Richard Stubbs

Chief Executive, Yorkshire and Humber Academic Health Science Network (YHAHSN)

As CEO of the Yorkshire and Humber Academic Health Science Network (YHAHSN) and through his varied non-executive and voluntary roles, Richard is driving innovation in the health sector, contributing to economic growth across the North of England and beyond and improving outcomes for patients.

He is also helping driving change at national and international levels. As a long-standing member of the NHS Assembly, as vice-chair of the AHSN Network, which represents the 15 AHSNs across England, and as a commissioner for the NHS Innovation and Life Sciences Commission, Richard is helping to shape the future of the NHS and to steer major health innovation programmes.

Commitment to diversity and inclusion runs through everything Richard does, and for the last two years he has been recognised by the Health Service Journal in their Top 50 BAME Powerlist as 'one of the BAME figures exercising the most power and influence in English health policy.'

As co-chair of the NHS Confederation’s BME Leadership Network, and a member of the NHS Confederation’s NED Taskforce, he plays a central role in increasing diversity within the NHS leadership.

Richard is a vocal proponent of tackling health inequalities. In 2020 he co-authored the influential report, Levelling Up Yorkshire and Humber; Health as the new wealth post-COVID on the link between regional productivity and population health. He went on to present the report’s recommendations at a virtual evidence session hosted by the House of Lords Public Services Committee. These recommendations subsequently contributed to the committee’s levelling up positioning paper, which was sent to the Prime Minister calling for ‘better targeted’ plans that protect health, education and skills in more deprived areas of the country.

In autumn 2021 Richard was recognised as Business Leader of the Year in the Yorkshire Post’s prestigious Excellence in Business Awards. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Leadership Fellow of St George’s House, Windsor Castle. He is also a trustee of Maltby Learning Trust, a multi-academy trust of secondary and primary schools across Rotherham and Doncaster.

Richard has recently joined the board of Westfield Health as a non-executive director and in his spare time he coaches an under 11’s football team.

Richard lives in Sheffield with his wife and two children.