Dr Sam Roberts is the chief executive of NICE. Before joining NICE in February 2022, Sam was the managing director of health and care at Legal and General, a financial services firm. In this role, she had responsibility for identifying promising areas for investment across health and care. Prior to that, Sam was the first chief executive of the Accelerated Access Collaborative. This is a national umbrella organisation for health innovation, hosted by NHS England and NHS Improvement (NHSEI). She originally trained as a doctor and practiced medicine in South Africa, the UK, and Australia before undertaking an MBA. She then joined McKinsey and Company, where she worked in a wide range of industries before specialising in healthcare. After McKinsey, Sam moved into the NHS as a senior manager at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. She was also a director in UCLPartners, an Academic Health Sciences Centre and Network. Last year, she took on the role of director of innovation, research and life sciences at NHSEI.

Over the last 5 years Sam has become involved in research, working with health economic models to inform evidence-based policy at the London School of Economics. She then moved to the University of Oxford where she undertook a DPhil (Doctor of Philosophy).