John Herring

John has over 20 years of experience working as a leader across Public Services. Initially trained as a psychological therapist John went on to set up a drop-in and therapy centre for homeless people in Liverpool in 2000 before moving on to roles with the Department for Work and Pensions and then the NHS leading on the delivery of mental health services within an NHS Trust.

John worked as part of the devolution of Health and Care across Greater Manchester since its inception in 2016 working on a number of areas addressing the leadership and cultural challenges of implementing the GM Mayor’s vision for a One Workforce approach to public services across the Greater Manchester devolved region. John also led on the commitment across Greater Manchester public services in addressing Race Equality across the workforce and commissioned the work to create change in experience and outcome for racially diverse groups in public services – this was the first project of its kind in the UK.

John sits on the Greater Manchester Good Employment Charter Board and the Employer Integration Board (led by Greater Manchester's Mayor) representing Health and Care. The aim of these boards is to spread good employment via a range of key characteristics including and improving technical education pathways into health and care respectively.

Outside of his public service roles John is the Chair of Abandon Normal Devices – an arts charity based in the North of England who use experimental art in unusual places to enable communities to have conversations about difficult issues. John is also a singer songwriter with two albums to his name and has worked in partnership with Unconvention raising awareness of the unique mental health challenges artists experience.