Professor Paul Corrigan is currently adjunct professor of public health at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and of health policy at Imperial College London. For the first 12 years of his working life he taught at Warwick University and the Polytechnic of North London. During this period he taught, researched and wrote about inner city social policy and community development. In 1985 he left academic life and became a senior manager in London local government and in 1997 he started to work as a public services management consultant. From July 2001 he worked as a special adviser to Alan Milburn and John Reid, the then Secretaries of State for Health. At the end of 2005 he became the senior health policy adviser to Prime Minister Tony Blair. Over these six years he was instrumental in developing all the major themes of NHS reform not only in terms of policy levers but also in developing capacity throughout the NHS to use those levers. Since then Paul has been working as a management consultant and an executive coach helping leaders within the NHS and internationally create and develop step changes within their organisation.