Who we are

Robert is Chairman of Nelsons, the UK’s largest natural medicine manufacturer. Robert is also a Trustee of a number of important charities both in Scotland and England including the Scottish Civic Trust and Chairman of the Barcapel Foundation and of the Edinburgh Art Festival.

Alison has worked in the field of communications, firstly in advertising and then in television. Her connection with Prostate Scotland is the early (and probably avoidable) death of her father at just 57 from prostate cancer. He died just a few days after the birth of his first grandchild – Alison’s son Cameron. Her grandfather also died at 68 from the same disease.

Alan is a consultant urological surgeon at the Western General Hospital, Edinburgh, where he has helped to develop the minimally invasive surgery programme in urology (including laparoscopic radical prostatectomy), after receiving additional training at the Cleveland Clinic, Ohio and the University Hospital in Leipzig, Germany. As a consultant urological surgeon with an interest in prostate disease, he has been struck by how little that many men know about their prostate gland until they develop prostatic disease.

Anna is a cancer clinician who leads the development of SCAN – a managed clinical network for cancer services in Southern Scotland. From 2001-6 she lead the development and implementation of the Scottish National Strategy for Cancer Services. She has been closely involved with guideline development, quality assurance programmes and national cancer audits. Her main clinical interests have been thoracic oncology and malignancies of the nervous system, and she served both as a Board Member and Treasurer for the International Association for Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC).

Julia works with Scottish Pension Trustees in Edinburgh as an independent pension trustee, working with a wide range of businesses across Scotland. She is a lawyer by background, was a partner in city law firm Sackers, and trained with Clifford Chance. She chaired the Education and Seminars Committee of the Association of Pension Lawyers for a number of years. She has a longstanding interest in prostate cancer and became a Trustee of Prostate Scotland in 2014.

Our new CEO, Alison has held senior positions in the third sector for 19 years. From 2014 to 2019 Alison worked at Community Enterprise, supporting charities across Scotland with business planning, feasibility studies, funding applications and community consultations. In 2019 she took up the position of CEO for Carers of West Lothian, a charity providing information, support and advice for unpaid carers and disabled people, leading the team through growth as demand for support increased as unpaid carers were impacted by the impact of the pandemic, challenges with public services and the cost of living crisis. In June, Alison moved to Prostate Scotland and is keen to use her skills and experience to work with the staff and board team to build and grow the organisation and rolling out a new 5 year strategy in 2025. Alison lives in Livingston, has 3 children and enjoys taking European City breaks, going to the gym, swimming and walking.

Mae joined Prostate Scotland in September 2009. Her remit is to develop literature to raise awareness of prostate disease, develop information leaflets on prostate disease, deliver presentations to community groups and in the workplace and develop Prostate Scotland’s involvement with volunteers. She has worked in the voluntary sector for the past 11 years and previously as Chief Dietitian in the health service for 10 years.

Richard Walker joined the team to lead the Charity’s fundraising activity and in particular to take forward the Blue Horizon Robot Appeal for Prostate Scotland. In addition, Richard’s role includes looking after the core funding required to run Prostate Scotland – this includes raising the funding to make sure that we can increase the public’s awareness of prostate disease through our literature, the website and the workplace initiative materials. Richard’s background is in fundraising consultancy, appeal management and managing teams of fundraisers throughout the UK. He has been employed in the charitable sector for the last 35 years in one or other of these areas.

Morag joined Prostate Scotland in March 2017.  Morag has worked in sales and marketing in the gift, jewellery and wine industries, and along the way gained experience of the charitable sector. She has collaborated on fundraising projects with The Princes Trust Scotland, and for five years was involved in The NSPCC and Childline Scotland Edinburgh Fine Wine Challenge. Her favourite fundraising experience was in aid of The Drake Music Project, where she undertook The Salsa Challenge, culminating in two weeks in Cuba, rehearsing and performing with the country’s top two dance companies.

Elaine joined Prostate Scotland in May 2022 to support our Compass project.  A dietitian by background, Elaine has worked in healthcare business development roles for over 25 years, the last 15 with LloydsPharmacy Clinical Homecare where she recently developed a homecare service for men with prostate cancer being treated with olaparib.  During this time, she also volunteered with two health charities, Health All Round and Breast Cancer Now.