Lesslie Young

Background

About Lesslie Young

Lesslie qualified as a general nurse in 1976 and a midwife in 1978. She was a Charge Nurse for ten years. She then led the introduction of quality assurance systems and performance indicators to hospitals in the public sector in Scotland and the private sector in England. On returning to Scotland Lesslie set up a charity providing a home-based teaching system to children with learning disabilities and their families whilst also working as a partner in a home care business and an occupational health consultancy. Her interest and passion for improving the life of people with epilepsy comes from personal experience. Her daughter has epilepsy and learning disabilities. Lesslie joined Epilepsy Scotland's training department in 2006. She was appointed Chief Executive in 2009. During her tenure Lesslie introduced a new business model enabling the private, public and third sector to work together to provide a service for people with epilepsy in an area where none existed. This model is replicable geographically and in respect of other long term conditions. The introduction of this model resulted in her nomination for Third Sector Director of the Year by the IoD. A particular interest of Lesslie’s is the inadvertent entry of people with epilepsy into the criminal justice system. Certain seizure activity can result in behaviour which can be perceived as criminal in nature; the repercussions of this can have a hugely detrimental impact on the individual. Lesslie has developed a close working relationship with the Judicial Studies Institute, COPFS and Police Scotland. She sits on the Criminal Justice Disability Advisory Group and presents annually at Dame Elish Angiolini’s LLM Advocacy course. Lesslie is a member of the Institute of Directors and the West of Scotland Vistage Group for CEOs- Specialties: Leadership, motivation, communication, government liaison and entrepreneurship.