Meet the team

Bio

Christina is founder and Director of HBDCA. Formerly Head of Services at The Haemophilia Society, she founded HBDCA having come to realise how essential psychological support is to the wellbeing of a person with a bleeding disorder and their family. She was recently re-elected for a third term as a member of the Inhibitor Working Group for the European Haemophilia Consortium (EHC) and, having been a member of the Psychosocial Working Group for the European Association for Haemophilia and Allied Disorders (EAHAD) since its inception in 2018, was elected Secretary of the Working Group in February, this year. Christina is a committee member and consultant to the newly-formed charity, Local Families with Bleeding Disorders.

From November 2017 to July 2018, whilst setting up HBDCA, Christina was invited to be Interim CEO of CARIS Haringey, a homeless charity in north London. She has remained a committed volunteer ever since and is now a trustee. Christina feels privileged to work in the two areas she is passionate about: bleeding disorders and homelessness.

Christina is exceptionally fortunate to have a wonderful team at HBDCA, including the trustees and their new ambassador, Ros Cooper. She is confident that this exceptional team will, in the coming months and years, fulfil its shared HBDCA vision of providing high-quality, FREE, much-needed,  psychological support to the bleeding disorder community across the United Kingdom.

What inspires you in the work you do? 
Having trained originally as a counsellor with British Airways many years ago, psychological support has always been an important part of my work. I have come to realise, more than ever, how mental wellbeing impacts on physical wellbeing, and vice versa. There has been an increasing recognition, thankfully in recent times, by other healthcare professionals that psychological support should be provided as an important part of holistic care for a person with a bleeding disorder. But what actually inspires me the most has been every single person I have met in this community; whether the Mum and Dad of a newly-diagnosed child, a teenager affected by an inhibitor, a young woman with a bleeding disorder considering motherhood, or a man or woman in the Infected Blood community who has stood up so bravely to give evidence at the ongoing Infected Blood Inquiry, no matter what emotional toll that may take on their mental wellbeing to do so, and who then has attended the Inquiry, day in and day out, in solidarity with the many others giving evidence too, disclosing similar deeply traumatic experiences.

Who is someone you admire?
I am inspired by the bleeding disorder community as a whole. But as far as individuals go, two really stand out for me. One is the CEO of the EHC, Amanda Bok, who has always been an inspiration to me, both as a human being and as the compassionate, supreme professional she is. And the second is a wonderful young man, who shall remain nameless here, who has haemophilia and works in medical science. He knows who he is! He spoke at a conference I once attended, telling the audience that when his mother was pregnant with him, and the doctors discussed with her the chances that her child would have haemophilia, as there was history of it in her family, she was strongly advised to have an abortion. Thank goodness his mother did not give in to the pressure to do this, because, in my view, the world would not have benefitted from the brilliant, kind, great young man he turned out to be!

What do you like to do for fun?
I take inspiration from the beauty of nature and its calming influence on me. I love to paint and be creative. And for fun, as many colleagues will tell you, I really love to dance!

What’s an unusual fact about you?

​That I worked in children’s television production for many years! Other than having my two children, my proudest achievement in life was to write and co-produce a documentary for BBC Education which compared the lives of children and young people in Rwanda and the UK affected by HIV/AIDS. I learned so much from the young people I met – being with them literally changed my life!  I took a new direction in my career, and started on the path that led, all these years later, to me founding HBDCA.