Dame Yve Buckland

Dame Yve Buckland was appointed as Pro-Chancellor of Aston University in June 2017.

Yve Buckland started her professional life as an archivist, having completed a history degree and archives training at Leeds and Liverpool Universities.

She went on to have a series of managerial roles in local government, working for Cheshire and Birmingham councils, and then in the early nineties she was appointed by Nottingham City Council as their City Secretary the first female Chief Officer in the Council since its establishment in the 1880s. By 2000 she had achieved her first national role. Yve was appointed by the Government to set up the Health Development Agency, a body which put together the evidence-base for tackling key public health problems such as childhood obesity and smoking-related diseases. She was awarded a DBE by the Queen for her work in this area.

Yve went on to become the Chairman of the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement based at Warwick University, a post she held from 2005 to 2010 and also, between 2005 and 2015, was the Chairman of the Consumer Council for Water. She then, between 2015 and 2020, became the Chairman of the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital in Birmingham, a specialist elective hospital providing healthcare for all types of muscular skeletal disease across the UK.

In December 2020, Yve was appointed as Chair of the newly designated Birmingham and Solihull Integrated Care System (ICS). The ICS includes all health and social care partners, commissioners and the Local Authority, and its purpose is to support partnership and drive improvement.

Yve has been appointed to the Board of the Birmingham Health Partners (BHP), which is a strategic alliance between the University of Birmingham and two NHS Foundation Trusts (Birmingham Women’s and Children’s, and University Hospitals Birmingham) and where members collaborated to bring healthcare innovations through to clinical application

Yve is also the interim Chairman since 2019 of the Dudley group NHS Trust. She is also a member of the Tessa Jowell Foundation.

She has two daughters and is married to Steve Freer.

Yve is also a member of the University Nominations and Governance Committee and the Remuneration and Workforce Strategy Committee.