Russell Ampofo is Director of Education, Training and Examinations. He is responsible for developing and delivering the College's education, training, and examination strategy in the UK and overseas. Russell provides leadership across the following College functions:

• development of trusted and high-quality anaesthetic educational opportunities, resources and content for members and others practicing anaesthesia and perioperative medicine in the UK and overseas
• delivery of world class training and career support and guidance to our members
• development and maintenance of standards in training curricula, assessment, recruitment for training in the UK and internationally
• supplying high-quality professional examinations for the specialty of anaesthesia, critical care, and pain medicine.

Prior to the College, Russell worked at Public Health England, the Faculty of Public Health and Edexcel (Pearson) Education. In these roles, he had varied responsibilities including training, developing curricula, workforce development, examinations, national recruitment, and quality.

Ricky Ellis is a clinician scientist, Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer, and medical educator. In 2020, he was awarded the Intercollegiate Surgical Research Fellowship by the Royal Colleges of Surgery of the UK and Ireland. During this Fellowship, he completed an award-winning PhD and body of research highlighting differences in attainment and career progression between groups of surgeons based on sociodemographic differences. He continues to lead projects and research teams advocating for equity and fairness in training and access to opportunities in medicine. The GMC has recently commissioned Ricky to investigate differential attainment across all UK postgraduate medical examinations. This meeting will be one of the first times that these results have been presented externally. 

Professor Sujesh Bansal is a Consultant Anaesthetist at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust and MAHSC Honorary Clinical Professor at Manchester. He has a busy educational portfolio and is the Director of Manchester International Fellowship Scheme, a multi-speciality scheme and Associate Director of Medical Education for the Trust with remit of about 1200 LEDs. He has specific interest in induction, supervision, support and career progression of overseas doctors and LEDs. He is regularly invited all over the UK to train Educational Supervisors in the field of ‘Supporting and Supervising International Doctors’.

Dr Sarah Thornton qualified from Leeds University in 1991. She created her own ACCS programme as a junior doctor, and then discovered the joy of anaesthetics – and never looked back.

She took up her consultant post with an interest in critical care in the year 2000 at Royal Bolton Hospital – a big district general hospital in a socially deprived area.

Sarah has always enjoyed education and took on the role of trainee rep on the Specialty Training Committee during her anaesthetic training. As soon as she was able, she took on the role of College Tutor in 2003, in between fitting in three kids. After that she was appointed higher Training Programme Director in 2007, then in 2013 Head of School of Manchester for two years, and then Head of School for Manchester and Mersey from 2015. She is passionate about trainee wellbeing and has tried hard to look after her School during the pandemic.

Outside of work, she fosters guide dogs, likes running and skiing, and loves spending time travelling with her sound-engineer husband and kids.

If not an anaesthetist, she would like to have been an international geologist or a spy!

Dr Elisa Bertoja has been a consultant in anaesthesia and perioperative medicine at University College London Hospitals since 2008.

Graduating in Italy, she also trained in Germany and the UK. Her clinical interest lies in anaesthesia for complex major surgery (cardiovascular, thoracic and upper-GI) alongside her active involvement in medical education. She is a Primary FRCA examiner and an educational supervisor and was a College tutor in anaesthesia and a training programme director to foundation doctors. As chair of her anaesthetic department, Elisa is an advocate for fairness and equality,

On the basis of her international background and her current involvement in training, Elisa is keen to make the route to anaesthetic CCT and the FRCA exam fit for the 21^st century. She is aware of the pivotal role of SAS and non-UK-trained doctors in our healthcare system and wants to make sure their treatment is fair and transparent.

Elisa is very sociable; she loves spending time with her friends and family, and travelling (when possible) to see the beautiful world we live in. If she hadn’t gone into medicine, her interests would have been in architecture or geology (specifically vulcanology).

Hamish qualified from Manchester University then trained as an anaesthetist in West London. He was a consultant at the Royal Marsden Hospital before heading north to Leeds in 2001 in search of a quieter life. In Leeds, he’s had a variety of management roles including Lead Clinician, Clinical Director, Trust Medical Appraisal Lead, Medical Director for Workforce & Professional Standards, Responsible Officer, and interim Chief Medical Officer. Earlier this year he moved to the role of Regional Medical Director and Higher-Level Responsible Officer for the Northeast & Yorkshire. He’s still looking for a quieter life.