Sharmila Nebhrajani Governor

Sharmila Nebhrajani joined the Board of the Health Foundation as Governor in February 2018. She became Chair of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in May 2020.

Before that she was the Chief Executive of Wilton Park, an agency of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth office focused on convening opinion formers and policy makers in discussion to address key global issues from health and sustainable development to conflict resolution, defence and intelligence.  

Sharmila has had a varied career spanning medical research, business, technology and the media. A biomedical scientist by background, before joining Wilton Park she was Chair of the UK Human Tissue Authority, regulating live organ donation and the use of tissue in research, and also Director of External Affairs for the Medical Research Council, the UK research funder. She was previously Chief Executive of the Association of Medical Research Charities (AMRC), a policy think tank that represents the interests of most of the UK’s best known medical research charities.

Before that she spent 12 years at the BBC, latterly as Chief Operating Officer of BBC Future Media and Technology, managing the business functions of bbc.co.uk including the launch of the iPlayer. She holds a broad range of non-executive roles including Board member for National Savings and Investment, the British Medical Journal and the Health Foundation. Earlier she was Deputy Chair of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, the organisation that regulates assisted reproductive medicine in the UK and advises on embryo research and related bio-ethics issues.

In addition to her non-executive work, in 2007-2008 Sharmila was a World Fellow at Yale University with a specialism in innovation and practical cases in bio-ethics.
Sharmila read Physiological Sciences (Medicine) at the University of Oxford and was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s 2014 Birthday Honours List for services to medical research.