- Rebuilt executive leadership capability and organisational accountability
- Strengthened operational performance across clinical and support services
- Improved governance, financial oversight and management reporting
- Enhanced physician engagement, quality focus and patient experience
- Established a sustainable platform for future growth and development
Mark Ian Adams FRSA
Healthcare
businesses,
built and governed.
Chairman · Non-Executive Director · Adviser
A career spent building, fixing and running healthcare businesses across the UK, Europe, the USA and the Gulf, now spent in the boardrooms of the people who run them.
Current appointments
Profile
“After more than forty years working with some of the finest healthcare operators in the UK, the USA and the Middle East, I now concentrate on helping other executive teams succeed and prosper.”
Mark Adams FRSA
Mark is a chief executive, chairman and non-executive director in international healthcare and social care. He has founded businesses from a zero base, led a £900m insurer, run a £145m charity through the pandemic, built a $130m clinic and hospital network in the Gulf, and taken a listed staffing group through turnaround.
He is known for his passion, integrity and innovation: commercial discipline paired with quality-assured governance, and a straight answer when a board needs one.
- Transformational change leadership
- P&L and balance sheet management
- Risk assurance and oversight
- Strategic and innovative planning
- Company performance management
- Stakeholder engagement
- Diplomatic communication
- PR, presentation and public speaking
Boards and advisories
Further current engagements.
Alongside the chairmanships, Mark advises founders and management teams in healthcare businesses across the UK, Europe and the Gulf.
Tern Group
Adviser · UKA London-based platform that trains, certifies and places healthcare professionals from more than a dozen countries into health systems in the UK, Europe and the Gulf.
tern-group.com ↗ Since 2025Valeo Health
Board Member · UAEA Dubai healthcare and wellbeing platform built around care delivered in the home and the community across the GCC.
valeo-health.com ↗ Since 2026Healthmark
Chair, Advisory Board · MaltaPersonalised domiciliary care, nursing and carer staffing across public, private and community settings, with a focus on dignity and client-centred support.
healthmark.com.mt ↗The record
Chief executive roles, and what changed.
A career that runs from a Manchester medical practice consultancy to hospital groups, insurers and charities on three continents.
- Rebuilt strategy, senior team and systems for a sustainable platform
- Sold 23 nursing homes for £21m to concentrate on supported living
- Three charity mergers and two acquisitions added £30m of revenue
- A leading voice for social care through the Covid-19 crisis
- Three-phase strategy from zero base; secured a further $63m for phase two
- Introduced IVF and reproductive medicine with Northwestern Medicine, USA
- Opened a female care centre, an oncology unit and a new Dubai hospital
- Recruited 160 doctors in 18 months
- Led an AED 100m recapitalisation, introducing JP Morgan as strategic investor
- Grew operating units from 18 to 26 in three years
- Revenue from AED 100m to AED 250m; EBITDA from AED 20m to AED 47m
- Managed the £2.6bn acquisition of BMI Hospital Group, 47 hospitals
- Won circa £700m of new NHS business
- Founding member and spokesman for the NHS Partners Network
- Renegotiated £60m of bond debt and led two rights issues
- Closed 60 branches and reduced costs by $25m
- Partnered with the British Olympic Association on its employment network
- Transitioned a 60-year-old mutual into Guardian Royal Exchange, then AXA
- Moved the business from £6m of losses in 1999 to £45m of profit in 2001
- Sold a £70m hospital chain to HCA and acquired BUPA Dental
- Won the financial services customer satisfaction award in 2000
Organisations Mark has led and served
Working with boards
Four ways Mark is engaged.
Chairman
Chairing the board of a healthcare business through growth, investment or a change of ownership, and holding the executive team to a clear plan.
Non-executive director
Independent oversight on quality, risk and performance, drawing on four decades of operating experience in the room where decisions are made.
Mentor
A sounding board for chief executives and founders: confidential, direct, and grounded in having faced the same decisions.
Consultancy
Short-term strategic assignments — market entry, turnaround, change management or the assessment of an opportunity before capital is committed.
Board history
Completed board appointments.
Chairmanships and non-executive seats across private equity, listed and family-owned healthcare businesses, alongside two decades of trusteeship in the not-for-profit sector.
Not for profit
Kingdoms of Care
Vice-Chairman and NED, UK · 2025–2026
Human Health Education and Research Foundation
Chairman · 2020–2024
UK National Care Forum
Non-Executive · 2019–2022
The Countess of Chester NHS Foundation Trust
Non-Executive · 2019–2022
British Quality Foundation
Non-Executive Director and Chairman of Judges · 2001–2008
David Lewis Hospital, Manchester
Trustee, children living with epilepsy · 1998–2008
NSPCC London
Board Member · 2000–2006
Common Purpose International and UK
Trustee · 2003–2008
Recruitment Employers Confederation
Chairman · 2003–2004
In their words
What colleagues say.
One of Mark’s greatest achievements has been his creation of a strong and capable leadership team at every level of the organisation, giving us stability and direction through some very challenging times. It is those challenging times that will be Mark’s greatest legacy: his confident, composed and compassionate leadership of the charity through the worst crisis in our history, Covid-19.Libby RaperChair of the Board of Trustees, Community Integrated Care
He is a highly professional healthcare leader with a vision of not only contributing to the development of healthcare in the UAE but also providing cost-affordable services with high quality care. He is among the few private sector leaders who contributed to the success of the Dubai 2021 healthcare strategy.Laila Al JassmiFounder & CEO, Health Beyond Borders; formerly Dubai Health Authority
Over the past twenty years I have worked in many parts of the world with some of the very best healthcare organisations. I have encountered a small handful of people I would recommend without reservation. Mark is one of those few. He has not only done it all, he has done it effectively and ethically.Brian de FrancescaInternational Healthcare Executive
Published writing
Columns on healthcare in the Gulf.
Mark writes for Gulf Economist on the questions facing healthcare systems in the UAE and the wider GCC. Each column below opens at the publisher.
Press and profile
Selected coverage.
A frequent commentator on healthcare and social care policy, quality and reform.
Pioneering the future of robotic surgery
An interview on surgical robotics, machine learning and how far the region is from autonomous systems in the operating theatre.
Read → BBC BreakfastThe care workforce crisis, live in the studio
Interviewed by Nina Warhurst and Jon Kay on the decision to add care workers to the Shortage Occupation List, and why it would change little on the ground.
Watch → The Guardian, UKCare homes and the second wave
Helene Mulholland reports on Mark’s criticism of the government’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis in care homes.
Read → Community Integrated CareNamed in the Social Care Top 30
Recognition for five years of transformation at the charity, the Unfair To Care report on the workforce crisis, and sector-leading pay for frontline colleagues.
Read → Care Home ProfessionalFive years at Community Integrated Care
Sam Lewis on Mark’s departure from the national social care charity after five years as chief executive.
Read →Contact
If your board has a decision to make, start with a conversation.
Mark is currently based in Dubai and works across the UK, Europe and the GCC. Educated at Ellesmere College, Manchester Business School and Henley Business School. A committed family man, keen golfer and loyal Everton supporter.