Meet our Deputy Director, Stephanie Wardle

Kicking off the 2025 Our NPC Team series, we had the pleasure of sitting down with our deputy director, Stephanie Wardle. Stephanie stepped into her role in September 2024, bringing 15+ years invaluable experience working in community services within with our parent trust, Northumbria Healthcare and 3 years in primary care. Here she shares her path to NPC and aspirations for 2025.

I grew up on a farm in rural North Yorkshire and studied languages at University so I suspect my choice of career was a bit unexpected!

After graduating, I moved down to London as it offered more career opportunities and joined a temping agency. My first assignment was as personal assistant in the Department of Health and Social Care working within the national specialist commissioning team. I realised very quickly that healthcare was something that fascinated me and where I wanted to try and build a career. I was appointed to the permanent business manager position, supporting the team to plan and monitor specialist services such as heart and lung transplantation. From there I decided I would apply for the NHS General Management Training Scheme and was thrilled to be accepted onto the scheme back in my beloved North.

The two-year training programme was a challenging but pivotal experience, allowing me to rotate through different NHS organisations and departments in the North East whilst studying a Masters in Health and Public Leadership. I worked across a wide range of specialities and functions delivering operational priorities and developing strategic plans, taking on as many different areas of work and experiences as I could.

I joined Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust in 2010 initially as business manager for child health and later moved into senior management roles in community services, focusing on the vital care that is delivered outside of hospital. In 2019, I had the opportunity to sidestep for two days a week and helped set up the North Shields Primary Care Network (PCN) alongside the Clinical Director. PCNs bring general practitioners together within a specific area to address health inequalities, increase capacity and improve resilience. It was such an interesting time to be involved in primary care as it marked the first major investment in years and it was while working with the PCN that I first properly encountered NPC. Back then, it was a much smaller organisation, but its reputation and innovative approach caught my attention, and it is great to see how far NPC has come as an organisation in such a short time.

In September 2024, I began my role as deputy director at NPC, which has been a learning curve for me personally but an exciting opportunity to help shape the future direction of NPC. My focus is on driving forward NPC’s vision to be the leading at-scale provider of primary care and delivering our operational and strategic priorities. We serve a vast population now across Northumberland and North Tyneside and improving the accessibility and quality of care underpins everything we do.

Day to day, I work closely with our managing director, David Hedgcock and the Clinical Directors and Delivery Team to ensure we use resources efficiently, develop our technology and estate, meet national and local contractual requirements including key performance indicators whilst also delivering ambitious change programmes. No two days are the same. Plans and priorities often have to shift as you would expect in such a fast-paced role, but I always try and focus on how we can make improvements by keeping the needs of staff and patients are at the heart of what we do.

Outside of work, I’m a mum to two kids who love being active and outdoors, so you’ll often find me cheering them on at their latest sporting endeavours or exploring the amazing places the North East has to offer. When I have a bit of downtime, I enjoy squeezing in a yoga class to relax and recharge.

Looking ahead, 2025 is set to be another exciting and busy year for NPC. We’ll celebrate our 10th anniversary, which is a fantastic milestone and is testament to the hard work and dedication of NPC’s pioneers. Thinking about our amazing staff celebration event in January and impressive quality improvement projects our staff have delivered in the last year, it is clear that NPC’s future is really bright and I’m incredibly proud to be part of the next chapter.