Lea Milligan obituary

My friend and colleague Lea Milligan, who has died unexpectedly aged 38, spent his career working for charities. He was passionate about improving the lives of others, and especially about getting people the healthcare they deserved, whether it was helping to deliver surgical care in West Africa through his work at the international development organisation Mercy Ships, or later as the CEO of MQ Mental Health Research, where he facilitated groundbreaking investigations into a variety of conditions and treatments.

Through Mercy Ships, he joined a team that in 2018 co-founded the Harvard Centre for Global Surgery Evaluation, which seeks to increase access to surgical care and inform surgery policy on a global scale. As part of this project, he oversaw the launch of a British Medical Journal supplement on safe surgical access that has already saved countless lives.

The son of Charly Milligan, a shipwright, and Joanna Wisner, a civil servant, Lea was born in Glasgow. The family moved to Joanna’s native Northern Ireland when Lea was still a baby and he went to school at Foyle college in Derry. He turned down a university place in order to volunteer for the organisation YFC (Youth for Christ) in 2003, working with young offenders in prisons. He remained in the charity sector, rising rapidly to assume his first CEO role, with Mercy Ships, at the age of 30. He took on his most recent post, as CEO at MQ, in 2020.

A sports enthusiast, Lea supported Ireland in the rugby, Europe in the golf, and England in the cricket, which he would go and watch at any opportunity (usually accompanied by a pint). He was at home in any situation, conversing with policymakers in Westminster, addressing Oxbridge professors or playing Lego with his two young sons, Jesse and Joel, to whom he was devoted. Lea had a passion for people and for life that was infectious.

The tall Northern Irish man with a booming voice and a quick wit was usually the centre of attention, whether at work, on the golf course, or at home with friends and family in Biggleswade, Bedfordshire. Lea will be remembered as a fun, kind-hearted man, generous with his time and advice, who mentored many of the current and future leaders of the charity sector.

Lea had many mantras that he lived by: “If you have my back, I’ll have yours”, “It’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission” and, perhaps most importantly, “You do you”.

He is survived by his partner, Amba Swain, by Jesse and Joel, the sons from his marriage to Jennie Seager, which ended in divorce, and by his parents and his brother, Andy.