QNI appoints two new Vice-Presidents

The Queen’s Nursing Institute has announced the appointment of two new Vice-Presidents. The appointments were officially confirmed by Her Majesty the Queen, the charity’s Patron.

The new appointments are Michael Cooper, who has served as a trustee of the charity from 2003 to 2021, and Dame Elizabeth Anionwu, Emeritus Professor of Nursing at the University of West London.

Professor Dame Elizabeth Nneka Anionwu set up the first ever UK sickle cell anaemia and thalassaemia nurse counselling service in Brent in 1979 and her subsequent work in this area has been internationally recognised. It was the first of over 30 centres in the UK using the Brent Centre as a model.

She became a senior lecturer in Community Genetic Counselling at the University College London’s Institute of Child Health. Prior to retirement in 2007, she was Dean of the School of Adult Nursing Studies & Professor of Nursing at University of West London (UWL), before establishing the Mary Seacole Centre for Nursing Practice there.

Dame Elizabeth was Vice-Chairperson of the Mary Seacole Memorial Statue Appeal and is a Life Patron of the Mary Seacole Trust. She became a Dame in 2017 in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List and was awarded a Fellowship of the Queen’s Nursing Institute in October 2017.

Michael Cooper was a trustee from 2003 until 2021 and served as Vice-Chair until 2013. After National Service in the RAF, university in the UK and post-graduate studies in the United States, he had a successful career in the international oil exploration and shipping industries, gaining an MBA in the process.

In the 1990s he fulfilled an ambition to work in the voluntary sector, spending six years as Chief Executive of Diabetes UK. He is a trustee of two other charities, a school governor, a Conservator of Ashdown Forest and spent nine years as a Non-Executive Director of East Sussex, Brighton & Hove Health Authority.