27 Nov On The Sofa With OVID Health: Q&A With Jack Fleming, Account Director
In this Instalment of “On the sofa with OVID health” we sat down OVID Health Account Director, Jack Fleming.
Jack joined OVID back in January 2022 from the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP), and has extensive experience working with clinicians and NHS leaders to develop solutions to complex policy challenges and translating those solutions for wider audiences. He led the production of several RCGP publications and was instrumental in preparing guidance to support the delivery of COVID-19 vaccinations in primary care. Prior to this, Jack worked in charities and membership organisations across the health and higher education sectors.
Read on to hear about Jack’s route into public affairs and policy and how he likes to spend winter evenings!
You have been at OVID for nearly two years now, what has been your favourite thing about working here?
If you’d asked me when I joined, I might well have said Murray – office dogs really do make everything better. But looking back on the last two years, the best thing about my role has been how it has enabled me to try so many new things and really broaden my skills. I came to OVID as a policy wonk, but now I can deliver parliamentary events, write message houses, manage major accounts and support the development of colleagues. And I like to think I can still nerd out about policy detail with the best of them.
People come into our industry through many different routes and backgrounds. Tell us a bit more about your route into public affairs and policy?
I emerged from university with a useless but delightful Medieval History MPhil, and no real sense of what I wanted to do, so I started searching around for anything interesting which would use my “transferable skills”. Having failed to make the cut for the Civil Service Fast Stream, I found myself as an intern in the Policy and Campaigns Team at Sue Ryder (a neurological and end-of-life care charity) and realised that working in policy was fascinating. If I hadn’t got that internship, I might have become a bookseller.
You have a wide breadth of experience across the charity sector, higher education and health policy. Is there one campaign/project that you have worked on previously that you are most proud of?
If I tell you I worked for the Royal College of GPs from 2019 to 2022, you can probably guess where I am going… My job was predominantly workforce policy (how do we stop losing the GPs we have, and ideally, get more of them), but when the pandemic hit, my team found ourselves picking up all sorts of different things. One particularly memorable occasion found me working with several GPs from military backgrounds, developing guidance for the delivery of mass vaccination programmes, and targeting a delivery rate of one patient vaccinated every two minutes.
Having a healthy life-work balance is key. What do you do to keep cool, calm, and collected?
I am a big believer in the four-day working week, which I think will be mainstream within my lifetime. Beyond that, I try to cycle to work at least once a week (7 miles each way), and in my downtime, I love choral music and climbing. A common thread between those is that they force you to focus very much on the present moment – which is great, as I am one of those people who always has a long to do list, and is thinking about what comes next (speaking of which, I must take the dog for a walk…)
As days get shorter and the weather gets chillier, what helps you beat the winter blues?
I’m actually a big fan of winter. I think the introvert in me likes the fact that it is suddenly socially acceptable just to stay in with a good book by the fire – and if one does go out, everywhere is that bit quieter. Also, Advent (the 40 days leading up to Christmas), has got some of the best music written for it.
The holiday countdown is on … how will you be spending the festive season?
Mostly I’ll be singing in far too many concerts and carol services, and then trying to find time to read a few good books. Confession time: I really liked not being able to go anywhere for Christmas during the pandemic. I honestly think I would hibernate if I could.
You mentioned you read for a “self-indulgent” masters in medieval history – who would be your dream historical dinner guest and why?
Eleanor of Aquitaine. Eleanor was smashing the patriarchy long before it was cool. Eleanor (who lived in the twelfth century) married two different Kings in succession, was ruler of about half of France in her own right and spent her later years sorting out the messes left by her sons (most notably King Richard I and King John). Sadly, however, I don’t speak Norman French, so our conversation would be a little thin.