Pete Wallroth is the founder and CEO of Mummy’s Star, the UK and Ireland charity supporting women and birthing people diagnosed with cancer during pregnancy, within 12 months after birth, or following pregnancy or baby loss. He founded the charity in 2013 in memory of his late wife, Mair, whose experience shaped its mission: to ensure that no family faces cancer in and around pregnancy alone.

Pete is deeply committed to equity in maternity care, advocating for women and birthing people with cancer to receive the same informed choices during pregnancy as they would without a diagnosis. Through his work with universities, hospitals and cancer centres across the country, he shares case studies and examples of good practice that help improve support for the families Mummy’s Star works with every day.

His work brings together personal experience, frontline charity leadership and cross-sector collaboration, giving him a distinctive perspective on how services can respond more compassionately and consistently to families affected by cancer in and around pregnancy.

Pete is also a strong advocate for partners’ mental health, particularly for those supporting a seriously ill loved one or coping with grief. He challenges assumptions about the role of partners, especially fathers, in pregnancy, care and loss, and highlights the need for their experiences to be recognised as part of family-centred support.

Before founding Mummy’s Star, Pete spent a decade in housing and regeneration, delivering youth, health and environmental projects in some of Greater Manchester’s most deprived communities.

Pete lives with his wife, Nic, and their three children, Martha, Merlin and Flynn. Outside work, he is a keen wild swimmer and walker, and sports fan.

Hibo Wardere is a Somali‑born British author, educator, and internationally recognised specialist in Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). A survivor of type 3 FGM, she has transformed her lived experience into a powerful force for education, safeguarding, and social change.

After arriving in the UK as a refugee from the Somali Civil War, Hibo began her career in education, where sharing her personal story during a training assignment led to her first invitation to speak publicly about FGM. Since then, she has become one of the UK’s leading voices on the subject, delivering training to schools, universities, NHS teams, police forces, and community organisations across the country.

Her book Cut: One Woman’s Fight Against FGM in Britain Today, brought national attention to her work and has been widely praised for its honesty, courage, and clarity. Hibo’s survivor‑led approach has reshaped how professionals understand FGM, placing empathy, cultural insight, and practical safeguarding at the centre of prevention.

Hibo continues to work nationally and internationally as an educator, advisor, and advocate, including through her role with Educate Not Mutilate, where she leads programmes focused on awareness, protection, and community empowerment. Her voice remains instrumental in the global movement to end FGM within this generation.

Maggie has 40 years of clinical nursing and midwifery experience, with over 10 years of senior leadership, service development and transformation experience. Coaching within the NHS since 2016, Maggie left the NHS in 2020 to start her own business as ‘Maggie Kennerley Coaching’.

Maggie has designed and is facilitating the Royal College of Midwives ‘Syndeo’ and ‘Eidos’ Programmes. In addition, she works with people 1:1 offering coaching and mentoring, as well as bespoke design and facilitation of team and leadership development support to staff  in NHS organisations across England.

As an experienced coach and mentor Maggie’s portfolio extends across financial and legal services to lifestyle and well-being, as well as healthcare and armed forces.

Maggie’s passion and empathetic approach creates a supportive and open-minded environment for coaching. In creating a non-judgemental safe space, she can quickly build rapport to allow her clients to identify their key issues, finding solutions through reflection and self-discovery, whilst offering constructive challenge. Her wide experience of working within the NHS gives her situational knowledge however, it is her knowledge of people and human behaviour that underpins her coaching style, focusing on the human under the uniform or role title.

In addition to Maggie’s professional nursing and midwifery qualifications, Maggie was awarded a formal commendation by Warwick Business School for the Postgraduate Award in Strategic Leadership. She is a Master NLP practitioner and hypnosis, and holds an Institute of Leadership and Management Coaching and Mentoring certificate.

Maggie is a Wiley accredited facilitator of  ‘5 Behaviours of a Cohesive Team’ and Everything DISC.

Madhuri is the Outreach Coordinator for South Asian Communities at Sands, the national pregnancy and baby loss charity. Drawing on her own experience of baby loss and associated inequalities, she is passionate about ensuring bereaved families know they are not alone. Madhuri raises awareness of the importance of bereavement support, builds partnerships, and develops initiatives that respond to the needs of South Asian communities. She advocates for change, amplifies the voices of bereaved parents, and works to address inequalities. Madhuri has also played a key role in projects including the Listening Report and the Parent Open Letter to the Government.

Alison is an experienced midwife and women’s health researcher based in The George Institute for Global Health at Imperial College London.  She has a wide range of experience in clinical midwifery and research, leadership and mentorship, as a local RCM branch representative, and as a midwifery expert witness.  Additionally, she has significant experience with global health projects in Sub-Saharan Africa settings and currently runs an ongoing midwifery education workshop programme in Uganda.  Most recently she has run a participatory photography project related to climate change and women’s health in rural Ghana and Uganda.  A current PhD fellow, her research relates to the better inclusion of women in health and research through creative participatory methods of engagement.

Shelly works as a consultant midwife in Powys Teaching Health Board, which is a service providing a unique midwifery-led model of care. Shelly focuses on programmes of work such as supporting care planning for birth at home or in freestanding midwifery units (FMUs) outside of recommended guidance, quality improvement initiatives, promotion of birth within Powys, birth reflections, research, audit and evaluation, education and numerous public health initiatives. Her area of expertise is in relation to community care, continuity and birth outside of obstetric units. Shelly has recently completed a Health and Care Research Wales Emerging Researcher Award, in which she completed activities to prepare for a PhD Fellowship application; her area of interest is intrapartum transfers from home and FMUs. Shelly also led the recent Midwifery Unit Self-Assessment (MUSA) project, which took an all-Wales approach to reviewing midwifery units against the Midwifery Unit Network (MUNet) Standards with the MUNet team in London.

Medbh Hillyard is a newly qualified midwife from Northern Ireland. She completed her midwifery training at Queen’s University Belfast. Medbh has a background in public health with a particular interest in the perinatal period. Prior to coming into midwifery, she completed a PhD which focused on developing a physical activity intervention for women diagnosed with gestational diabetes. Her hope for the future is to combine midwifery research with clinical practice by becoming a clinical academic midwife.

My name is Clare, I am a student midwife just beginning my final year at Queen’s University Belfast. After leaving school in 2018 I completed a degree in psychology and worked for a number of years in mental health. I loved working in this field, but felt a strong pull towards midwifery and embarked on my training in 2024. My midwifery training so far has been intense and demanding in many ways whilst spending time in university, out on placement and working a part time job. It has also been incredibly rewarding and I have learned so much from the fantastic midwives I have been mentored by placement. In June this year I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the ICM 34^th triennial congress in Lisbon as an RCM blogging partner. This was an unforgettable experience that will shape my practice through my career. It encouraged me to think about how we practice and to always strive for better for both women and for midwives. Attending the ICM encouraged attendees to think beyond our own trusts, hospitals and organisations and to think about midwifery on a global level in order to learn from one another. I very much look forward to attending the student conference in Manchester so I can continue to learn from others and continue to be part of the midwifery community.

Liz Glyn-Jones is a Clinical Supervisor for Midwives (CSfM), Perinatal Mental Health Midwife and Research Midwife working in Powys Teaching Health Board, supporting midwives to provide case-loading midwifery care within a continuity model. Liz’s work involves supporting wellbeing of both women and midwives, including providing Birth Reflections sessions through the Birth Trauma service. Liz was recently awarded an RCM Wellbeing of Women grant to better understand transfer to obstetric care following water birth and outcomes for women and their babies (part of the POOL research study). Other interests include: midwives support for physiological birth, personalised care outside of guidelines and midwives’ experiences of supporting those births.

I have been a Maternity Support worker for over 18 years, and for the last 6
years an Infant feeding support worker. I qualified as a Lactation Consultant in 2022 and took the BFI leadership qualification course in 2025. I have also been an RCM Activist for many years with several roles. My main goal as a Lactation consultant is to ensure anyone working in Maternity has the knowledge and confidence to ensure they can provide families with the opportunity to make informed choices around feeding decisions as well as understand what impacts feeding behaviours after birth.

From Shiney Row, Bob is our CEO and takes responsibility for delivering training across the UK

“Fiercely passionate about child loss and very proud to be Chief Executive of this lovely charity supporting families through their darkest days”