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Shilpa Shah,
CEO North East London LPC
Shilpa Shah grew up in East London above a Newsagents which her parents owned. Her parents worked hard to ensure that she and her sister could go to university it was ingrained in her from a young age that education was important, and it would be a good idea to do a vocational degree that would lead to a job straight away and that pharmacy would be a good choice. Luckily, she liked science, so it seemed like a reasonable option to follow.
"Whatever sector of pharmacy you work in, you are making a difference to people’s lives."
A Childhood Rooted in Hard Work and Education
From a young age Shilpa was often identified as a leader. She was manager of the school Tuck Shop and editor of the school newspaper. Journalism was another profession that Shilpa had thought about as she loved reading and writing. Whilst she chose pharmacy, she is grateful that she gets to write articles for various pharmacy publications.
Growing up and working in the family business also helped her understand business finances and how to run a business. Shilpa is a night owl rather than an early bird so the hardest thing growing up was when she had to get up early to do a paper round, when the paper boys/girls didn’t turn up.
From early on she knew that she wanted to be a community pharmacist rather than work in hospital. Carole, a regular customer in her parent’s shop, worked at Boots and she organised work experience for Shilpa which cemented this view. Now, though there are so many more options for pharmacists than there were 25 years ago, but Shilpa’s heart still lies in community pharmacy.
As soon as Shilpa turned 16, she started looking for a weekend job and handed her CV in to the local bookshop and the local pharmacy, the bookshop hired her as the pharmacy didn’t have any vacancies and she worked there for 6 years whilst studying only giving up the job when she started her pre-registration year. Shilpa has a strong work ethic which she attributes to her parents.
The Start of a Leadership Journey
It was during her pre-registration year when she realised that pharmacy leadership within community pharmacy was the route she wanted to pursue. She had a pre-registration tutor, Jim Thomas, who saw potential in Shilpa as a leader so he spent time not only ensuring her clinical knowledge was up to scratch and that she would pass her exam but also that she knew how to run a branch of Boots from merchandising, attending management meetings, to manging rotas, budgets and payroll etc.
Shilpa went on to manage her own Boots store soon after qualifying as a pharmacist and spent 17 years in Boots where she learnt so much about leadership in retail pharmacy. She worked her way up the management ladder starting at a small non-dispensing Boots store in Sainsburys and ending in a top 300 store. Her next 3 years were spent at LloydsPharmacy as an Area Manager where she learnt about supermarket pharmacy and integration of a smaller company into a larger one.
After leaving LloydsPharmacy, Shilpa was not sure what she wanted to do. The role of CEO for Kent LPC kept coming up whilst searching for various roles, but imposter syndrome held her back from applying. Whilst having been a committee member on two LPC’s she didn’t feel confident enough to apply for the CEO role until two colleagues from LloydsPharmcy persuaded her to go for the role. They convinced her that she had nothing to lose from applying. It turned out that Shilpa had found her dream job. She got to help and support 330+ pharmacies be the best that they could be which in turned helped millions of people get the best care from those pharmacies.
A Dynamic and Rewarding Role
"The best part of the role is that every day is different."
One day Shilpa may be in meetings back to back with the ICB regarding various services across NEL and on another she may be presenting at a conference or at a round table event at the House of Commons.
Not many people know exactly what an LPC does. The Local Pharmaceutical Committee (now known as Community Pharmacy Local’s) are the representative body for all pharmacies in a particular geography. They negotiate locally commissioner services and support implementation locally of the national services.
Throughout her career Shilpa has received many accolades and achievements. Growing up, Shilpa saw how much her parents did in the local community and the impact this had on people so supporting communities and charity work has been important to her. In Boots she won a Best of the Best award for the work she did regarding the charities that Boots supported at the time such as Children in Need and Macmillan.
As a Macmillan trained pharmacist Shilpa and the No 7 team visited the local hospital oncology department and ran events supporting women with cancer. Shilpa was able to use her Macmillan training to help them talk about symptoms, side effects of treatment and medications etc. The No 7 team shared make up tips so people could feel better. This was so rewarding. As an LPC CEO both Kent LPC and NEL LPC under her leadership won the ICP award for Best supporting LPC in 2021 and 2023 respectively.
Leadership can be exciting and fun, but it can also be challenging. As a female leader it hasn’t always been easy. Where a man is called assertive, a woman is called bossy. Over the last 25 years Shilpa has learnt to adapt her leadership style when speaking to different people in different organisations, but often what people don’t talk about is adapting to different line managers. Throughout her career, Shilpa has had several different line managers. Some were huge advocates of women and gave her some amazing opportunities, she is thankful for the part they played in helping her get to where she is today.
Shilpa believes that community pharmacy has accelerated more in the last 5 years than the 20 before that. Whilst there is a huge funding issue which cannot be ignored, there is also huge opportunity. Community Pharmacists are more clinical than ever. Independent Prescribing is around the corner and in 2026 all pharmacists will be Independent Prescribers. The services offered in community pharmacy are increasing all the time. When qualifying Shilpa simply dispensed prescriptions and delivered locally commissioned services such as smoking cessation and substance misuse. Then came the introduction of MUR’s and Flu vaccinations. Now there is so much more.
Shilpa’s day starts at 9.30am where she responds to emails and attends various meetings with the ICB, NHS, Local Authorities etc. She is often calling contractors to support them with various queries that they have raised. Shilpa’s team consists of 5 staff members and a committee of 11. Setting up the team to ensure that everyone remains focused on priorities is important. Shilpa attends many conferences and speaks positively about the role of Community Pharmacy.
Balancing a Busy Life
Work life balance is important to Shilpa. Aside from her full time CEO role, Shilpa is a Director of Branch Operations at Samaritans covering London, South and Southeast. This is a senior volunteer role which bridges the gap between the volunteers at Samaritans and the Senior Leadership team.
Shilpa is also a listening volunteer at the Waltham Forest branch. She is also a pharmacist volunteer at Crisis at Christmas which she started 11 years ago. Shilpa soon became a team leader at Crisis and is now a Deputy Healthcare Manager. Shilpa also volunteers at Pharmacist Support. All these voluntary positions take up a lot of her time outside of work but are so rewarding.
Shilpa loves listening to podcasts, some favourites are Tara Humphrey's The Business of Healthcare, Elizabeth Day’s How to fail, Ferne Cotton's Happy Place, Dr. Rangan Chatterjee's Feel Better Live More, and many more. To fit them into her busy schedule she listens to them at a speed of x2. Shilpa loves reading and enjoys a mix of fiction and non-fiction. This year Shilpa has started piano lessons as she wanted to learn something different. She admits she’s not great at relaxing and doing nothing, but she enjoys everything she does.
If someone wanted to choose pharmacy as a career, Shilpa would advise them to be open-minded and experience as much as possible throughout their career. There are so many different sectors where a pharmacist can work, and she would advise someone to try them all until they find the one that gives them the most satisfaction. Ultimately whatever sector of pharmacy you work in you are making a difference to people’s lives and that is the most satisfying part of the job.
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