Lived Experience Lead

Wellcome is a global charitable foundation. We improve health for everyone by funding science, leading policy and advocacy campaigns, and building partnerships.

We plan to spend £16bn over the next ten years, funding new discoveries in life, health and wellbeing, and taking on three global health challenges: mental health, infectious disease and climate.

Wellcome’s vision for mental health is ‘a world in which no-one is held back by mental health problems’, and our mission is to create a step-change in the ability to intervene early in depression, anxiety and psychosis.

We are looking for a Lived Experience Lead to sit in the Mental Health Lived Experience Team. The Lived Experience Team work to ensure that lived experience expertise is embedded in the work of Wellcome’s Mental Health Team, the projects and research that we fund, and the wider Mental Health Science community.

You will need to have significant expertise in relation to lived experience collaboration and involvement in mental health science. We seek people with a broad outlook and interdisciplinary vision for the future of the field. The Lead role will work closely with and deputise for the Head of the Lived Experience team. The role won’t require you to manage a team, but you will lead matrixed teams on key projects.

In this role you will:

• Work in collaboration with our international team to lived experience advisors and consultants.
• Have strategic oversight of and initiate projects to advance and iteratively improve our work to:
  • ensure lived experience experts inform and shape the day-to-day work, projects, direction and decision-making of Wellcome’s Mental Health team. This includes ensuring lived experience experts shape the development of projects and funding programmes developed within the Mental Health Team; involvement in all stages of funding review and decision-making processes; evaluating impact and leading on iterative improvements.
  • ensure lived experience experts are meaningfully involved and embedded in all projects and research funded by Wellcome’s Mental Health Programme. This may include the development and implement of funding calls or commissions; convening activities involving key stakeholders across mental health science; leading the scoping of research areas for future development; inputting to scoping led by other Wellcome teams; and developing methods for evaluating the success of our work.

• Identify, build and maintain partnerships with key stakeholders to deliver key elements of the team strategy. This includes personal responsibility for managing senior stakeholder relationships with key partner organisations.
• Deputise for the Head of Lived Experience in internal meetings and external fora, such as conferences, board meetings and steering groups and networks; Maintain a presence and influence in the mental health science field, representing Wellcome at a national level, through meetings, workshops and media.
• Contribute to the creation and development of a diverse and inclusive culture across the organisation, collaborating across departments

To be successful in this role you will have:

• Proven expertise and knowledge in relation to lived experience involvement and collaboration in mental health science
• Experience of setting up and delivering lived experience involvement and collaboration initiatives in complex projects, programmes or organisations
• Demonstrable experience of time and priority management- ability to distinguish urgent from important tasks/ priorities.
• Demonstrated ability to develop and negotiate partnerships with key individuals and organisations internationally in public or private sectors. Well-developed inter-personal skills.  Can challenge and influence senior stakeholders whilst building and maintaining relationships.
• Excellent delivery, logistical and problem-solving skills. Able to drive execution of objectives despite setbacks.

To apply please upload your current CV and complete our short application form.

You can view the full job description here

We understand that our colleagues have commitments and personal interests outside of work and we strive to build a flexible working environment, in which people can perform at their best. We are currently working 2 days per week (Tuesdays and Wednesdays) from our Euston Road offices with the remaining 3 days from home.

You can read more about the benefits we offer our employees here

Diversity and Inclusion is at the heart of everything we do

Diversity and Inclusion is a priority at Wellcome. We are committed to cultivating a fair and healthy environment, where everyone can be themselves and thrive. We are happy to discuss flexible working options for all roles. We work to ensure that our recruitment processes are as inclusive as possible to everyone. This includes making adjustments for people who have a disability or long-term condition. If ! you would like us to make adjustments during the application process, please contact us at jobs@wellcome.org.