Our Team
Revd. Minister Gail Thompson, DipMin, BTh (Hons), MTh
Founder & CEO
Revd. Gail Thompson is a long-time member and ordained Christian minister of C.I.C. International (Churches in Communities). She is also a member of the Centre for World Group, Ambassadors College and an ordained Honourable chaplain at SOAS University (disability unit).
Gail spent 20 years as a professional and world class conductor, saxophonist, clarinetist & flautist. As well as touring, composing and conducting her own 23-strong big band, she has world tours, concerts & countless solo appearances under her creative belt. She has played iconic venues including the Royal Albert Hall, Barbican Centre and the Royal Festival Hall and alongside such luminaries as Art Blakey, Charlie Watts and the Jazz Warriors.
Gail achieved everything above before she turned thirty; her future was incredibly bright and she was making great strides in her music career. At the desperately young age of twenty-nine she was diagnosed with Secondary-Progressive Multiple Sclerosis (SPMS), however this did not dampen her ebullient enthusiasm. Music is part of who Gail is and after her diagnosis she founded and established Musicworks, one of Lambeth's most prominent community music schools; based in Brixton, Musicworks boasted over 3000 students. Gail also organised many jazz festivals through her promotion company, Frontline Productions. She was later Managing Director of the Mick Jagger project, National Music Day, whereupon 1500 musical events were registered & took place throughout Britain for one day each year. Gail also started arranging and scoring music for big bands and writing scores for television, she also made TV appearances and presented shows for the BBC, Jazz Week and BBC’s Black London.
At the age of forty-three she was called into ministry and studied at both Ambassadors College and Spurgeon's College, London. She obtained her ministerial qualifications; Diploma in Theology for Ministry, Bachelor (Hons) and Masters Degree in Theology and Fine Arts (DipMin, BTh (Hons), MTh). She is now studying for her PhD, and will be releasing her autobiography Black Foot Forward in late 2021.
The call to serve her community is evident in everything Gail has put her mind to. She established Millennium Community Solutions CIC for that very reason, having in the past served as a Governor of St Thomas's and Guy's Hospital, a member of the Arts Council of Great Britain and various other funding bodies and local Borough councils for many years. Gail is currently an ambassador for World Vision UK: International Children's Charity alongside running many community projects in Lambeth sheltered housing schemes, disability day care centres, nursery schools reading programs and much more. Gail is truly an effervescent, tireless committed person who is well equipped to deal with the day-to-day running of and fundraising for any community endeavour.
Adam Matich
Community Partnerships & Social Value
Profit with purpose, social and technology entrepreneur with a love of positive change, driven through ideas and innovation. Supporting the drive towards a better world in terms of economic resilience, social equality and environmental improvement. Adam provides a wide variety of services for social and commercial enterprises including designing business strategies for social progress and making connections in responsible finance. Adam is an award winning entrepreneur who has founded and invested into several high impact, scalable, mission-driven organisations.
Othman Hack
Technology & Devices
Othman is the head of our technology and devices department, ensuring all the equipment we distribute is correctly and safely wiped before being donated to service users. He is our tech guru and keeps Millennium Community Solutions running.
Isabel Appio
Project Development
Isabel is responsible for the day-to-day operations surrounding the Digital Assistive Technology Toolkit. She collates, edits and categorises all the information available within the toolkit as well as building networks to connect us with other Assistive Technology companies.
Shirley Newton
Volunteer
A decade plus of retirement has afforded Shirley a greater opportunity for volunteering in various ways. Her background has been in education, as a secondary school teacher, teacher governor and lecturer. From being a member of a schools’ committee for rebuilding Shakespeare’s Globe, Shirley later worked for the theatre in its earlier days. She has been a trustee of two charities and is a Freeman of the City of London.
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Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP BSc MA GDL
Patron
Bell was born and raised in Streatham, growing up on a working class estate in Brixton Hill. She attended the independent Streatham and Clapham High School after winning a scholarship and went on to study Biomedical Science with Ethics & Philosophy of Science , Medical Law & Ethics before later branching in to law.
Bell was the National Black Students' Officer for the National Union of Students (NUS) from 2008 to 2010, national co-ordinator of the Student Assembly Against Racism, and the national convenor of the NUS' Anti-Racism/Anti-Fascism campaign during her time studying.
She has sat as a school governor at Saint Gabriel's College, Camberwell since 2018 and assumed her seat in Parliament in December 2019 before being made Shadow Minister of State for Immigration. Alongside her work as a sitting MP, Bell has a proven history of working with charitable organisations and promoting their causes. Bell is co-chairperson of Labour's left-wing Socialist Campaign Group, a trade unionist and fights for what she beliees in.
Myles Pilling BA MA
Patron
Myles’ career has seen him work across a myriad of positions within the education system, having been a teacher in SEN (Special Educational Needs) schools for 27 years.
After leaving the teaching profession he became an IT SEN adviser; providing equipment, software, education and training for pupils with special and/or complex educational needs as part of the Specialist SEN Service (SSENS) team at Wiltshire Council - where he worked for ten years as an ICT SEN Consultant.
For the last seven years Myles has been running his own assessment, consultancy and training company AccessAbility Solutions where his role is Specialist SEND ICT Consultant, he is a County Co-ordinator for AbilityNet's network of volunteers in Wiltshire and Myles is also a Director for BATA (British Assistive Technology Association), a part-time external lecturer for Bath Spa University on their MA Dyslexia course and a SEND Consultant for Tablet Academy.
Patrick White MB ChB BAO MRCP FRCGP MD
Advisory Board Member
Patrick completed his undergraduate training in Ireland before moving to Scotland to become a GP trainee where he first developed an interest in research and published a paper about the care of epilepsy in general practice.
After moving to London in the early eighties he undertook a Primary Care Research Fellowship at St George’s Hospital School of Medicine whilst working as a GP. He was also a lecturer in general practice and primary care at King’s College Hospital School of Medicine.
More recently he leads a research programme in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
To do this it’s necessary to design new projects and seek research grants from funding bodies such as the NHS National Institute of Health Research and charities such as the Dunhill Medical Trust. The second element of his work involves the recruitment of new GP academics into the department as academic registrars and clinical fellows. Patrick is responsible for their management as they progress through their training. Linked to this is the supervision of students undertaking their Master’s degree in Public Health.
Thirdly he is involved with teaching, including contributing to the Master’s degree in Palliative Care (within the Department of Palliative Care, Rehabilitation and Policy).
Lalit Kalra MD PhD FRCP FRACP
Advisory Board Member
Lalit Kalra, or Kal, has held senior clinical and academic leadership positions as Head of Stroke Services and the Professor of Stroke Medicine at King’s College Hospital between 1998-2016. He was responsible for establishing one of the leading comprehensive stroke centres in the UK, securing over £10 million of research funding and publishing over 300 research articles which have contributed to stroke policies and guidelines in the UK and other countries.
Kal was head-hunted in 2017 to take up the role of Medical Director at Auckland District Health Board, an integrated care organisation and the leading tertiary care provider in New Zealand, with an annual budget of 2.5 billion NZD. The key aspect of the role was facilitating the medical workforce to engage in a major systems transformation taking place in the organisation. He developed frameworks for service accountability, alignment of personal professional and service objectives, quality assurance and leadership development within the senior medical workforce.
Having joined the Senior Leadership Team as the Director of Community and Long-Term conditions in 2018, Kal was accountable for developing strategy, service priorities, business planning, risk management and staffing of 11 hospital and community services and 600 staff. He introduced systems to improve effectiveness, efficient and well-being within multidisciplinary professionals and investing in developing staff talent and leadership skills. In 2020, he was tasked to undertake a strategic review of the NZ Disability system and produce recommendations for a “one system” approach across health, social and voluntary services sectors to be implemented by Northern Alliance District Health Boards as their 2021-2026 priorities for Disability.
In these roles, he has demonstrated the ability to plan strategically and engage different disciplines to deliver effective and high quality services. Kal is a team player who respects the contribution of other team members and believes in building relationships, timely communication and transparency. As a leader, he have taken accountability for delivering outcomes, and developed a workplace culture that values and respects people, recognises talent, celebrates achievement and develops leaders for the future.