The Trustees ensure that the BSG has a clear strategy, and that its work and goals are in line with its vision. A trustee’s role in a charity is to be the ‘guardians of purpose’, making sure that all decisions put the needs of the beneficiaries first.

They safeguard the charity’s assets – both physical assets, including property, and intangible ones, such as its reputation. They make sure these are used well and that the charity is run sustainably.

Trustees don’t normally do the day-to-day running of the charity. This is delegated to the staff, led by the Chief Executive. Instead, they play the role of a ‘critical friend’ to the Chief Executive by giving support and by challenging – in a supportive way – to help them manage effectively.

The BSG has both ‘Member Trustees’ who are actively involved in the clinical/committee work of the society and ‘Lay Trustees’, who are normally non-clinicians lending their advice and expertise from industry.

The BSG trustee board meets four to six times a year with a finance sub-committee often meeting before each main board meeting.

BSG Trustees

Prof Colin Rees, BSG President, June 2024-2026

Prof Colin Rees is Professor of Gastroenterology at Newcastle University and an Honorary Consultant at South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Trust. His research interests include endoscopy and colorectal cancer (CRC) screening, prevention and early diagnosis (COLO-SPEED). He has led many large endoscopy studies recruiting around 20000 patients and believes the UK should be a world leader in endoscopy and CRC research. Colin was BSG VP Endoscopy from 2015-17 and established the BSG Endoscopy Quality Improvement Programme (EQIP). He has a strong interest in patient reported experience measures and led development of the Newcastle ENDOPREM. Colin has a strong faith, belief in social justice and has held a Newcastle United season ticket for over 30 years supporting them through thick and thin.

Dr Harriet Gordon, BSG President-Elect, June 2024-2026

Dr Harriet Gordon is a Consultant Gastroenterologist, she has been a Consultant in Winchester since 2000. Her involvement with the BSG began with the training committee when programme director, and since then has been BSG Workforce Lead, and then Director of the Medical Workforce Unit RCP.  Since then, she has continued to address the medical workforce crisis as Chair of the RCP Flexibility and Wellbeing group and the AoMRC Flexible Careers Committee, looking at opportunities throughout a medical career and into retirement.  She set up the RCP Emerging Women Leaders Programme in 2018 and was an elected member of SWiG. She was an elected member of BSG council and a BSG Trustee, and then an RCP Censor.

Dr John Morris, BSG Treasurer, June 2024-2026

Dr Allan John Morris is a Consultant Gastroenterologist at Glasgow Royal Infirmary, Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer at Glasgow University Medical School and Clinical Lead for Gastroenterology for Greater Glasgow and Clyde health board. He is Director of the West of Scotland Endoscopy Training Centre and has an international reputation for education and quality in delivery of all types of gastrointestinal endoscopy. He was visiting Associate Professor at the Medical University of South Carolina in 1995, developing advanced endoscopy practice. He has written several original papers, reviewed articles and contributed to national guideline development in the field of GI endoscopy.

A recognised national expert in luminal gastroenterology, he receives referrals of complex patients with inflammatory bowel disease, irritable bowel syndrome ,celiac disease, anaemia and capsule endoscopy. Dr Morris has held several senior positions in UK and European Gastroenterology including Scottish and British Society of Gastroenterology (BSG) and Joint Accreditation Group endoscopy (JAG) council member, BSG VP Endoscopy and board member of the European Society for GI Endoscopy.

Prof Helen Steed, BSG Senior Secretary, June 2023-2025

Helen Steed was appointed Consultant Gastroenterologist at the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust in 2014, Professor at the University of Wolverhampton in 2019. She was formerly a member of the IBD section between 2018-2021, Food and Function Clinical Research Group between 2019-2022 including chair of the group 2021-2022.

She has been a Foundation Programme Director, Clinical Tutor and, since 2019, the Director of Postgraduate Medical Education for two West Midlands NHS Trusts. She is the West Midlands lead Director of Medical Education, a Postgraduate Associate Dean role and since 2023 has fulfilled some Deputy Dean duties. She has active research interests and has published over 60 peer-reviewed papers spanning luminal gastroenterology, endoscopy and medical education. 

Prof Pradeep Bhandari, BSG Vice President Endoscopy, June 2024-2026

Prof Pradeep Bhandari was appointed as a Consultant Gastroenterologist at Portsmouth(UK) in 2005 and Professor of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy in 2012. He has authored more then 200 peer reviewed publications and has authored several International and national Guidelines as well as book chapters.  He has recieved several awards for his work in the field of endoscopy. These include Hopkins Endoscopy prize  (from British Society of Gastroenterology), Barbour Freeland Award (from Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh)   and Crystal awards (ASGE) . His work of use of Artificial Intelligence in detection of Barrett’s neoplasia was recently awarded the ‘Innovation of the Year’ award by the ESGE.

He sits on the UEG Research committee, specialist advisor to NICE and is the current chair of the ESGE Research committee. His key areas of interest are advanced diagnostics, endoscopic resections and Third space endoscopy. He has lectured at various National and International meetings and has a passion for endoscopic innovations, cricket and football.

Dr Coral Hollywood, BSG Vice President Hepatology, June 2023-2025

Coral Hollywood is a Consultant Hepatologist at Gloucestershire Royal, a busy District General Hospital.  She was recruited in 2013 to take on the growing demand for a dedicated hepatology service in Gloucestershire and joined the BSG Liver section committee a year later.  Alongside the development of the liver service locally she has been involved in the BSG programme committee, RCP liver education days and BSG liver guidelines.  Being Clinical Lead for Hepatology in her own hospital has seen the recruitment of a further 3 hepatologists, 6 nurse specialist and multiple outpatient services and involvement in multiple national research trials.  She is regional lead for Hepatology research, a member of the UK Liver Alliance.

Dr Umesh Basavaraju, BSG Elected Councillor, June 2022-2025

Dr Umesh Basavaraju is a Consultant Gastroenterologist appointed in 2015 at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, NHS Grampian, Scotland. He successfully completed his PhD in 2012 from the University of Aberdeen and is actively involved in clinical research in the area of HPB endoscopy (EUS&ERCP) and Bowel cancer screening.  He is the current Endoscopy Lead for Scottish Society of Gastroenterology and is an Elected Councillor of the British Society of Gastroenterology. He is keen in Endoscopy training and is a faculty of the NHS Scotland Endoscopy Academy. He has been organising National ERCP and EUS training courses in Scotland since 2016.

Dr Matthew Cowan, BSG Elected Councillor, June 2023-2026

Dr Matthew Cowan first realised that medical education would be an important part of his professional career upon qualifying in 1998 when he discovered that the attributes that had won him preclinical and clinical prizes at St George’s Hospital Medical School were not actually those that make a good doctor. Following SHO posts at the Hammersmith Hospital and inspired by a consultant mentor, he trained in gastroenterology with a hepatology interest in and around London including time at the liver units of King’s College, The Royal Free, St Mary’s and St George’s. Noticing a real clinical problem, he underwent an NIHR Fellowship developing AI models to spare patients with poor treatment outcomes undergoing long courses of toxic antiviral therapy for hepatitis C. He completed his PhD thesis in the same month that the first directly acting antiviral agents were licensed, rendering his work obsolete. In 2012 he had the same feeling as in 1998 when he found that his registrar training had taught him good clinical skills but little else that he needed for life as a consultant at Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust. Over the last decade, his clinical focus has been to develop a hepatology service for local patients. Following his appointment as Training Programme Director for the newly formed Kent, Surrey and Sussex gastroenterology rotation and more recently with his national role as Chair of the BSG Training Committee, he has sought to address some of the structural challenges in postgraduate medical education to create more relevant training for aspiring gastroenterologists. He firmly believes that all of our patients have something unique to teach us but that it takes skill, experience and often humility to find out what this is.

Mr Paul McCauley, Independent Lay Trustee, appointed June 2023

Paul qualified as a Chartered Accountant in Ireland in 1997. The following year he joined Goldman Sachs in their London office where he was a Vice President in the Equities Division specialising in Prime Brokerage. Since 2016 he has worked at Pension Insurance Corporation plc, a bulk annuity provider, where he is currently the Head of Multi-Asset Strategies and manages a portfolio of Alternative Investments.

Mr Trevor Jones, Independent Lay Trustee, appointed June 2021

Following ten years as an academic social researcher, Trevor moved into the private sector in the mid-1980s, having developed an interest in statistical analysis and the commercial use of census and other large official data sets. He had a 35-year career running a number of marketing services companies, latterly focusing on 'big data' analytics. He has previously been a Trustee at the Woodland Trust and Cats Protection and will shortly step down after two terms as Lay Trustee at the British Society for Haematology. Last year he was appointed as a Lay Member of Council at the Royal College of Radiologists.

Ms Joanne Flitcroft, Independent Lay Trustee, appointed June 2018

Joanne is a qualified solicitor and having trained in London, has spent almost 20 years as an in-house lawyer before setting up her own company Opallios in 2016. Joanne provides consultancy advice to companies in the life sciences sector and in particular advice on issues concerned with pharmacovigilance, compliance and risk management.

Mrs Rosemary Lloyd, Independent Lay Trustee, appointed June 2020

Rosemary has extensive experience in Human Resources in the Retail, Consultancy and Financial sectors, with experience in a full range of HR activities including recruitment, training, reward, benefits and employee relations. In her most recent role as HR Director, she led a team of 20.

Ms Marina Azdejkovic, Independent Lay Trustee, appointed June 2020

Marina has worked for a number of international organisations in finance roles. She is currently working in London for the Standard Chartered Bank as a Director, Operations and Governance for a Sustainability function. She is also responsible for looking after governance and finance of the Standard Chartered Foundation which she helped set up in 2019.

Mr Thomas Budd , Independent Lay Trustee, appointed June 2020

After qualifying as a solicitor, Tom studied for a postgraduate law degree at the University of Cambridge before joining Slaughter and May and two subsequent law firms. He was until recently a partner in the London office of an international law firm, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, where he served as co-chair of the firm's Global Finance practice group. Tom is also the Chancellor of the Order of St John and a trustee of Foothold (The Institution of Engineering and Technology Benevolent Fund).