Members Council
The Members Council sits at the heart of the Fellowship and is made up of representatives from around England, Scotland and Wales who represent the branch members alongside two national member representatives. Its role is to be the voice of the membership with trustees and staff.
The Council normally meets three to four times a year and has its own elected chair and vice chair.
Council members
Lorraine Taylor, Chair
Lorraine is a long-standing member who is the current chair of the Members Council. She is responsible for gathering members comments and suggestions which she and her vice chair can then present to the Board for consideration. She believes it is important that the voice of the members is heard by the trustees and tried her best to fulfil this role.
Lorraine trained as a nurse at West Middlesex University Hospital, the last four years at the hospital she worked on the male orthopaedic unit, nursing members of the England rugby team and the British athletics team. After ten years she went into nursing in residential care, running residential homes for the elderly for the last 20 years of her working life before retiring in 2004.
She has been married to Bob for 63 years and has two sons, six grandchildren and three great grandchildren.
Sue Williams - Vice Chair
Sue has been a member of the Fellowship since 2014 as a founder member of the Walsall branch where she is the secretary. She then became a regional representative and is now the vice chair of the Members Council.
Sue started working in the NHS aged 16 years as a cadet nurse and has held various nursing roles specialising in operating theatre nursing since qualifying in 1979. She went on to hold various management roles in Walsall before moving to Derby again holding a wide range of management roles before retiring in 2011.
Sue lives with her husband in Chasetown, Burntwood, Staffordshire. They have one son and two grandsons aged nine and 12 who live close by.
Jane Dubery
Jane joined the Eastbourne and District branch of the Fellowship in 2009 and became a committee member in 2012. Between 2013 and 2024 she took on various jobs, from looking after arranging speakers and being membership secretary to then becoming chair, secretary and also treasurer for a while. In 2024 she decided to “retire” and pass the baton to others.
Before retiring Jane was a biomedical scientist for more than 30 years – firstly at Great Ormond Street Hospital and then at Eastbourne Hospital. For the final years of her working life, she moved to the local mental health Trust where she worked in clinical governance and audit. At home she enjoys cooking and crafting and with her partner Kevin, enjoys cruises particularly to Scandinavia and the Mediterranean.
Barbara Edgley
Barbara has recently taken on the role of member representative for the south west Thames region, having been a member of St. George’s, Merton and Wandsworth branch for the past 13 years where she has been the treasurer since the branch formed in 2012. She regularly contributes to treasurer training and sharing learning about the role throughout the Fellowship. Barbara worked in the NHS for 19 years in administration roles and is also a trustee for the Friends of St. George’s Hospital. Before that she worked in retail and at the Greater London Council’s housing department. She is married to Bruce (currently the branch member secretary) and has a family which includes six grandchildren.
Barbara is an active committee volunteer. She enjoys walking, going to the theatre, gardening, knitting and travelling.
Paula Grant
Information to come
Barbara Kolator
Barbara is a national representative for members who are not part of a branch. She tries to keep in touch with members via a series of zoom meetings on various topics.
Barbara started life in the NHS in the 1970s in microbiology and ended her NHS career as a clinical trials co-ordinator in ophthalmology. Now she has reinvented herself as a gemmologist. Barbara has been a member since 2013 and lives in London.
Judith McMurray
Judith is one of our two national representatives for Scotland as well as the chair of the Scottish Federation of branches. She trained as an enrolled nurse eventually taking over management of the whole of the neurosciences department at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee as clinical nurse manager. She worked for a spell as a senior advisor in HR but missed patient contact so went to infection control as a senior nurse covering Tayside and at the same time completing my Batchelor of Nursing degree alongside her specialist nurse practitioner qualification at Dundee University. She retired in 2012 and joined the NHSRF shortly after. Judith also volunteers in the eye clinic at Ninewells Hospital and is a member of St John Scotland looking after and maintaining public access defibrillators in the city of Dundee. She volunteered at the V&A Museum of Design in Dundee for a few years and is a big supporter of ice hockey.
Janet Martin
Pat Oliver
Pat is the representative for branches in the Oxforda and East Anglia regions. Her role is to keep in contact with the membership, be a source of help with any problems, take forward items that the branches want discussed and generally to offer friendship and keep them informed of what the Fellowship does for individual retirees.
Pat is a retired registered nurse with qualifications in management and marketing and is also a Fellow of the Institute of Decontamination Sciences. Since retiring in 2001 she has held a number of committee roles in her local branch in Northampton where she has now been given honorary membership.
Loreen Smith
Loreen is one of our national member representatives for Scotland, having joined the NHSRF in 2010, where she spent ten years as chair of the Aberdeen branch. She started her nursing career in the NHS in 1956 at the age of 15, working as a nursing cadet in a small cottage hospital in Alston, Cumbria until she was old enough to start her training at 18. She then completed her nurse training at Newcastle General Hospital before training as a midwife and working in the city for 12 years. After a break to bring up her children and five years spent in Australia she moved to Stonehaven in Aberdeenshire, returning to nursing in 1989 and working in the community. In 1994 she graduated from Robert Gordon University with a BA in Community Health Nursing and then enjoyed a variety of roles before she retired in 2003.