Introducing our new Member Trustee, Dr Tsitsi Chawatama-Kwambana

The RCPCH is delighted to announce that Dr Tsitsi Chawatama-Kwambana has been appointed to its Board of Trustees as a new Member Trustee. Tsitsi replaces Dr Carol Roberts, who is coming to the end of a five-year term as a Trustee in November 2021. Tsitsi will join the Board as Trustee elect in October ahead of taking up her post in December.
Dr Tsitsi Chawatama-Kwambana
Dr Tsitsi Chawatama-Kwambana

Tsitsi [1] is a consultant paediatrician based at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in London. Her extensive experience spans a number of NGOs - as Chair of Save the Children UK, Trustee of Sentebale, Vice Chair of AFRUCA-Safeguarding Children and safeguarding Trustee for UK-Med.

Tsitsi will play an important role in ensuring that the Board of Trustees [2] fulfils its role in scrutiny and oversight of the RCPCH.

Responding to her appointment as Member Trustee, Tsitsi comments:

I am excited to be joining the team at a crucial moment in history for child health outcomes. I look forward to contributing to the good work of advocating for children and supporting paediatric education in the UK and globally.

Chair of the Board of Trustees, Dame Mary Marsh comments:

It is with great pleasure that I welcome Tsitsi to the RCPCH Board of Trustees. She will bring a wide range of relevant experience and perspective as a member Trustee, including internationally. I know that she will make a strong and distinctive contribution.

On stepping down as a Member Trustee later this year, Carol [3] comments:

As we all enjoy Team GB’s Olympic successes in Tokyo, I feel like I have just run the first leg of a five-year relay! Being one of the inaugural Member Trustees has been a pleasure and a privilege. I know I will be passing the baton to a very capable pair of hands and I hope my successor finds the experience as exhilarating as I have. I am sad to say goodbye to my fellow Board members and our incredible Senior Management Team but will follow with excitement the next leg in the life of our College.

Notes

[1] Dr Tsitsi Chawatama-Kwambana grew up in Zimbabwe and graduated from the University of Leicester medical school. She completed paediatric training in Sheffield and London and was a member of the trainees’ committee. She worked in Ethiopia as a VSO/RCPCH fellow and is now a consultant paediatrician at Chelsea & Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust with special interests in medical education and served as deputy college tutor. Her other interests are infectious diseases and Global Health.

She has worked in the NGO and development sector and is the Chair of the Board of trustees of Save the Children UK and safeguarding trustee of UK-Med which responds to health emergency responses around the world. She has also served as a Vice Chair of AFRUCA-Safeguarding Children, which promotes the protection of children from ethnic minority communities in the UK, Europe and Africa and a trustee of Sentebale, a charity co-founded by Prince Seeiso of Lesotho and the Duke of Sussex to support vulnerable children in Lesotho and Botswana.

She is a passionate about empowering others to care for the world’s most vulnerable children through capacity building, training and program development. 

[2] The College’s Board of Trustees is the body with legal responsibility for all the College’s activities. There are twelve posts on the Board, of which seven are open to RCPCH members: the President, Registrar and Treasurer, plus four posts that members in general are eligible for.

[3] Dr Carol Roberts originally trained and worked as a GP; after a five-year career break (including two years living in the United States), she switched to paediatrics in 1998. She worked as an Associate Specialist in Community Paediatrics based at Nottingham Children’s Hospital for twenty years before giving up clinical practice in 2018 to take on a management role as Deputy Medical Director at the Nottingham University Hospitals Trust. She has delegated RO (Responsible Officer) responsibilities and her portfolio includes managing all doctors in difficulty.

Prior to this, she was the Trust Lead for Medical Appraisal, and she continues to appraise colleagues locally, regionally and nationally. She was RCPCH Officer for CPD and Revalidation for three years before joining the Board of Trustees; she also undertakes college Invited Reviews (IR) and sits on the Invited Reviews Programme Board. She is a strong advocate for SAS doctors and anyone seeking a flexible career pathway.