Sola Afuape

Sola joined Innovation Unit in 2022 and is an experienced Non-Executive Director currently sitting on the boards of SWLondon Integrated Care System Health Inequality and EDI Board and SWLondon and St George’s Mental Health Trust, where she chairs the People Committee. 

She was awarded an MBE in 2013 in recognition of her work as Chair of The Afiya Trust, a national charity focused on tackling social exclusion and health inequalities faced by those most vulnerable and marginalised in society. She has held a number of advisory roles across the public sector and central government and has worked as the Department of Health London Region Health Improvement lead and their National Equality Advisor to the NHS; for Public Health England; as a Commissioner on the cross government Commission on Carers; in the Arts and more recently as an independent on HMCT’s London West Advisory Committee recruiting for a more diverse magistracy.

She is currently a National Professional Advisor to the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and has had a number of commissions through her consultancy firm specialising in Strategy, Workforce & OD and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) with clients such as the NHS Innovation accelerators (NIA); Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), HunterHealth global recruiting company  and a number of large NHS organisations. She recently facilitated two annual iterations of a series of Dialogues entitled ‘Race, Racism and the Built Environment’ at The Bartlett, UCL and a programme of work supporting The Westway Trust called “understanding Reparations” as part of their mission to enable their local community to thrive.

Sola has over 20 years’ operational experience advising, designing and implementing local, regional and national HI and service improvement programmes. She has been an active leader in her local community where over 149 languages are spoken, working with local communities particularly young people from marginalised groups and women, local neighbourhood police teams, Brent Local Authority and voluntary sector groups serving a broad range of communities.