Leadership Team
Drawn from across the public and private sectors, the leadership team brings together clinical and operational expertise, industry and management consulting experience.
Attain’s leadership team embodies our focus on taking the best from different sectors to support our customers to transform care and improve health and wellbeing.
Mark Carmichael
Managing Director
Mark Carmichael, Managing Director
For the past 16 years Mark has focused exclusively on working with the NHS; helping to transform care in a way that improves efficiency and benefits patients directly. He has worked across health and care systems and with individual organisations to broker consensus and develop sustainable models of care that meet people’s future needs. This has included ground-breaking programmes that have resulted in major changes in care economies – significant shifts in care activity, the implementation of capitated budgets with contract values of up to £285m and the integration of clinical services across multiple, independent, acute Trusts.
Mark brings a deep understanding of implementing effective change; he personally leads Attain’s delivery in several geographies including the East of England and the North West. Mark began his career in manufacturing industry with Honda and Unipart before moving into health firstly with KPMG and then Avail Consulting. He has been Attain’s Managing Director since our formation in January 2011.
Martin Wilson
Executive Chair
Martin Wilson, Executive Chair
Martin Wilson is one of the founders of Attain and is the Executive Chair. Currently, Martin is directing a range of projects including the support Attain is providing to the development of Somerset’s Health & Care strategy. In a 40 year career, Martin has led private sector businesses and supported the work of the public sector both in the UK and overseas. For the past 15 years Martin has focused on supporting the NHS. He has worked across the system – commissioners, providers, arm’s length bodies and DH. His work has encompassed strategy development and operational planning to system, service and pathway redesign. Martin’s current work includes helping systems address major financial and service delivery challenges Martin spent two spells with KPMG and his last role was leading KPMG’s UK public sector consulting practice. Over the course of his career Martin has been a founder and leader of four start-up businesses. Outside of work Martin cycles and is ticking off a number of hill climbs!
Struan Coad
Director
Struan Coad, Director
Struan is one of the founders of Attain. Over the past 15 years Struan has extensive experience working across health and social care as well as the wider public sector.
He has led the development and implementation of models of care and system-wide programmes to generate collaboration that focuses on outcomes for the population. This includes working closely with patients and clinicians to develop coherent care models that are delivered through robust commercial arrangements, whether through integrated care systems or outcome based contracts.
Recent work includes leading Attain’s support to implement multiple place based plans for greater collaboration across providers and commissioners to deliver integrated care, developing new care models for acute provider collaboration for both clinical and non-clinical services. Struan has worked with the Boards of several acute trusts and community providers as they transform their strategic plans to embrace integration and the opportunities for their populations. He leads Attain’s digital work including significant work with NHS Digital and STPs nationally.
Struan has previously implemented complex programmes for the Department of Work and Pensions, Department for Education, numerous local authorities and organisations across the health sector, working for EDS (now HP) and Avail Consulting.
Chris Walker
Director
Chris Walker, Director
Helen Pyecroft
Director
Helen Pyecroft, Director
Helen Pyecroft is a Director at Attain. Since joining Attain in 2012, Helen has supported her clients to operate as effective and robust organisations – including developing strategy, designing effective organisational structures and governance arrangements, integration and partnership working across health and social care and designing and delivering organisational development strategies to build effective teams.
Helen started her career as a civil servant and has since spent 18 years as a public-sector management consultant working with numerous high-profile government clients. Helen has delivered large scale programmes and projects and has a strong track record in advising clients on strategy, change, business planning, service transformation and delivery and organisational design and development. Her clients included the Department for Education, Foreign & Commonwealth Office, Royal Mail, Home Office, numerous local authorities and many organisations across the health sector.
Helen won the Sunday Times and Management Consulting Association’s Change Management Consultant of the Year award in 2007.
Gareth Hartley
Director
Gareth Hartley, Director
Gareth is a Director at Attain and leads our Service Transformation team. Gareth has over 10 years’ experience of working with a range of NHS clients – combining strategic, commercial, financial, and programme management skills to deliver improved patient outcomes and better value for money. He has a successful track record in supporting integration between health and care organisations and is experienced in the development and implementation of new service models, payment mechanisms, and contract incentives. Since joining Attain at its inception in 2011, Gareth has led on several high-profile roles and complex change programmes, including the development of system wide health and wellbeing strategies; establishing integrated care systems and partnerships; acute service reconfiguration; out of hospital transformation; and financial recovery and turnaround. He has also successfully programme managed a number of complex and high value healthcare procurements.
Chris Spark
Associate Director
Chris Spark, Associate Director
Chris is Associate Director and manages the day-to-day delivery of Attain’s Commercial team. Chris has several years NHS commissioning and provider experience, during which time he has delivered a portfolio of projects that encompass system and service redesign, and commercial and procurement interventions. Chris has an award-winning track record of delivering tangible results in challenging environments. Most recently Chris has been engaged across Yorkshire and Humber leading a team to deliver a collaborative, competitive dialogue procurement for Integrated Urgent Care Services, specifically NHS 111 telephony, Call Handling and Core Clinical Advice Services. Chris has also been advising North Lincolnshire CCG on their Out of Hospital service as one of the major transformation programmes.
