James Mountford MD

James Mountford MD

Health Strategy Officer
Galileo Global Education

Dr James Mountford is Health Strategy Officer for Galileo Global Education. Based in France, Galileo runs a network of universities and colleges internationally. Galileo’s mission is to bring higher-and vocational-education within everyone’s reach, and to equip people to have rewarding careers in areas which matter to society.

James has a medical degree from Oxford and a Master’s in Public Health from Harvard. He worked initially as an NHS doctor, then in consulting. From 2005 to 2007, he was a Commonwealth Fund/Health Foundation Harkness Fellow based at Massachusetts General Hospital, and at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), both in Boston, USA.

James was Director of Quality at UCLPartners and then at the Royal Free London NHS FT, during which he led a multi-year programme build improving quality and value into routine practice. He has also worked centrally in the NHS as Director of National Improvement Strategy for NHS England, and in 2020 during the pandemic was Chief of Quality and Learning at the NHS Nightingale Hospital London, a field ICU hospital treating patients with COVID.

James is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal BMJLeader and an Associate of AQuA, the Advancing Quality Alliance based in North-West England.