Behind Aliento Studio

Not as a designer looking in from outside, but as someone who has stood in these environments, and later run the strategy behind them.

I spent twenty-five years working across the NHS, beginning as an anaesthetic nurse in operating theatres and recovery units across London and the South East, before moving into senior leadership: patient experience, service redesign, and moving services across sites on large capital projects.

That combination, lived clinical experience and years spent responsible for budgets, workforce and service delivery, is what shapes how I think about design now. I've seen what a poorly considered space costs, in staff strain, in patient discomfort, in the small daily friction that adds up across a shift. I've also seen what changes when a space is genuinely thought through.

Today, I work as a design consultant under Aliento Studio, helping healthcare and wellbeing environments become calmer, more considered spaces, courtyards, breakout spaces, furniture, colour, and outside space where possible, through decisions that enable faster recovery and improve wellbeing for everyone who spends time in them, patients and staff alike.