Team Members of Life On the Level

All Team members are volunteers, who dedicate their time, energy and passion for free to help others.

Rupal Rajani

Rupal puts lots of energy and time into our support group, improving our communications and “making things happen”. She holds the title of Life On The Level “Head of Communications” but will rarely use this, as her warm and winning personalty is all she needs for her natural command of any situation. Rupal is also a Life On The Level “Balance Buddy” – helping our members with her own experiences, tips and support.

As an experienced Broadcast Journalist who has worked for the BBC for 29 years. She has produced and presented various programmes at BBC Leicester, BBC Asian Network and East Midlands Today. Born in Uganda and arrived in the UK when she was only two, Rupal’s documented journey back to her country of birth won Rupal an a Race in the Media award in 2005. She has continued to present various programmes on BBC Radio Leicester and met and interviewed many celebrities in her time.

Around 8 years ago she was diagnosed with Vestibulopathy with Visual Preference. Damage to her inner ear which has affected her balance significantly. She was able to continue work after an absence of around 8 months with the help of the Leicester Balance Clinic and regular vestibular physiotherapy . The condition worsened again in early 2015 which led to her being off work for over two and half years. She works as a freelancer and writes about how the condition has affected her life and hopes to help others through her blog https://rupalrajani.blogspot.com/

Kelly Martin

Kelly is both a member, and a busy Key helper in our support group. Now Officially “Head of Social Media” for our support group, and pretty good with Live streaming video to our FaceBook page at our meetings.

Kelly first developed Vestibular Neuronitis in 2014 during a day trip to London, and it has been a prominent part of her life since. In addition to her balance condition, a key challange she has faced has been with getting other people to understand the nature of her condition and the impact it can have on even completing simple everyday tasks.

As well as using Life on the Level to access support for herself, she became involved with us in order to help increase awareness of balance disorders to the wider audience, and to try limit the negativity and isolation she has experienced since developing Vestibular Neuronitis, for other sufferers of balance conditions. A big motivator for her is to also show others that despite having a balance disorder, you can do whatever you put your mind to and achieve great things. This is no more evident than in her achievement last year of completing the London Marathon where she raised money for The Ménière’s Society – Well Done Kelly !

Away from Life on the Level, you can usually find Kelly at her local parkrun (symptoms permitted of course) or with her husband and cat (the best support system a girl could wish for). She also loves being creative and often has several different craft projects on the go…anything from scrapbooking to dollhouses.

Caren Hodgson

Caren famously came to the aid of our fledgling support group when we were seeking a home for our very first support group meeting. Fixing it for the group, that we could have the most perfect venue ever – being the London Road Balance Clinic in Leicester, where Caren is the practice manager.

From day one Caren has displayed such great passionate support for the group and its members, that it was natural for Caren to become part of our team. Initially carrying the title “Head of Cakes” due to her amazing ability to conjure up the most delicious selection of cakes at every group meeting, but now recently promoted to “Head of planning and Logistics” due to her brilliant organisational and management skills. If the support group needs to achieve something , you can be sure Caren will make it happen.

Prof Andrew Hugill

Andrew is both a member, a past guest speaker and regular contributor to our support group.

Andrew is based at Leicester University, and is the founding Professor of Creative Computing. His personal academic details being : Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy , National Teacher Fellow, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, PhD in Composition, MA in Musical Composition.

You can find out more about Andrew and his work on https://andrewhugill.com/

Andrews work in creating the worlds first balance disorder spectrum can be seen here https://www.balancedisorderspectrum.info/

Andrew gave the group a wonderful insight into his own personal journey with a balance disorder , and how this has impacted upon his professional career and led to many new areas of work and research for him in the field of Balance disorders. Andrew covers some very exciting topics from the newly created first ever Balance Disorder Spectrum, to his ambitions for developing artificial intelligence led diagnosis for all balance disorders. Another exciting project of Andrews is that of the worlds first platform for staging concerts in which aurally diverse musicians perform to an aurally diverse audience. Andrew has composed music for this project and the first performance is later this year. For details on this please click here https://www.auraldiversity.org/ Andrew also introduced some information concerning various aids and services that are of use to those with balance disorder

Andrew also works tirelessly to seek out any gadgets, services or tips that may be of help or beneficial to our members and anyone with a balance disorder see Andrews work here on our web site

Prof Hugills Gadgets https://www.lifeonthelevel.org/category/prof-hugills-gadgets/

Thank you to all of our Team members, they are all very special people despite despite most having serious balance disorders, they find time and energy to help other people