Leadership Team

Chris Yates joined Abingdon Health as CEO in July 2015. Chris had originally co-founded Abingdon Health with Dr Chris Hand and Dr Brett Pollard in 2008 and had been a non-executive of the Company prior to his appointment as CEO. Prior to Abingdon Health, Chris held CFO positions in two medical diagnostic group’s, both AIM-listed, Immunodiagnostic Systems Holdings PLC and Cozart plc.

Melanie is a highly experienced executive with a strong track record of process and business improvement, and has broad experience in managing rapidly growing businesses, fund raisings, acquisitions, and corporate governance. Most recently she was Group Finance Director at GVO-B1 Ltd, and prior to that served as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer at AIM-listed Surgical Innovations Group Plc where she was instrumental in leading the Company to profitability. Melanie holds a BA (Hons) in Accounting and Finance from the Nottingham Trent University.

Olly has a wealth of leadership experience from his successful 17-year career as an Army Officer. Initially training at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Olly commissioned into the Royal Signals where he reached the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Olly led British and Gurkha soldiers in many locations across the world, before culminating his military service in the Ministry of Defence, where he worked closely with US Department of Defense leading a number of special projects.

Post Army, Olly has held senior industry roles at RWE npower and York-based Park Leisure. During his time at Park Leisure, Olly held numerous executive appointments, including Chief Operating Officer.

Leigh Thomas joined Abingdon Health in March 2019 and is responsible for driving the global sales expansion. Leigh brings over 24 years of commercial experience in contract sales and negotiation starting his career with Pearson and latterly spending 16 years in various senior sales roles within BBI Solutions including periods as Sales Director and Chief Commercial Officer. Leigh is a graduate of Cardiff University.

Scott Page joined Abingdon Health as Group Financial Controller in July 2017 with promotion to Finance Director in January 2020. Scott has 10+ years’ experience in finance and controlling roles with medium/large organisations. Prior to joining Abingdon Health Scott spent 6 years at Aptar, a global leading plastics manufacturer where he worked on multiple projects around factory scale and controlling environment as well as upgrading the ERP system.

Michael is responsible for Abingdon Health’s ISO 13485 certified and GMP compliant lateral flow manufacturing activities based at the Group’s York site. These activities comprise the manufacture of the group’s proprietary rapid testing products in the area of hematology oncology as well as a growing number of contract manufacturing partnerships.

Michael has over 25 years’ experiences in operational roles in the healthcare industry at Bristol-Myers Squibb, SSL International, Leica Biosystems (Danaher) and Immunodiagnostic Systems. Michael’s experience includes implementation of lean manufacturing, manufacturing under a GMP compliant Quality systems and ERP implementation.

Nina joined Abingdon Health in 2019 and brought with her over 18 years of experience in the development and production of lateral flow rapid tests. Nina held several senior roles at British Biocell International (now BBI Group) before moving to oversee Abingdon Health’s assay development and technical transfer teams.

Nina has a Masters in Chemistry (MChem) from the University of Exeter.

Amanda has over 20 years’ experience delivering large-scale business transformation programmes and world-wide IT service support, including infrastructure replacement and application rationalisation programmes working for Siemens, TATA and FIAT. Amanda is a certified Six Sigma Black Belt from the American Society of Quality and winner of two IBM Customer Excellent Awards. Amanda has held responsibility in senior IT and business management roles throughout her career in the UK, Europe and US.

Brenda has over 25 years’ experience working in private and public sector organisations operating at senior/board level.  Most recently Brenda has supported several Blue-chip companies to develop strategies designed to drive world-class performance. Leadership and Management development is one of Brenda’s specialisms having established and managed a number of Academies.  Brenda has a Masters Degree in Human Resource Management from the University of Huddersfield.