Dr Sarah Atayero
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Dr Sarah Atayero
About
Dr Sarah Atayero is a Chartered Clinical Psychologist, workforce transformation consultant, and founder of Together We Move. She operates at the intersection of mental health, racial equity, and organisational leadership.
Together We Move (TWM) is a peer-support programme Sarah built in 2019 after identifying a gap no institution was filling. Black aspiring clinical psychologists, navigating one of the most competitive doctorate admissions processes in the UK (Doctorate in Clinical Psychology; DClinPsy), were doing it largely alone. Six years, six cohorts, and over 50 members later, TWM has achieved a 78% interview-to-offer success rate, compared to a national average that sits far below that for Black applicants. It has operated entirely without formal funding. TWM runs on an "each one teach one" model, meaning each year a new cohort of facilitators, Black aspiring psychologists who have themselves benefited from the programme, is trained by Sarah and supported to lead the next group.
Beyond TWM, Sarah's career spans frontline NHS clinical psychology, corporate change management, and independent consultancy. She works with organisations across the NHS, higher education, and the private sector, designing programmes that build psychologically-informed equitable workplaces. Her practice spans staff wellbeing, diversity and inclusion training, leadership development, and workforce strategy, underpinned by doctoral research examining racial inequity in NHS career trajectories. She has published on decolonising psychology and used Freedom of Information legislation to challenge admissions transparency across 30 DClinPsy programmes, directly influencing how universities recruit.
She doesn't just identify the problem. She builds the infrastructure to solve it.
What’s the most exciting part of being a DiNN One To Watch for you or your organisation?
Being selected as a DiNN One to Watch feels like the right recognition at the right moment. Together We Move has spent six years proving that the model works, entirely through community commitment and without a penny of formal funding. What excites me most is the visibility this brings, not for me personally, but for the programme and the Black aspiring psychologists it exists to serve. When aspiring psychologists see TWM featured on a platform like DiNN, it signals that this work is serious, valued, and here to stay. That matters enormously for recruitment, for credibility with potential partners, and for future funding. The DiNN community is also exactly the network I want to be part of, Black leaders building sustainable, evidence-based solutions to systemic problems. Being part of this community and learning from eachother, is genuinely exciting to me. TWM has always believed there is power in community. It feels right to be finding our own.
