Kate Smyth

Kate qualified as a chartered town planner in the 1970’s and worked at a very senior level in a number of local authorities. She was a competitive sportswoman playing badminton at county level.

With the onset of MS more than thirty years ago her career ambitions changed and she developed a successful consultancy, focussing on economic development and disability.
Kate is now impaired significantly and has no independent mobility and relies on voice activated software for all computer work.

She has been a Non-Executive Director in the NHS for the last five years and becoming aware of the small numbers of disabled senior leaders in the NHS, co-founded the Disabled NHS Directors Network ( DNDN) in 2020. She has been co-chair since it was established.

The principal aims of DNDN are to provide a peer support group and to increase the number of disabled people in senior positions in the NHS. DNDN has been acknowledged by NHS England’s Workforce Disability Equality Standard Team as having had a major impact on the increase of directors in the NHS who have declared a disability.

Kate has worked closely with numerous executive search firms to change their approach to the recruitment of disabled people into senior positions and particularly in the NHS. Kate is also the Board sponsor at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals ( LTH) of the Living with Disability Staff Ambassador Forum which was cited as an example of good practice by NHS England. Kate is an ambassador for disability at LTH and a role model and her different lived experience is highly valued by her colleagues. Kate works with a Yorkshire hospital trust and provides training to Health Care assistants to improve the way in which disabled people are nursed in hospital. Kate also works with academic colleagues at the Universities of Central Lancashire, Bradford and Leeds and has contributed to several health related publications.