4 September 2024

This week, King’s Health Partners (KHP) was delighted to welcome its new Executive Director, Prof Graham Lord, MA MB BChir PhD FRCP FRSB FMedSci, NIHR Senior Investigator Emeritus.  

Graham has also taken on the role of Senior Vice President, Health and Life Sciences at King’s College London and serves as Chief Academic Officer, a Non-Executive Director role on the Board of Directors, at Guy’s and St Thomas’ and King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trusts, a newly created post that is unique in the UK. 

Upon starting his new role at King’s Health Partners, Prof Graham Lord said:

“I am delighted to be joining King’s Health Partners as Executive Director. I want to offer my sincere thanks to Prof Richard Trembath for his significant contribution to the partnership. His leadership has supported King’s College London and King’s Health Partners to address the complex challenges facing healthcare, supporting front-line services during COVID-19, and spearheading the delivery of the partnership’s five-year plan to improve patient care and health outcomes. 

"I look forward to working with our partners to reimagine how we can pioneer better health for all, keeping patients and the communities we serve at our heart.” 

Graham previously served as the Vice-President and Dean of the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health at Manchester University, Honorary Consultant Transplant Nephrologist at Manchester NHS Foundation Trust and Executive Director of the Manchester Academic Health Science Centre. 

Before joining the University of Manchester in 2019, Prof Lord held the position of Professor of Medicine and Head of the Department of Experimental Immunobiology at King’s College London. 

A leading clinician-scientist, Prof Lord trained in Medicine at the University of Cambridge, gained a PhD at Imperial and completed his postdoctoral training at Harvard University. He then established a research group seeking to understand the regulation of the immune system to enhance the treatment of severe inflammatory diseases. His clinical interest is in multi-organ transplantation and the genetics of long-term transplant failure. He has significant commercial expertise, having founded companies in the US that focus on immuno-oncology, infectious diseases and autoimmunity and has recently graduated from the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School. 

Rt Hon Prof Lord Kakkar, Chairman of King's Health Partners, said: 

“I would like to offer Prof Lord a very warm welcome to the King’s Health Partners team.  

"As we embark on the development of our new 2030 strategy, we look forward to benefitting from his distinguished experience and extensive expertise across health and life sciences.  

"Graham’s leadership will be invaluable in supporting the partnership to realise its vision of better health for all.”