Wai-Yin Hatton

Chief Executive of NHS Ayrshire & Arran, Wai-Yin Hatton

In a recent speech, Gordon Brown talked about global London. I think it’s time we started celebrating diversity in Scotland too. Scots are too modest. This is a rich and diverse culture, and we have some of the best brains working here. It’s time we started shouting about it.

I didn’t really know Scotland well when I moved here in 1995 but my parents’ best friends were Scottish, so from an early age I thought of Scots as warm and friendly.

What brought me to Scotland was a fantastic career opportunity: to become the Chief Executive of the then Ayrshire & Arran Health Board. They were actively looking for someone with pioneering ideas, who would bring in improvements and develop new ways of working.

That was an approach that very much appealed to me, and I haven’t been disappointed. I’ve had support, encouragement and backing from the very start. In the nine and a half years I’ve been here, I’ve seen real changes and improvements. The service is getting better for patients. There is never a perfect model but if I’m going to be ill in the UK, I want to be in Ayrshire!

Moving to Scotland has been a success in so many other ways too.

When I told friends that I was moving, some of them thought I wouldn’t be accepted into the community. In fact, I found I was very welcomed and have never felt an outsider, even though we moved to a very small village. On our first night in our new home a neighbour came round with a bottle of homemade wine to welcome us.

Where I live in Ayrshire is fantastic. We’re on the Gulf Stream, so the weather is never that bad. We even have palm trees! Transport infrastructure is great. I do 90% of my travelling from Prestwick International Airport. I can be in Toronto in seven hours.

There are wonderful cultural, sporting and retail facilities in Ayr, Kilmarnock and Irvine, and with the new M77 extension you can be in Glasgow in less than forty minutes by road. And I can get authentic ethnic food whenever I want. What more does anyone need?

I always say that I live in God’s own little paradise in Scotland. Even if the wind is horizontal sometimes.

Wai-Yin Hatton
Wai-Yin Hatton was born in Hong Kong and moved to the UK to study at Durham University. She was appointed Chief Executive of Ayrshire & Arran Health Board in 1995 and became the Chief Executive of the unified NHS Ayrshire & Arran in 2004.