Baroness Joyce Gould (our Patron)
Baroness Joyce Gould of Potternewton became a Life Peer in the House of Lords in 1993. Originally a dispensing chemist, she moved on to a career within the Labour Party as Chief Women’s Officer and Assistant National Agent, to become the Party’s Director of Organisation.
In the House of Lords she was a Deputy Speaker for ten years, and held various positions on Select Committees and House Committees. She was a member of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for HIV/AIDS and chaired the APPG for Sexual and Reproductive Health for over twenty years.
A lifelong feminist and activist for human rights, Joyce has been a member and secretary of several anti-racist, women and civil liberties bodies , and past Chair of the Women’s National Commission and the Independent Advisory Group for Sexual Health and HIV and HIV Sport.
She is a Fellow of the British Association for Sexual Health and HIV (BASHH) and the Faculty for Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare (FSRH), and been awarded Honorary Degrees from Bradford, Birmingham City and Greenwich Universities. Joyce is currently Patron of Yorkshire Mesmac,
President of the Family Planning Association and Patron of the Martin Fisher Foundation.
Gillian Dean
Gillian has been an HIV Consultant in Brighton & Hove since 2001 and Trustee of MFF since the charity was launched in 2015. She has previously worked in London, South Africa, Leeds and Manchester.
She is passionate about increasing opportunities to test for HIV, both in the general population and for vulnerable minority groups. She wholeheartedly believes that service users should always be involved in developing services and innovating.
She co-chairs the Innovations in Testing and Care Implementation Group, the sub-group of the Towards Zero HIV Taskforce. With colleagues she developed a ‘world-first’ digital vending machine for distributing HIV self-tests in the community. She was project lead for the Martin Fisher Foundation 2018 Stigma Campaign and is committed to destigmatising HIV through increasing knowledge and awareness of how stigma affects people.
Adrian Palfreeman
Adrian was a Consultant in Sexual Health and HIV in Leicester until he retired in 2020. He has been working in Leicester on research on Covid 19 since then.
He first met Martin when they were both junior doctors in the 1980s and had worked with him over many years with the British Association for Sexual Health and HIV (BASHH) special interest group on HIV, and subsequently on the BHIVA exec committee.
Jaime Vera
Dr Vera is a Senior Lecturer in HIV Medicine and a Consultant Physician for the Lawson Unit at Brighton and Sussex University Hospital. Dr Vera is also an investigator for the Elton John Centre at Brighton where he is a principal investigator for several HIV clinical studies.
He is the HIV lead physician for the combined elderly, neurology and memory clinics at the Lawson Unit in Brighton, and the research lead for the Martin Fisher Foundation. He sits on the Towards Zero HIV Taskforce and chairs the Research and Education implementation group.
Eileen Nixon
Eileen has worked in the HIV field since 1988 and has worked in palliative care, acute and community settings. She has been a Nurse Consultant in Brighton since 2004. Her clinical work includes working with harder to reach groups of patients and people with complex health needs. She has been involved nationally and internationally in training and development of HIV nursing.
Eileen worked closely with Martin in developing early models of patient representation and she is currently involved in participatory research with patients on service delivery. She completed her PhD in 2014 and co-chairs the Towards Zero Stigma Working Group.
Eileen is committed to changing negative attitudes towards HIV and working with people with HIV to make HIV Stigma a thing of the past.
Colly Fitzpatrick
Colly has worked in the Brighton HIV nursing team for 14 years. He has worked closely with the HIV clinical research team and has been involved in a large number of clinical research studies, including new anti-retroviral medications & studies investigating growing older with HIV, and was the lead research study nurse locally for the first HIV curative trial in the UK. Additionally, Colly was awarded an honorory clinical research fellow by Brighton and Sussex medical school in 2024 for his on-going commitment to research in his field of HIV.
His current role in the Lawson Unit as an HIV nurse specialist places him in an ideal position to ensure the highest quality of HIV care is provided. He believes passionately in the goals of the Martin Fisher Foundation and is committed to working together towards ZERO HIV.
Vikki Pearce
Vikki has worked in the field of sexual health and HIV for over 25 years. Starting as a Health Promotion Specialist in Public Health, she moved into service improvement where she has developed a strong track record on leading change and improvement in HIV and sexual health care. She has worked across the UK and internationally, most recently on a sexual health & HIV project in New Zealand. Passionate about involving service users in improving care, Vikki runs mystery shopper programmes to evaluate services.
Vikki also manages projects at Brighton and Sussex Medical School and is a visiting lecturer on service improvement for the post graduate Commissioning and Leadership programmes.
Steve Fisher
Steve Fisher is a committed and valuable member of the Martin Fisher Foundation’s Board of Trustees, having joined in March 2023. As the brother of the late Professor Martin Fisher, Steve brings a deeply personal connection to the foundation’s mission of eliminating new HIV infections and reducing stigma in Brighton & Hove. Drawing on his extensive experience in governance and development, Steve works alongside colleagues and family to guide the charity with compassion and determination, carrying forward Martin’s vision of dignity, inclusivity, and community‑centred care. He stands as both a guardian of Martin’s legacy and an active leader in shaping the Foundation’s strategic direction toward zero new HIV cases and zero stigma.
