Welcoming Grazina Berry, new Overcoming MS CEO | S2E19

Bio:

 

Grazina Berry joined Overcoming MS in July 2020 as CEO. She has had an extensive career, as a senior and board executive, in the public and not-for-profit sectors.   

 

She was previously CEO of The Aplastic Anaemia Trust (dedicated to research and support for those living with rare bone marrow failures) and held leadership roles at the Richmond Fellowship, a mental health and substance use services provider in the UK.  

 

Grazina is passionate, driven and committed to making a positive difference to the lives of all communities and helping OMS achieve its goal to reach everyone diagnosed with MS around the world. She is looking forward to leading OMS, through organizational strategy, using data and digital technology and crucially via close collaboration with people who live with MS, their support networks, the medical community and experts in the MS field. A powerful motivating force behind Grazina’s drive to raise the profile of our charity is a close family member who lives with MS. Grazina lives in Cambridgeshire, in England, and speaks Lithuanian, English, German and Russian.

 

Questions:

 

• Can you tell our audience and the OMS community a bit about yourself personally so we can get to know the person behind the new chief executive of the OMS charity?
• You’ve held senior leadership roles at other charities, most recently as CEO of the Aplastic Anaemia Trust. What attracted you to OMS?
• What’s your personal philosophy on the place a charity like OMS should have in the communities it serves?
• What do you think OMS offers to people with MS?
• What do you see as the most crucial influencing factors in continuing the important work the charity does but also charting a new direction for the future?
• What opportunities would you like to embrace and explore in your early tenure at OMS?
• What are some of the challenges of running a global charity and how do you personally handle them?
• If you were to look ahead, where would you like to see OMS in a few years’ time?
• Is there a massive difference in running a charity that’s in the MS space versus some of the varying focal areas of your earlier work?
• What are you most excited about in your new role as OMS’ CEO?
• And finally, on a totally different note, can you share something from your life that happened to you that left you thinking, “oh wow, we live in an amazing world”?

 

Links:

 

About Grazina Berry

About The Aplastic Anaemia Trust 

About Overcoming MS

 

Coming up next:

 

Coming up next, join Geoff Allix as he interviews fellow podcaster Bron Webster, producer and host of The MS Show, on Living Well with MS Coffee Break #8, which launches on Monday, August 31.

 

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