greatly to the lives of thousands of service users across the UK through the recruitment, training, and development of the mental health workforce. The charity has grown from a small start-up to become a nationally respected institution. The success of this programme has been reliant on building strong partnerships with NHS Mental Health Trusts and understanding the pressures they face.

Prior to founding Think Ahead, Ella had more than 10 years’ senior leadership experience in the civil service, starting out in the Social Exclusion Unit in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister – the predecessor to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. She went on to lead on workforce skills at HM Treasury and then joined the Department for Education, where she worked for eight years in deputy director roles in strategy, child health and wellbeing, and special educational needs and disability.

Ella’s vision is to continue growing and reinvesting in the Charity, to ensure seriously ill children in hospital can have their families close by, and that those families are fully supported in our Houses through what we know is an incredibly stressful time in their lives.

Ella lives in North London, close to our East Finchley head office and when she’s not there or at one of our Ronald McDonald Houses around the UK, she is kept busy taking her two sons to their football or rugby matches and plays a bit of rugby herself for Finchley Women’s RFC.