Change Makers returns and we're joined by former Deputy Prime Minister and co-founder of Haymarket, Lord Heseltine. Michael paid a visit to the spectacular Thenford Arboretum and Gardens for this inspiring conversation with a beast of the political jungle. Lord Heseltine remains as sharp today as he was at the dispatch box, even aged 90 and with his famous blonde mane now a snowy white.  From the lemonade stand that made him to how Liverpool changed him, and the legacy he sees for himself, you'll hear honest insights into the life of one of the UK's most consequential public figures in the 20th century. Did he really try to bring down Thatcher? Why does he think Brexit was a century-defining mistake? And is this political titan in fact a more reserved figure than his public persona emits? You can listen to this episode through all your usual podcast platforms, or watch it on our website changemakers.works to see the full beauty of Thenford Gardens and the three surprise guests who tried to disrupt the fun!

Michael is joined by George Clarke, the architect, TV presenter, lecturer and writer, best known for his work with Channel 4, including The Restoration Man and George Clarke's Amazing Spaces.   Growing up on a Sunderland council estate, George was inspired to become an architect, spending summers on building sites with his grandfather.   While studying at Newcastle University School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, and London’s Bartlett School of Architecture, George supported himself by renovating people’s homes in his spare time, before turning his attention to TV and programmes that demonstrate the opportunity of space and the vital importance of the home.

We are excited to bring you the second episode of Journeys of Discovery – Change Makers’ collaborative series with the Royal Philharmonic Orchesta. Over the course of these interviews, Michael explores fundamental questions about what it means to be human that accompany nine incredible concerts. This week, the themes are Freedom and Redemption, and our guest Katy Emck OBE, knows a thing or two about both of those. As Founding Director of Fine Cell Work, Katy speaks to Michael about how she is helping to transform the lives of prisoners and ex-prisoners through needlework. Prisons can be “places of soul, spirit and connection”, says Katy. Rather than carrying out their sentences “full of rage and self hate”, prisoners should be permitted to embark on a journey of “self understanding and self acceptance”. Craftwork in prisons is common, but Katy feels there is something about the intense focus of needlework that provides a much needed “release from the here and now”. Whilst momentarily being transported out of their cell’s confinement, prisoners are also developing a skill, creating something they can be proud of, and generating income. This positions them with the self belief to rebuild meaningful, independent, crime free lives once they have finished their sentences. There is no better depiction of Katy’s belief in the power of freedom and redemption than her favourite song by Nina Simone, ‘I Wish I Knew How it Would Feel to be Free’, which she describes as the ultimate song about freedom, release and the longing we all have to break free of inhibition and to be connected. Through needlework, Fine Cell Work is opening one of the few doors of opportunity available to prisoners – allowing them both a glimpse of freedom, and a chance for redemption.

For our guest this week, there are 10,000 stories behind her message but perhaps above all, one reason to listen. For a message that is determined, optimistic and empowering, that is: “this next decade will be the best of my life yet”.  Charlotte Keenan is the Managing Director of Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Women initiatives – providing women entrepreneurs around the world with business and management education, mentoring and networking, and access to capital.  Alongside its sister programme 10,000 Small Businesses, which is committed to stimulating small business growth, it gives her a ringside seat into the importance of entrepreneurs to the economy and insights into how gloomy times for growth might glow again with the feel good factor of progress and potential realised. 

Cécile Reinaud is the founder of Seraphine, the international maternity label worn by the stars. From Kate Winslet to Kate Hudson to  Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge.  Launched as a single store in 2003, over the next 15 years Cécile scaled the company and grew turnover to £18 million by 2018. Exporting to more than 30 countries around the world and winning two Queens Awards for Enterprise along the way.  After exiting the business last year, Cécile has taken on roles as European Co-Chair of the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women with a mission to empower women to start, grow, and sustain successful businesses. Michael and Cécile are also joined later in the episode by Xavier Mufraggi, CEO of YPO.  YPO is a global leadership community of more than 30,000 CEOs in 142 countries. Its members are those who have achieved significant leadership success at a young age.  Combined, their businesses contribute to over $9 trillion in annual global revenue. YPO supports them by fostering peer learning and inspiration as a community driven by values of open sharing and trust. 

Andy Haldane is the Chief Executive of the RSA: the Royal Society of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce, and the former Chief Economist of the Bank of England.  From 'Chicken Licken' warnings about inflation rates, to predictions of V-shaped recoveries, he's had little trouble in capturing the imagination with economic outlook - having been described by the Spectator as a "brilliant real world observer." Andy joined the RSA in 2021, which he describes as an "enlightenment institution" that has provided him with new tools to tackle cross-sector issues, in order to affect long lasting change. 

Sian Sutherland is the co-founder of A Plastic Planet, the campaign group supporting one single goal: to ignite and inspire the world to turn off the plastic tap. It's a straight talking message that looks to reject the information and greenwashing around plastic, increasing the use of materials that nature can handle, and eliminating those it cant.  Through a three-pronged framework to 'reduce, refill and replace', A Plastic Planet is a call to action to business, media and policy makers to pull the plug on production in an industry which, if it were a country, would be the world's fifth largest polluter.  It's a story of a campaigner for whom the words 'why not' are not in her vocabulary and whose tip for life is: 'We have a duty to be joyful. We are the lucky ones.'

Brett Wigdortz is the founder and CEO of Tiney, the startup offering what it calls an ‘Amazon-type solution for childcare’, which he founded after seeing how difficult it was to find reliable childminding options as a father of three. Before turning his attention to early years education, Brett founded and spent 15 years as the CEO of Teach First, a world renowned charity focused on incentivising new graduates to get into teaching, which he led to become the largest recruiter of graduates in the UK. If there’s a theme here, it’s about backing the next generation, children, citizenship, society and beyond.

Michael Hayman's guest today is Rebecca Ryan, the futurist and founder of Next Generation Consulting, with a mission to help individuals and organisations develop foresight, to create brighter futures. Described as a "human spark plug", Rebecca looks at the signals to establish the future trends of our economies, supporting people to prepare rather than predict. It's about using strategic foresight to prepare for the unknown.  Listen now to hear their discussion about the road ahead, and Rebecca's advice on how to think like a futurist. 

Elisa Moscolin is Executive Vice President of Sustainability for Sage, the integrated accounting, payroll and payment systems market leaders supporting the ambition of the world's entrepreneurs.  With a mission to transform the way people think and work, and enable organisations to thrive, Sage grew from a small business itself to one of the UK's most successful scaled up stories, and a member of the FTSE100 with 11,000 employees around the world.  But if you thought this was where Elisa’s story began, you'd be wrong. It begins with a trip to Ecuador at age 16, which Elisa said changed her life and made sustainability her mission.

Jason Knights is Managing Director of Ground Control, the fast-growth external maintenance business and biodiversity expert committed to enhancing and improving the physical environment.  He recently penned a piece for Fast Company making the $5 trillion case for improving biodiversity and the essential role that businesses can play in addressing the challenge. It's an ambition propelling the rapid growth of Ground Control through an environmentally friendly approach to commercial landscaping and fostering new approaches to protect the natural environment.

Change Makers is delighted to bring you the first episode in a brand new series with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra: Journeys of Discovery. This major new season with a great deal of creative expression, focuses on three core questions: What does it mean to be human? What is our place in the world? What are we dreaming of? All fundamental issues humans have pondered for centuries, and composers have attempted to answer through music.  Over the course of nine conversations, we explore fundamental questions about what it means to be human that accompany nine incredible concerts. The first theme of the season is Awakening. And while Wagner, Grieg and Strauss provide the soundtrack, Michael will be joined by Kamal Ahmed, Co-Founder and Editor-in-chief, The News Movement, to offer the commentary. Listen now to hear Kamal’s words of reflection there from his outstanding memoir, The Life and Times of a Very British Man, and a very personal take on his own journey of discovery. With special thanks to our audio partners at RODE, and to the BBC for providing the soundtrack, Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra. Find out more and book tickets for the RPO’s Journeys of Discovery series at rpo.co.uk/journeys.

After 12 years running Twitter in Europe and YouTube in the UK, Bruce turned to writing and speaking about one of the topics of our time, the modern workplace. His first book, The Joy of Work, was the Sunday Times number one business best seller and draws on the experiences of psychologists, neuroscientists, and workplace experts to understand how we can improve our jobs. It was to go on to inspire the creation of his podcast, Eat, Sleep, Work, Repeat.  Now, his attention is on the topic of resilience in fortitude, and unlocking the secrets of inner strength. Bruce seeks to disprove the myth that only extraordinary people are successful, and demonstrate how we can draw on those around us to empower ourselves and build our inner strength. Never in the history of resilience, has someone become more resilient by being told to be more resilient. Listen now.

“Black economic empowerment relies on thinking bigger than you may have ever imagined before. Much bigger.”  These are the words of Michael’s guest today, Eric Collins, and are contained in his new book, We Don't Need Permission. It's a clarion call to change the world for good, and it's far more than the words of an author; because this is the story of an economic activist. Eric’s career highlights include successfully building the value of companies including AOL, Time Warner and SwiftKey; working on President Obama’s Small Business Administration Council for underserved communities; as well as being named by Powerlist as one of the most influential black people in Britain and by the Financial Times in the UK’s Top 100 BAME leaders.  Now CEO of the London based venture firm Impact X, Eric has built a business with a double bottom line mission to advance progress and social mobility for underrepresented founders, and to generate returns for investors by funding the undiscovered and creating the extraordinary.  If you're looking for the story of business as a force for good, this is it. Listen now. 

It’s 10 years since the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games in London. To celebrate, Change Makers is delighted to welcome one of our greatest ever Olympians, who many say is one of the trailblazers that paved the way for the world class athletes representing Team GB today.   Duncan Goodhew MBE scored gold in the 100 metre breaststroke in the 1980 Moscow Olympics, in a dramatic nail biting finish that went down to the wire. It marked a remarkable transformation for a young man who described himself as “drowning” during his time at school, struggling with the challenges of dyslexia.    In a story of resilience and ambition, Duncan overcame the odds to become one of the most recognisable British sporting figures of the 20th century, and lives by the motto, you're only as good as your worst day.    Listen to his conversation with Michael now. 

Bella Lack is a conservationist, campaigner, writer, filmmaker, board director and foundation ambassador. It's an impressive CV for the most storied of careers, but in Bella's case, she's achieved it all before most people have even got going with their own careers. At only nineteen, Bella has carved out a name for herself as an inspirational and respected environmental campaigner. Her first book, Children of the Anthropocene, tells stories from young people at the heart of the climate crisis, and received plaudits, including the former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, and the legendary environmentalist Jane Goodall, among many others. It's been described by the Green Party MP Caroline Lucas as an inspirational manifesto for change, and the naturist Steve Backshall as a remarkable and important book, adding that Bella can change the world.

Taban Shoresh is founder of the Lotus Flower, the non-profit empowering vulnerable women and girls affected by conflict and humanitarian crises, and an ambassador for the Global Youth Movement, One Young World.  Taban’s remarkable story started in Kurdistan, where her family were amongst the many persecuted by Saddam Hussein’s regime in the Kurdish genocide. Her horrific ordeal saw Taban imprisoned at the age of just four and later, narrowly escaping a mass live burial. Coming to the UK as a refugee in 1988, Taban built her life here, later moving into asset management. But in 2014, amidst the persecution of the Yazidis by Islamic State, she turned her attention to humanitarian aid and peace-building, supporting survivors of genocide, and women and girls displaced by conflict. Listener discretion advised: this week’s episode includes references to challenging issues, including genocide, sexual and domestic abuse.

Michael Hayman welcomes Dr. Grace Lordan; an economist, Professor of Behavioural Science and founding director of The Inclusion Initiative at the London School of Economics. Grace’s research has been conducted throughout her career with a singular objective: to establish why some individuals succeed in life and others do not. She is an expert on the effects of bias discrimination and technology changes and sits on the UK Government Social Mobility Task Force and the Women in Finance Charter’s advisory board. The Inclusion Initiative is a research centre established in 2020, aiming to bring behavioural science insights to firms to allow them to enhance the inclusion of all talent. It also provides studies, measurement frameworks and training to create more inclusive business leaders in the UK. Last year, Grace published Think Big, Take Small Steps and Build the Future You Want, a practical framework for aspiring business leaders on how to use behavioural insights to achieve the future that they seek.

Cheryl Giovannoni is CEO of The Girls Day School Trust (GDST), a cohort of 25 independent schools that encourage girls to learn without limits. With alumni including Olivia Colman, Helena Bonham Carter, Afua Hirsch, Miriam Margolyes, and Mary Beard, among many others, the Trust schools look to develop character beyond curriculum and individual progression for each of its students. The GDST was founded in 1872 by four pioneering women and Suffragettes, Mrs Maria Grey, her sister Miss Emily Shirreff, Lady Stanley of Alderley and Miss Mary Gurney. They believed that girls should be entitled to the same academic education as their brothers. Today, with 19,000 students and almost 4000 staff, the Trust has doubled down on its commitment to work with future generations of women who will change the world for the better, for us all. Cheryl joins Michael on Change Makers to discuss the education landscape in the UK today, the power of learning to shape lives, and leadership lessons from her career in advertising as well as education ahead of her speech at the National Coalition of Girls Schools’ Global Forum in Boston, next week.

Michael speaks to Romi Savova, the founder and CEO of PensionBee, the company bringing pensions into the 21st century. Romi’s story is one that begins in Bulgaria and has taken her to the London Stock Exchange, via South Africa and the US, with stops at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley on the road to entrepreneurial success. Founded in 2015 to provide savers with a low-cost, easy-to-use and transparent pension plan, PensionBee today serves 800,000 customers, helping them to be pension confident and put their money towards a better future.

Michael is joined by Tom McGillycuddy, co-founder of CIRCA5000, describing itself as “the investment platform of the human future.” With a vision of a thriving planet in the year 5000, the company asks us to question whether people will be included in that future. And the answer to a certain human future? Impact investing.  CIRCA5000 offers its customers the chance to invest in the sustainable businesses enriching the planet. Launched in 2019 as tickr, alongside business partner Matt Latham, the company now has more than 150,000 investors and has had its own purposeful credentials recognised through B Corp status.

Joining Michael this week is Greg Hoffman, the legendary former Global Chief Marketing Officer of Nike. During almost 30 years with the company, Greg led three Olympic campaigns and worked with global superstars from LeBron James to Serena Williams. He described his approach to brand building as seeking out the day dreamers and taking them seriously, recognising that visionary ideas come not only from ingenious individuals but from whole cultures of innovation. It’s an approach that drove the ideas behind some of the most famous marketing campaigns in history and a story that is told in Greg’s new book, Emotion By Design, described by BT Sport’s Jake Humphrey as “the ultimate playbook to unleashing creativity.”

In 1947, as the then HRH Princess Elizabeth celebrated her 21st birthday, she said: "I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service." 75 years later – an unprecedented 70 of which have been spent on the throne – Her Majesty has left an indelible mark as the defining figure of the United Kingdom's modern history. In June, we will be celebrating that legacy and a lifetime of service with the Queen's Platinum Jubilee. The centrepiece of this landmark moment is the People's Pageant, described as a "once in a lifetime, awe inspiring spectacle filled with wonder, warmth, wit and wow factor." Rosanna Machado is a specialist in the coordination of large scale events and the CEO of the Queen's Platinum Jubilee pageant. She joins Michael on Change Makers to share how the pageant will bring to life iconic moments from the Queen's reign, as well as bringing people together from all over the country, as it showcases our changing society over the past 70 years.

Michael Hayman’s guest today believes we should all be more curious, not judgmental, and that confidence is silent while insecurities are loud. Advice from Milan Kocic, the head of Sixth Sense at Hexagon, which is on a mission to enable an autonomous and sustainable future.    Milan joins Michael to discuss Sixth Sense, a new open innovation platform where ambitious scaling startups can connect with world class companies to solve some of humanity's biggest challenges – and it's a big opportunity. Hexagon’s technologies are used to manufacture 90% of aircraft, 75% of smartphones and 95% of every automobile produced worldwide. 

Host Michael Hayman is joined by Jan Büchsenschütz, co-founder and CMO of RIIICO, a software and AI business aiming to transform the manufacturing industry by delivering cutting edge interactive digital twins of production assets.    A team of engineers, designers, and inventors of reality simulation software; RIIICO aims to set new standards in computer vision, while creating software that is fun to use and easy to work with. Its technology helps manufacturers to manage their factories and accelerate their digital transformation, and its cutting-edge technology is why it was chosen by Hexagon’s Sixth Sense open innovation platform as one of the members of its inaugural startup cohort. Through Sixth Sense, RIIICO has been provided with the tools to scale and roll out its vision to more companies around the world.

Albert Einstein, Whoopi Goldberg, Keira Knightly, Pablo Picasso, and Sir Richard Branson may be notable in their own right, but they also share the condition of dyslexia. For years it’s been portrayed as an obstacle but for Michael’s guest, Kate Griggs, it presents the opportunity of a superpower for life. Kate is a campaigner and the founder of Made by Dyslexia, a leading voice in global advocacy for what she calls the superpower of dyslexia, now in its fifth year. That means disrupting the world's thinking and campaigning for the unique and important skills of people with dyslexia. It's a challenge that Kate has made a lifelong mission and is driven by her own experiences of growing up and the difference identifying a dyslexian made to her own education. With a TED talk that has garnered almost 400,000 views, and Kate’s latest book, This is Dyslexia, she aims to redefine and reshape how it's shaped our past and how harnessing its powers is vital to our future.

Joining Michael Hayman on Change Makers is Kim Polman, co-founder and chair of Reboot the Future, a fellow of the Aspen Institute and co-founder and chair of the Kilamanjaro Blind Trust.  Reboot the Future is a foundation aimed at transforming how people connect to themselves, each other and the planet. Its work is powered by one golden rule; to treat others and the planet as you would wish to be treated. Kim describes this call to action as the only universal principle the world shares and uses it as a roadmap for the conversations and campaigns that will lead to a more sustainable world.  It is this ethos that inspired the book she co-curated Imaginal Cells: Visions of Transformation, a collection of essays from thought leaders and change agents including, Al Gore, Muhammad Yunus and her husband, Paul Polman.

Joining Michael Hayman on Change Makers is Gina Badenoch, the social entrepreneur with a dream to enable social and economic mobility, to build a more inclusive society.  With a primary focus on fostering equality for the visually impaired, through the companies she has founded – Capaxia and Ojos Que Sienten (Sight of Emotion – she creates experiences that change mindsets, to overcome the prejudices that exist between talent, potential and companies.  It is an approach that has seen Gina recognised as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and an Ashoka Fellow, with a changemaking ethic inspired by her quote for life: “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”

Jenny Costa is the founder and CEO of Rubies in the Rubble, the food business that sees wonder where others see waste. Since launching in 2012, Rubies in the Rubble with Jenny at the helm has become one of the pioneering voices in food sustainability, with an award-winning range of “gooder” condiments created from products that would otherwise go to waste. With a brand that is now stocked nationwide, in just a decade the company has saved more than 350,000 individual pieces of fruit and vegetables from the bin, taking food diamonds in the rough and turning them from rubble into rubies.

Alex Wright is the co-founder of Dash Water; the soft drinks brand doing its bit to cut food waste by saying yes to produce that others say no to. Its mission is to make drinks that taste good while raising awareness about food waste: “one bashed up berry, curly cucumber and lopsided lemonade at a time.” Five years on from its launch, Dash Water is a rising star in the soft drinks industry, sold in more than 6000 UK stores and 20 international markets. But this isn’t just a story of drinks sector disruption, it is an entrepreneurial endeavour with a purposeful heart, driven by wonky fruit and a commitment to change.

Building the operating system behind a better future in healthcare is the mission of our guest today, Melissa Morris, the CEO and Co-Founder of Lantum.  Lantum is a total workforce platform for healthcare organisations, reducing spend and empowering healthcare staff. Through its unique end-to-end platform, it has helped to modernise how healthcare organisations connect with the workforce and fix what Melissa describes as “the broken system” of NHS staffing. Recognised as one of the of the UK’s top female tech leaders and healthtech innovators, this is the story of a founder with a mission to support the NHS and other healthcare organisations find the people they need, when they need them.

Juergen Maier is the former CEO of Siemens UK, the UK Chair of Digital Catapult, Vice Chair of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, and co-founder of vocL, which works with the next generation of business leaders to help them find their voice and enable them to have a more positive impact on society.  Named as the most influential businessperson in North West England, Juergen describes himself as an industrialist, with a purpose to provide leadership, encouragement and critique for UK policies and activities that support green re-industrialisation, particularly in northern regions and in the context of a post-pandemic economic landscape.

Garvita Gulhati is an Ashoka Young Changemaker and founder of the ‘Why Waste?’ campaign. She has lived up to her own quote for life that change starts alone, but happens together, dedicating the prime of her youth to causes that bring people together to make the world a better place for future generations. Having started ‘Why Waste?’ at just 15 years old with the aim of tackling global resource waste, at 22, Garvita is showing no signs of slowing down. She was awarded the ‘Young Social Changemaker of The Year 2021’ and is continuing to build communities and projects focussed on creating systemic change for the better.

Mark Campanale is a leader described as opening “a different front in the fight against global warming.” He is an Ashoka Changemaker and the founder of the Carbon Tracker Initiative, an independent think tank that looks at the impact of clean energy transition and a move away from fossil fuels on the financial markets. The aim is to change how financial analysts and fund managers determine investment risk and mobilise shareholders to align their business priorities with the climate agenda. And as co-founder of Planet Tracker, Mark’s goal is to align capital markets with natural ecological limits to growth, based on his ‘unburnable carbon’ thesis, which identified that up to 80% of proven fossil fuel reserves are effectively unusable, if we are to stay within the planet’s Carbon Budget.

Joining Michael to celebrate International Women’s Day is Jude Kelly CBE, the award-winning theatre director, producer and founder of WOW (Women of the World) Foundation, the global movement that says a gender equal world is desirable, possible and urgently required. Through its flagship WOW festivals as well as year-round events and school programmes, WOW was designed to ensure a high-profile cultural space existed for women's stories to be shared.  Described by the Financial Times as someone who has never changed down a gear in her life, Jude describes that moment in 2010 when WOW was launched as the moment that she “truly came out as a woman” and, in 2018, she chose to step back from her role as Artistic Director of the Southbank Centre to focus on growing this incredible initiative, which is now the world's biggest and most comprehensive festival, celebrating women girls and non-binary people.  With WOW Festival 2022 set to kick off next Friday, Jude joins us to share her journey from artist to activist, the cultural moments and movements that shaped her world view, and the importance of self-identity.

On this week’s Change Makers episode in collaboration with the University of London’s School of Advanced Study, looking at addressing the question, “How has Covid changed us?” host Michael Hayman is joined by Cephas Williams, who describes himself on his website in just one word: human. But one word doesn’t quite do justice to someone with a career as extensive as any campaigner in the UK today. As founder of the Black British Network, he aims to use the collective influence of business leaders across the UK to keep the conversation going around the challenges of systemic racism we see here and around the world, beyond moments of trauma and public traction. And as well as convening and inspiring corporate leaders, Cephas has a track record of impacting the public consciousness with his photography campaigns Portrait of Black Britain and 56 Black Men, and the open letter he penned to his new-born son in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020, ‘Letter to Zion’.

Joining Michael today is Andrew Roughan, the managing director of the innovation centre and co-working space in the heart of East London, Plexal. Part of the Here East campus in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Plexal supercharges collaboration, working with government and the UK’s best and brightest start-ups and scale-ups, to foster a new era of innovation and solve the challenges that matter most to society. Andrew was part of the founding team that secured Here East’s 200-year lease from the London Legacy Development Corporation to transform the former press and broadcast centre at the Olympic Park into an ecosystem and community that delivers on the legacy of the Games. A decade on and the campus is now a home to almost 4,000 people working and studying on-site, changing the face of East London by opening up new opportunities to the wider community.

Hardeep Rai is the founder and director of Kaleidoscope Group, the portfolio of companies that say there should be no barriers to business for those with disabilities. The journey began for Hardeep after his son, Eshan, was born following a number of complications, which led to a severe brain injury, learning difficulties and a physical disability. From a successful career in financial services, Hardeep soon understood no amount of wealth could reverse a disability. But the attitudes from those with wealth to disabled people certainly could be changed. Starting with Kaleidoscope Investments, the fund putting money behind business ideas originating from people with disabilities, Hardeep has helped many disabled entrepreneurs throughout their business life-cycle, with a motto that “integration not discrimination is our motivation.”

“Now the wine served on our tables is our own. The olive oil used to season our salads comes from our own olive groves, and the vegetables cooked by chefs are grown in the vegetable gardens we create on our properties.” The words of Frédéric Biousse and Guillaume Foucher, founders of the European collection of hotels, Les Domaines de Fontenille.  In the last episode of our special Change Makers collaboration with Mr & Mrs Smith, the travel club for hotel lovers, we’re transported to Provence, France where Les Domaines de Fontenille journey began.  This is the story of how a vision to embrace France’s beauty became a group of luxurious homes away from home for visitors to stay local, and reconnect to nature.

Michael and Xochi Birch are the founders of The Battery, described as “simply, San Francisco’s best hotel” by The Telegraph and by Forbes as the city’s “coolest place to stay.” As the founders of the pioneering social networking site, Bebo, Michael and Xochi have more than 15 years of experience in fostering networks, something they have replicated with The Battery’s 5,000 exclusive members. Situated across the top three floors of its eponymous private members’ club, the 14-room hotel is designed for the creative elite of San Francisco to connect, founded with a vision to create a culture where inspiration is embraced, diverse communities come together and egos are checked at the door. But it’s not just about the network they keep. Michael and Xochi created The Battery with the vision that it would become more than a place to eat, drink and socialise and, through Battery Powered, are turning that promise into purpose by opening the door to generosity, community and possibility, by helping members find and fund people and projects that are dedicated to a better world.

Dr Elin Haf Davies is an endurance rower, whose 77-day voyage across the Atlantic was the first in a line of adventures that led to her becoming part of the first all-woman team to row across the Indian Ocean and later, completing a “hat-trick of oceans” by sailing the Pacific. Through these voyages, Elin has raised over £300,000 for causes close to her heart and has been recognised by the Welsh Assembly for “services to Wales”. But with ever the thirst for adventure, Elin has continued to make a difference after gaining her PhD and going onto a successful career as a scientific researcher and founder of healthcare innovation platform Aparito, which she still leads today. It’s a long way from her early career, which began as a Premiership rugby prop forward for Alton and London Wasps, when she also competed for five years at international level for Wales A.  In this conversation with Michael, Elin discusses what has inspired her “squiggly career” and what comes next for someone who is always looking for the next great adventure.

Michael Hayman is joined by Dan Glass, the award winning human rights campaigner, writer and performer, to discuss activism and cultivating curiosity we have about ourselves and the world at large.  With his visionary community based approach that weaves connections between groups that are marginalised in society, Dan's work seeks to raise critical consciousness and creativity so people can read their reality and write their own history.  According to Dan, activism is simply acting upon what you care about, and cultivating curiosity we have about ourselves and the world at large. It's with this spirit that he's led campaigns for climate justice, LGBTQIA rights, HIV awareness, and much more with his exuberant passion for change, described as matched only by the depth of his rage and the warmth of his insight.  

In part two of this series in collaboration with Mr & Mrs Smith, we continue to explore the travel industry’s role in delivering a more sustainable future in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic and the growing climate emergency.  This week Michael travels to Ostuni, a fairy-tale Italian city known for its labyrinth of historical white-washed buildings, as he visits Pascale Lauber and Ulrike Bauschke, Founders of Paragon 700. Both with a background in design, Ulrike and Pascale have painstakingly restored every inch of what was the former 17th century palace, Palazzo Rosso, and turned what had been empty for more than 40 years into one of Italy’s most exciting and dynamic boutique hotel experiences. Described as having a ‘green soul’, developed by the duo’s mantra that green hospitality is a philosophy, not simply a style, this hotel has a very modern mission to be better for the world. From employing local tradespeople, serving home-grown and locally-sourced organic produce, to operating with low emissions energy and working fully plastic free. Listen to how Pascale and Ulrike turned their vision into reality in the latest Change Makers episode. 

Michael welcomes Peter Flavel, the CEO of Coutts – the private bank and wealth manager that describes its clients as the trailblazers, pioneers, disruptors and challengers, who help to shape the fabric of UK society. And alongside that spirit of challenge is over three centuries of tradition, which provide Coutts with a unique perspective on the character of success, and the springboard of Peter’s drive to lead what he has described as “more than a bank.” Under Peter’s leadership since 2016, Coutts has doubled down on the purpose-driven spirit on which it has built its reputation, accelerating its digital capabilities, extending its commitment to entrepreneurs and earlier this year, achieving B Corp certification.

Michael welcomes Jeroo Billimoria, the social entrepreneur, and founder of the One Family Foundation and co-founder of Catalyst 2030. Jeroo’s commitment to family is one that runs deep. After tragically losing her father at a young age, she made a career changing decision to create Childline India Foundation, and devote herself to a life driven by belief in the best of human nature, and the mission that every child can and should be economically empowered. Incredible, impactful and inspiring, this is the story of the determination to make a difference at scale, and the drive to deliver change.

“To control the past they edited history, and to control the future they edited literature." The words of Michael’s guest today, the author Jane Thynne. While they belong to the setting of Jane’s brilliant thriller, Widowland, for many these words have unsettlingly felt closer to the world of facts than they do to fiction. Little wonder that Widowland was chosen by The Times as its 'Book of the Month' adding to acclaim as the "most important feminist novel in decades": an accolade that more than delivers on Jane's passion for historical fiction and telling the stories of the 20th century through the eyes of the women who shaped it.

Host Michael Hayman welcomes Meg Mason, the author of Sorrow and Bliss, the best-selling novel acclaimed as "remarkable," "extraordinary" and containing a "brutal, hilarious and compassionate truth". With fans including The Times, The New York Times and the likes of Gillian Anderson, Pandora Sykes and Sophie Dahl, its protagonist has been compared to Phoebe Waller Bridge's Fleabag. With an option to be adapted for the big screen by Oscar winning US studio New Regency, this is the story of a writer on a journey – one inspired by one of her own favourite novelists Ralph Ellison, who observed that the end is in the beginning and lies far ahead.

Joining Michael today is the polar explorer and campaigner, Ben Saunders, whose goal is to restore the very Earth he has explored from head to tail. Having skied for more than 6000km on polar expeditions over the last 20 years, including a solo skiing expedition to the North Pole in 2001, Ben holds the record for the longest human-powered Polar journey in history, and the longest solo Arctic journey by a Briton. Describing himself as “an entrepreneur, writer, cyclist, runner, weightlifter, dog-lover and husband,” this is the story of a jack of all trades – and master of all too! – with lessons about what it takes to overcome adversity, remain focused and achieve your goals.

We’re delighted to welcome Christina Bengtsson, the author and global thought leader on a mission to put society’s focus on the art of focus itself. She has been described as “the female version of James Bond. Moving on purpose with precision, charisma and grace." And for good reason. As a world champion in precision shooting and a former military officer, Christina knows just what it takes to leverage a focused mindset to achieve success. Today, Christina uses those attributes to focus on unlocking people’s full potential.

Joining Change Makers today is Guy Schanschieff, co-founder and managing director of the reusable nappy company, Bambino Mio. With 90 billion disposable nappies thrown away worldwide each year, this is an urgent environmental challenge that Guy, and his wife and co-founder Jo have used their entrepreneurial talents and flair to address, with a mission to create reusables that are better for your pocket and our planet. Since, the business has become the world's most widely used reusable nappy brand distributed to more than 50 countries. 

Michael is joined by Justine Roberts, the CEO and founder of Mumsnet – the website launched to help parents find and share information and advice. The site has gone on to become a popular forum, hosting over 10 million unique users per month. contributors have included Jamie Oliver, Dawn French, Gok Wan, Clare Balding and even Hillary Clinton. Little wonder then that former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, described Mumsnet as a “great British institution”.

The Change Makers collaborative series with University of London brings you Roly Keating, Chief Executive, British Library. Roly shares how the iconic institution has developed in a decade – from maintaining a safe space for gaining knowledge to digitising archives in the pandemic.

Thea Maria Carlson is an earth steward, farmer, facilitator, community weaver, speaker, writer, and co-creator. Thea collaborates with organisations, individuals, and communities at the intersections of food and agriculture, environmental stewardship, social justice, and economies of care. Thea offers skilled and multifaceted consulting, advising, facilitation, organisational development, speaking, writing, community weaving, and co-creation.

Credited as the new face of American fashion by Vogue at the start of her career, Arizona Muse first gained exposure in 2010 when she was chosen to open and close Prada’s Spring-Summer 2011 catwalk show in Milan. She has since fronted advertising campaigns for the likes of Chloé, Karl Lagerfeld and Louis Vuitton, and has been in cast in shows for Burberry, Chanel and Dior. She was signed as the face of Prada in early 2011 and shortly after, the face of Yves Saint Laurent. She's since covered every major Vogue, including its American and British editions. Recently, Arizona has dedicated her efforts towards sustainability in fashion and is an advocate for better environmental practices, urging the fashion industry to examine its relationship with the world. She has protested alongside Extinction Rebellion and has adopted the role as a sustainability-consultant for fashion companies who wish to lower their environmental impact. Arizona sits on the board of The Sustainable Angle, a non-profit organisation that initiates and supports projects that minimise the environmental impact of the fashion industry, and contributes to Fashion Revolution, a team of business leaders, policymakers and brands who work together towards radically changing the way clothes are sourced, produced, and consumed.

Joining Michael today is Joseph Foster, co-founder of Reebok, to tell us the story of how the brand he co-founded with his brother started with a brilliant idea and turned into a billion-dollar sportswear legend and global icon. The entrepreneur who describes himself simply as “the shoe maker”, also the title of his new book about his role as co-founder, opens up on how a small family shoe making business led to a brand now recognised as one of the defining British manufacturing success stories of the 20th century.

Joining Michael is Galahad Clark, from the family who brought us Clarks, the British shoe retailer founded in 1825. Galahad shares why he founded Vivobarefoot, the shoe brand that allows wearers the freedom and flexibility to move as if they were indeed barefoot. As the seventh generation of the Clark shoemaking dynasty, Galahad looks to live up to his family legacy not only in the products that he makes, but in the impact he wants his business to have on the world.   Passionate about the health of people and the planet, Galahad is calling for a change to come in the shoe industry, disrupting how we think about what we put on our feet: where our shoes come from and the damage they can cause to us and the environment.  

At a time when “trusted, impartial news has never been more vital,” Kamal Ahmed says he is taking lessons from almost 30 years in the newsroom to the News Movement, where he is on a mission to address a “global crisis of information”, aiming to deliver objective and trustworthy information for a digital generation. As editor-in-chief of the News Movement, the former editorial director of BBC News is aiming to sew the seams of unity back into public discourse, and it also informed his own book, The Life and Times of a Very British Man, a memoir about the history of and indeed resistance to immigration in the UK, and a celebration of the role immigrants play in our society. This month, the book was also included in Trevor Phillips’ Black History Month guide to the best books and films to read and watch to understand the black experience.

Michael is joined by Anil Sebastian, the artist, musician and creative director of specialist sonic branding agency DLMDD. As co-founder of the world-leading alternative choir London Contemporary Voices, Anil has fostered a creative, safe space for transgender and gender non-conforming singers to use their voices and spread the joy of music. And it is the act of spreading joy that drives Anil in their work and life, inspired by their own quote: “Joy is an act of resistance.” From resisting the “imposter syndrome” they say they live with each day, to the challenges that come with their own identity as mixed race, queer and non-binary, Anil has turned all of life’s barriers into a joyous and completely unique body of work, which seems them recognised as one of the most exciting artists in the UK today.

Michael is joined by Maryam Meddin, founder of The Soke: a new mental health concept integrating mental healthcare, wellbeing, support and performance coaching. Launched last year at the height of the pandemic, Maryam has seen first-hand the impact of COVID disruption on workplace well-being: both the good and the bad. From the isolation of lockdown to the new-found flexibility of remote working, Maryam has helped to identify the challenges and opportunities that come from our new normal, while working to shift the narrative from “it’s OK to talk” to “it’s healthy to talk.” With the values of “responsibility, integrity and creativity” at the heart of her business, and an extraordinary story of personal challenge that came from fleeing war-torn Iran to come to the UK as a child, this is the story of a founder with a view on what it takes to make a better life: both for yourself and those around you.

In this Change Makers series in collaboration with Mr & Mrs Smith, we explore the travel industry’s role in delivering a more sustainable future in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic and the growing climate emergency. This week Michael Hayman is joined by Wilbert Das and Bob Shevlin, Founders of Uxua Casa. The hotel and spa is set right on the Unesco-protected Quadrado, making it an easy stroll to the artisans’ workshops and restaurants lining the grassy town square. But the Unesco site isn’t the only one under protection: the clutch of casas were born in 2006, carved out of a collection of original fishermen’s houses and inspired by authentic craftsmanship which the founders strive to preserve.

Bob Wigley spent his banking career with Morgan Grenfell and Merrill Lynch and was EMEA Chairman of Merrill Lynch between 2003 and 2009. Between 2006 and 2009 he was a member of the Court of the Bank of England. He is a past member of the Takeover Panel, the FSA’s Senior Practitioners Panel and was the FSA’s nominated representative on the Council of European Securities Regulators Market Consultation Panel. He led a group of industry Chairman and Chief Executives to author a report on the competitiveness of London as a global financial centre “London, Winning in the Decade Ahead” and chaired the Green Investment Bank Commission. Since leaving banking, he has chaired and invested in a number of Fintech companies. Bob was instrumental in the creation of TheCityUK and has been on its advisory board since its formation.

In this Change Makers series in collaboration with Mr & Mrs Smith, we explore the travel industry’s role in delivering a more sustainable future in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic and the growing climate emergency.  This week Michael Hayman is joined by Sonu Shivdasani and Eva Malmström Shivdasani, founders of Soneva. A connection to the Maldives that started with a trip in 1995 for Eva, where she visualised potential for a new way of life. Over 25 years later, Eva and Sonu have created three stunning Soneva hotels which have responsibility, sustainability and luxury at their core.   Think of Soneva’s journey as an onion, says Sonu, with endless layers of discovery, and this is what you can expect during a stay at any one of the hotels. There’s always something new to discover about how Soneva is making luxury sustainable – even when you think you’ve done everything possible. From recycling glass on site, to preserving local environments (particularly fragile marine ecosystems), to sourcing produce from local farmers and fishermen. Listen to how they have perfected the practice of the Slowlife (sustainable, local, organic, wellness, learning, inspired, fun, experiences) philosophy.

This week, Michael pays a virtual visit to Count Benedikt and Donna Nencia Bolza, founders of Hotel Castello di Reschio. A castello that once lay in ruin, Reschio is a passion project that defies convention to bring history to life. The couple share how their devotion to restoring the grounds, and acute attention to detail, has created architecturally awesome sights inside the castle and out. Alongside beautifully bespoke interiors, the grounds have seen native plants and flowers flourish, and nightingales, bees and butterflies return in their droves through smart landscaping of olive groves, vineyards, lakes – all set against the backdrop of sublime Umbrian hills. Years in the making – and centuries in the shaping – this old Etruscan stronghold showcases hospitality of the highest order. Listen to this story of how a deep respect for the past has helped create the most stunning of sustainable futures. 

Thanks to all our listeners for all of your support throughout our first 100 episodes. It has been an absolute pleasure for us to provide a platform for people with a passion to share their inspirational ideas and insights, in 100 interviews that we hope have provoked thoughts about the world and how we can all make a difference within it. This week, we’ll be sharing a special playlist in collaboration with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra to celebrate this milestone, as well as recognising the RPO’s own milestone: its 75th anniversary, which it celebrated last week. Once again, thank you for listening to Change Makers and if you enjoy the podcast, please give us a rating and a review, and follow us on Twitter @ChangeMakers_SH, and on Instagram @changemakers.works

Magnify Impact's aim is to focus the world’s abundant resources for good. It puts the power of purpose to work in companies, transforming cultures and the community. Since 2018, it has helped create social impact to supercharge profitability, guiding business leaders to put purpose into action, creating real, life-changing benefits for the company and society.  'Chief Troublemakers' Maggie Miller has developed social impact solutions with hundreds of company leaders globally. Previously, Maggie founded an international nonprofit organization to provide microcredit loans for thousands of women in Peru.  'Chief Optimist' Hannah Nokes helps business leaders turn “love into action,” designing social impact strategies to drive profitability. Hannah has led corporate social responsibility for global corporations and founded an impact collaborative of companies in Austin, Texas.  In September 2021, Maggie and Hannah published their first book, Magnify Your Impact: Powering Profit with Purpose.

This week Michael Hayman is joined by Robin and Judy Hutson, founders of the Pig hotels. What began with a charmingly revamped estate in the New Forest in 2011 has grown into a litter of the UK’s most sought-after stays, each characterised by unique and eclectic interiors and sprawling kitchen-gardens, where most things on the now-famous 25-mile menu are grown.     Situated in some of England’s most scenic southern locations, and with an ever-growing list of awards for innovation, sustainability and décor, the Pig hotels truly are among the best in the business. Listen as Robin and Judy share how they have lived in harmony with nature, invested back into local communities and incorporated strong family values into their hotels – and how all that has enhanced the guest experience. 

This week Change Makers in collaboration with the University of London brings you Dr Eliza Filby, Generations Expert & Historian of Contemporary Values. In this special series with global leaders, writers, and campaigners, we will be reflecting on more than a year of challenge and change as we ask the question: how has COVID changed us? A generations expert and historian in contemporary values, Dr Eliza specialises in ‘Generational Intelligence’, enabling companies to understand generational shifts within politics, society, and the workplace, while looking at how demographic disruption is transforming the world as we know it. From Baby Boomers to Generation Alpha, Dr Eliza examines how the traditional lifecycle is being reordered and remade in the 21st Century: from the impact of us living longer, to what we can expect in the post-pandemic age.

Over the course of this new Change Makers series in collaboration with Mr & Mrs Smith, the travel club for hotel lovers, we explore the travel industry’s role in delivering a more sustainable future in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic and the growing climate emergency. Each week, host Michael Hayman virtually visits a double act behind one the most innovative and sustainable hotels from Mr & Mrs Smith’s global collection to speak about the challenges they face and hopes for the future. From creating in Britain to restoring in Italy, connecting to nature in the Maldives and local communities in Brazil; these double acts have curated their own paths, harnessing the joy of travel with the responsibility for protecting our planet – and inspiring others to follow suit. But to begin the journey around the world in eight episodes, Michael pays a virtual visit to the founders of Mr & Mrs Smith themselves, James and Tamara Lohan. They discuss the importance of the people and the stories behind the hotels, looking at the partnerships that built them and the ethos that drives them.

Gavin Esler is an award-winning television and radio broadcaster, journalist and author. His 40-year career at the BBC included a decade as one of the anchors of its flagship news and current affairs programme Newsnight, prompting the Financial Times to note that Gavin “understands the political beast better than anyone.” It is an understanding that has focused his thinking on the power of storytelling in public life: the who we are and the where are we going. And it is his ability to tell these stories and provide answers to these questions that has seen him interview the likes of Margaret Thatcher and Bill Clinton, address challenges of Brexit and the USA’s political discontent, and more recently turn his abilities to a successful collection of novels, focusing on world leaders’ tips for getting to the top.

Leena Nair is the Chief Human Resources Officer for the global giant Unilever. Her work sits at the heart of a team of more than 150,000 people, serving two and a half billion customers – one of the many reasons why she speaks of a personal purpose to “ignite the human spark for a better business and better world”.   And igniting a spark is something she knows a good deal about. She has been described as a ‘leader of many firsts’ not least since she was appointed the first female, first Asian and youngest ever Chief Human Resources Officer at Unilever.   Of this experience she says, “In every job I've done, I've been the first woman ever to do the job, be in the night shifts or the production work. You've got to be courageous, not only embrace the trailblazing, but also bring your own take on it.”

Joining Michael is US entrepreneur, Phil Libin, Co-Founder & CEO of mmhmm. Phil was born in the USSR and lives in the USA, completing the story of arrivals and departures from Leningrad to the Bronx to Arkansas. From going on to capitalise on the smartphone revolution as CEO of the software sensation Evernote to powering better productivity in the pandemic, this is the story of someone who has followed his own path.    Phil is forging a new way forward for the future of work with his venture which aims to break out of, what he calls, the narrow overheated bubble that is built up in the San Francisco Bay Area. In this conversation he asks why anyone would be asking how to get back, when back wasn't amazing. He’s on a mission to bring optimism to his workforce, and shares how he has been inspired by Star Trek to build a better world. It's perhaps for this reason that business author Tim Ferriss described Phil as an “awesome guy, hilarious and just amazing, amazing.” 

The Queen appointed Sir Ken Olisa OBE as Her Majesty’s Lord-Lieutenant of Greater London in 2015. Sir Ken is a businessman and philanthropist, the founder of two technology merchant banks and the first British-born black man to serve as a Director of a FTSE-100 company. An advocate of social inclusion, he is Chair of Thames Reach, a charity working to shelter and resettle the homeless; Chair of the Shaw Trust, supporting the disabled and chronically unemployed to find work; founding Chair of the Powerlist Foundation, supporting future leaders from Black and Minority Ethnic and disadvantaged backgrounds; a former Governor of the Peabody Trust; and a former Non Executive Director of the West Lambeth NHS Trust. He was awarded a knighthood in the 2018 New Year’s Honours List. In 2019 he became President of London Youth, a member network of 450+ community youth organisations working across London, supporting tens of thousands of young Londoners each year.

Honoured by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader, David Jones is an industry visionary, proponent of corporate responsibility and social change, and The Guardian’s 2013 Sustainable Business Leader. David was the youngest global CEO in the history of advertising, heading both Havas and Havas Worldwide, and the only British CEO of a French publicly traded company. David is co-founder of One Young World, described by CNN as the “Young Davos”, a non-profit organisation that provides brilliant young people with a global platform through which to effect positive change. He was the driving force behind Kofi Annan’s TckTckTck Campaign for Climate Justice, one of the most successful cause campaigns in history, with 18 million people signing on as climate allies. David is the creator of the Social Business Idea® and author of best-selling book Who Cares Wins: Why Good Business Is Better Business, published in 2011. In 2015, he created You & Mr Jones to harness the power of technology to improve marketing, to help clients do their marketing better, faster and cheaper. 

Listed as one of the UK's Top Most Influential Women in Tech & an international multi-award winner for her services to Diversity & Inclusion in industry, Sheree Atcheson is a Global Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Senior Executive; Advisory Board Member, Women Who Code; and a contributor for Forbes. She is the Author of Demanding More, a book which aims to teach readers about how deliberate exclusion has been in systems and society, so we can be purposefully and deliberately inclusive moving forward. Sheree is a Global Diversity & Inclusion Senior Executive at Valtech, having previously worked at Deloitte, Monzo and Peakon. She has worked in many regions developing tailored, data-driven DE&I strategies, with clear goals and lines of accountability to embed success and inclusion that scales. As a passionate advocate for gaining/retaining women in the industry, in 2013, she launched & led the award-winning U.K. expansion of Women Who Code, the world's largest non-profit globally dedicated to women in tech, where she now sits as an Advisory Board Member.

Kenneth Cukier is senior editor and the host of the weekly podcast on technology, Babbage. He is the co-author of the New York Times Bestselling book Big Data with Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, which was translated into over 20 languages. In 2021, he co-authored Framers: Human Advantage in an Age of Technology and Turmoil, alongside Mayer-Schönberger and Francis de Vericourt. Previously Kenn was the technology editor of the Wall Street Journal Asia in Hong Kong and worked at the International Herald Tribune in Paris. In 2002-04 he was a research fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Kenn is a board director of Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International Affairs), a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and an Associate Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School.

Gordon Brown is the United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education and former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He served as Prime Minister and Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 to 2010 and is widely credited with preventing a second Great Depression through his stewardship of the 2009 London G20 summit. He was one of the first leaders during the global crisis to initiate calls for global financial action, while introducing a range of rescue measures in the UK. Previously, he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1997 to 2007, making him the longest-serving Chancellor in modern history. During ten years at the Treasury, Gordon oversaw many of Labour’s flagship policies and achievements, including the Minimum Wage, Sure Start, the Winter Fuel Allowance, the Child Trust Fund, the Child Tax Credit and paid paternity leave. Gordon served as the Labour Member of Parliament for Dunfermline East (1983- 2005), and for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (2005-2015) in his home area of Fife in Scotland. He is a passionate advocate for global action to ensure education for all. In his role as UN Special Envoy for Global Education, he works closely with key partners to help galvanise support for the new International Financing Facility for Education that proposes a groundbreaking way to finance education for every child. 

Mary Ann Sieghart is an experienced journalist, broadcaster and author. Today, she makes programmes for BBC Radio 4, is a Visiting Professor at King’s College London and is a trustee of a large portfolio of organisations and charities. She spent 2018-19 as a Visiting Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, where she researched her latest book, The Authority Gap, on why women are taken less seriously than men. From 2010 to 2012, she wrote a weekly column in The Independent about politics, economics and social affairs, which followed two years as presenter of Newshour, the BBC World Service’s flagship news and current affairs programme. Between 1988 and 2007, Mary Ann was Assistant Editor of The Times, its chief political-leader writer from 1992 to 1999 and acting editor of the Monday edition of the paper from 1997 to 1999. She was a political and social affairs columnist both on the Comment page of the main paper and in the Times 2 section. Mary Ann has extensive TV and radio experience, both in presenting the likes of Newshour, The Big Picture and The World This Week and in appearing as a guest on Question Time, Today, Newsnight, Channel 4 News, The Andrew Marr Show, The Daily Politics and more. Before joining The Times, Mary Ann was political correspondent of The Economist, City Editor of Today newspaper and a Lex columnist and Eurobond correspondent at the Financial Times. 

Richard Curtis is a film writer and director, responsible for some of Britain's best-loved romantic comedy films, such as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones’ Diary, Love Actually, About Time and Yesterday. He is also known for the drama War Horse and as co-writer of the sitcoms Blackadder, Mr Bean and The Vicar of Dibley. His early career saw him write material for the BBC's Not the Nine O'Clock News and ITV's Spitting Image. In 2007, he was awarded the BAFTA Academy Fellowship. In the other half of Richard’s life he is co-founder of the charities Make Poverty History and Comic Relief. He created the fundraising event Red Nose Day, in which he co-produced 16 live nights for the BBC since 1988. The charity has raised over £1.3 Billion for projects in the UK and internationally during that time. In 2015, he helped to bring Red Nose Day to the United States. In 2015 he helped found Project Everyone to work to make the Global Goals famous and effective – and is now a UN Advocate for the SDGs. He was also co-founder of the 2005 Live 8 concerts, which pressurised G8 leaders to provide more overseas aid to end poverty in Africa. His most recent campaigning role is as co-founder of Make My Money Matter, a people-powered campaign fighting for a world where we all know where our pension money goes, and where we can demand it’s invested to build a better future.

Deborah Williams founded The Women's Association in 2018, after being "awakened" by the realisation that being a woman in the world and especially in the corporate landscape comes with many challenges. This realisation came when she embarked on a journey of discovery for her dissertation, which explored the stories of women in leadership across industries. As Deborah embarked on her journey to create change, she found that she was personally burdened by the historically imposed expectations and stereotypes that dictated what was acceptable for her as a women trying to navigate her journey. This led her to want to create an organisation that works to change systems, cultures and mindsets that make women and girls feel like they have to be anything other than their authentic selves at work and in the wider world. Her hope is that through The Women's Association, girls can be given the information and support to dream, while dismantling the barriers that could prohibit them from making their dreams a reality. In order to do this, The Women's Association is working on educating and inspiring young girls, whilst building a strong community of women that can support them through their journey. 

Charley Boorman is a modern-day adventurer, travel writer and entertainer. His charismatic “let’s just do it” approach to challenges has won him over to a massive TV and literary audience. His acting career started as a child, appearing in the film Deliverance in 1972, with others following. In 1997 he met Ewan McGregor the star of Train Spotting, Star Wars and Moulin Rouge amongst others, who became his co-adventurer and co-star in the Long Way Round – a motorcycle trip from London to New York via Europe and Asia, which became an iconic television series, book and DVD – and its follow-up Long Way Down, from John O’Groats to Cape Town. Through the series, he became involved with UNICEF as an ambassador, and has visited many of their projects during his travels. In 2006, Charley competed in the famous Dakar rally, which was filmed and  became the Race to Dakar TV series. After his friendship with Ewan drifted in the years following Long Way Down, two serious motorbike accidents in 2016 brought the two back together, leading to a third epic road trip filmed in 2019 and released in 2020, Long Way Up – travelling from the southernmost city in Argentina to Los Angeles.

Nick English co-founded the award winning British luxury watch brand, Bremont, manufacturing mechanical watches in Henley-on-Thames, England alongside his brother Giles. The brand was founded in 2002 and after five years in development the first watch hit the market in 2007 and has made a substantial impact on the watch industry in a short period of time. Passion and dedication has grown Bremont to be in the top 10 chronometer producers in the world with global retail coverage. The brothers' unique approach to product and marketing including partnerships with Martin Baker, Boeing & Jaguar have built a strong business and brought watch making back home to Britain. The brand remains true to its original principles of: aviation and military, British engineering and adventure.

Three times Nobel Peace Prize nominee for her work with Oxford Research Group to develop effective dialogue between nuclear weapons policy-makers worldwide and their critics. She now leads The Business Plan for Peace to help prevent violent conflict and build sustainable peace throughout the world, because it is possible, see three minute video ; this work is based on her latest books The Business Plan for Peace: Building a World Without War (2017) and The Mighty Heart: How to Transform Conflict (2020), which is now an on-line course. Scilla founded Peace Direct in 2002 to fund, promote and learn from local peace-builders in conflict areas: Peace Direct was voted ‘Best New Charity’ in 2005. She was awarded the Niwano Peace Prize in 2003, the Luxembourg Peace Prize in 2020, and was adviser to Peter Gabriel, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Sir Richard Branson in setting up ‘The Elders’. Scilla co-founded Rising Women Rising World in 2013, and FemmeQ in 2016 to establish the qualities of feminine intelligence for women and men as essential to use in building a safer world. Her TED Talk on nonviolence has been viewed by over 1,500,000 people. Scilla is an Ambassador for Peace Direct and patron of Oxford Research Group; adviser to the Syria Campaign and the Institute for Economics and Peace. She also advises the leadership of selected international corporations as well as students and young social entrepreneurs.

Revd Joanna Jepson is an Anglican priest, author, broadcaster and coach. She trained at Bristol and Cambridge and, following her ordination in 2003, served in parishes in Chester and London. Joanna has since worked speaking, coaching and leading groups across the UK, USA, West Africa & Australia. In 2006 she set up the first chaplaincy in the British Fashion Industry, based at London College of Fashion. In 2015, Joanna’s first book was published by Bloomsbury. A Lot Like Eve; Fashion, Faith & Fig Leaves, charts her journey through faith, deconstruction and reconstruction. Joanna is based in Wells, with her husband and son, and, as a military chaplain, spent the first part of 2021 working with the UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus.  She is a regular contributor on BBC Radio 2 and guest on Radio 4, BBC, ITV and Channel4, and has written for the national press including The Independent, The Times and The Sunday Telegraph. She is a patron of Alabaré; a charity that seeks to end homelessness for military veterans, vulnerable adults and people with lifelong disabilities.

Lord Alf Dubs was born in December 1932 in Prague, and was one of the Czech children rescued from the Nazis in the Kindertransport. He had no idea of the identity of his rescuer until 1988, when a relative spotted his name on Esther Rantzen’s That's Life television programme featuring English former stockbroker Nicholas Winton, who had arranged for the transport of 669 children out of Nazi-occupied Prague. Lord Dubs studied at the London School of Economics before entering a long career in public service. He has been a local councillor, MP for Battersea South and Battersea between 1979 and 1987, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Northern Ireland Office from 1997 to 1999, Chair of the Fabian Society, Chair of Liberty, a trustee of Action Aid, Director of the Refugee Council and a trustee of the Immigration Advisory Service. He was also Deputy Chair of the Independent Television Commission from July 2000 to February 2001, a member of the Broadcasting Standards Council between 1988 and 1994, becoming Deputy Chairman in 1995, and then Deputy Chair of the Broadcasting Standards Commission until 1997. Lord Dubs was appointed a Labour working peer in 1994, and is an active and independent-minded member of the House of Lords.

Lord William Waldegrave of North Hill is the Provost of Eton College, a post he has held since 2009. He is a Distinguished Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford and an Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Lord Waldegrave served as a Conservative Member of Parliament from 1979 to 1997 (representing the Bristol West constituency) including 16 years service as a Minister, of which seven years were as a Cabinet Minister. Educated at Oxford University and Harvard (a Kennedy Scholar), before entering Parliament he worked in the Cabinet Office in Whitehall; as Political Secretary to Prime Minister Edward Heath; and for GEC Ltd. From 1998-2008 he worked in the City, first at Deutsche Kleinwort Benson and then UBS. Lord Waldegrave was appointed Chairman of Coutts in January 2014 and is the Director of a number of companies. He is Chairman of the Royal Mint Advisory Committee, former Chairman of the Rhodes Trust, a Founder Trustee of the Mandela Rhodes Foundation, a former Trustee and Chairman of the National Museum of Science and Industry and a Trustee of Cumberland Lodge.

Carl Schramm is University Professor at Syracuse University and former president of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. A $2 billion endowment, Kauffman is the world’s largest philanthropy dedicated to promoting entrepreneurship. Carl is recognised internationally as a leading authority on innovation, entrepreneurship and economic growth, referred to by The Economist as the “evangelist of entrepreneurship.” In 2007, Carl and then British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, created Global Entrepreneurship Week, now observed in 165 countries. His 2010 essay in Foreign Affairs initiated the study of expeditionary economics. Carl's academic career began at Johns Hopkins, where he founded the nation’s first research centre on healthcare finance. He has founded or co-founded five companies, including HCIA and Greenspring Advisors, a merchant bank. Carl also has served in major corporate roles and chaired the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Measuring Innovation in the 21st Century Economy Advisory Committee during the Bush Administration and was a member of President Obama’s National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. He is a founding member of the Board of the International Intellectual Property Commercialisation Council, a U.N. recognised NGO, headquartered in Hong Kong; a trustee of the Templeton World Charity Foundation; and a Council Member of the National Academies of Sciences’ Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable. He has served as a trustee of the Kauffman Foundation and the Milbank Memorial Fund.

Neeta Patel CBE is CEO of Centre for Entrepreneurs and New Entrepreneurs Foundation, and an experienced executive with over 25 years of strategy and operational leadership experience in launching new ventures, business turnarounds and change, with a sharp focus on impact, growth and revenues. Prior to joining the New Entrepreneurs Foundation, Neeta worked in Private Equity advisory, matching technology entrepreneurs with investors. Neeta held senior positions at Thomson Financial (Reuters), Legal & General PLC, Financial Times Group and at the British Council. She is an early internet pioneer having launched the first personal finance web site in Europe for L&G in 1996.

Sir Charlie Mayfield chairs Be the Business and the Productivity Leadership Group, which focus on stimulating and encouraging competitiveness and growth in businesses across the UK. He was Chairman of the John Lewis Partnership from 2007 to 2020, having joined the Partnership in 2000, with responsibility for business strategy and development for both John Lewis and Waitrose and for developing the Partnership's online strategy. He became Managing Director of John Lewis in January 2005 before taking up his appointment as Chairman of the Partnership in March 2007. Charlie began his career as an officer in the army. He joined SmithKline Beecham in 1992 and became Marketing Manager for the Lucozade brand, before moving to McKinsey & Co in 1996, where he worked with consumer and retail organisations. He also serves as chairman of QA Limited, a leading technology and IT skills solutions provider, and a trustee of The British Museum and Place2Be. He received a knighthood in June 2013 for services to business. This episode was released as part of Change Makers X Scaleup Week, a special series of conversations in partnership with Scaleup Week – led by BGF with the ScaleUp Institute – about the crucial issues and opportunities facing growing businesses as they navigate towards a sustainable, diverse and prosperous future.

James O'Brien is an award-winning writer and broadcaster whose journalism has appeared everywhere from the TLS to the Daily Mirror. His daily current affairs programme on LBC has over 1.2 million weekly listeners and his first book, How To Be Right, was a Sunday Times bestseller, which won the Parliamentary Book Award for Best Political Book by a non-politician. He is often to be found on Twitter trying not to get into arguments unless absolutely necessary. In his follow up, How Not To Be Wrong, James turns the mirror on himself to reveal what he has changed his mind about and why, and explores how examining and changing our own views is our new civic duty in a world of outrage, disagreement and echo chambers. He writes candidly about the stiff upper lip attitudes and toxic masculinity that coloured his childhood, and the therapy and personal growth that have led him question his assumptions and explore new perspectives. Laying open his personal views on everything from racial prejudice to emotional vulnerability, from fat-shaming to tattoos, he then delves into the real reasons – often irrational or unconscious – he holds them. Buy How Not To Be Wrong: The Art of Changing Your Mind in  paperback now.

”Musical weirdo and visionary" Beatie Wolfe is an artist who has beamed her music into space, been appointed a UN Women role model for innovation, and held an acclaimed solo exhibition of her ‘world first’ album designs at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Named by WIRED Magazine as one of "22 people changing the world,” Beatie is at the forefront of pioneering new formats for music that bridge the physical and digital, which include: a 3D theatre for the palm of your hand; a wearable record jacket - cut by Bowie/Hendrix’s tailor out of fabric woven with Wolfe’s music - and most recently an ‘anti-stream’ from the quietest room on earth and space beam via the Big Bang horn. Wolfe is also the co-founder of a “profound” (The Times) research project looking at the power of music for people living with dementia. The Barbican recently commissioned a documentary about Beatie's pioneering work and her latest innovation is an environmental protest piece built using 800,000 years of historic data that will be premiered at the London Design Biennale in 2021. Watch Beatie's performance at the Nobel Prize Summit here.

Founder and CEO of BioSure UK, Brigette Bard has carved a successful, entrepreneurial career in the FMCG sector. Based on her experience with pregnancy testing, she is passionate about the role self-testing has to play in allowing people to make informed choices and assume responsibility for their own healthcare. She is actively and dynamically involved in normalising the conversation around HIV, HIV tests, breaking down stigma and nurturing understanding around confident sex and sexual health. BioSure develops, manufactures, sources and distributes rapid tests with the highest levels of accuracy, many rivalling those of standard laboratory tests. Its rapid diagnostic and detection tests are invaluable tools where immediate results are the primary consideration. The tests that it manufactures and supplies are used worldwide for the management of human infectious disease.

Baroness Nicola Blackwood is a leader in health innovation policy and entrepreneurship. She is Chair of Genomics England and a Member of the House of Lords Science & Technology Select Committee. Nicola served as Minister for Innovation in the Department for Health and Social Care (UK) under two Prime Ministers where she led on Life Sciences, NHS Data and Digital Transformation and Global Health Security. She was the first female MP for Oxford and she was elected by MPs of all parties to Chair the Commons Science and Technology Select Committee. Nicola remains the youngest ever select committee chair in British history and the only woman to have held in that position.

Rob Law MBE is the founder and CEO of Trunki, the brand behind the ride-on suitcase for children. His entrepreneurial journey has taken him from one of the most famous rejections on BBC Dragons' Den in 2006, to successfully building a team who have pioneered a new retail category of children’s travel products, designing and creating a range of innovative solutions which help families on the go. Since Trunki launched in May 2006, the company has sold four million suitcases in over 100 countries. Rob's entrepreneurial journey has seen him win over 120 awards within the design, trade, consumer and business sectors including reaching 42nd on The Sunday Times Fast Track 100  and winning The National Business Awards SME of the Year. In 2011, Row was awarded an MBE for Services to Business and went on to receive an Honorary Doctorate of Engineering from Bath University in 2015, an Honorary Doctorate of Business Administration from UWE in 2018. Rob is also passionate about inspiring future entrepreneurs, business leaders and designers. 

Claire Warner began her corporate career in 2003, joining the LVMH owned brand, Belvedere Vodka and was appointed Head of Spirit Creation and Mixology in 2009. In this role, Claire led the development of all new Belvedere expressions, as well as creating the global educational programmes for Belvedere. In 2015 Claire was awarded both Best International Brand Ambassador at Tales of the Cocktail, the ‘Oscar’s’ of the drinks industry, and Wine Spectator Ambassador of the year. Claire joined the alcohol-­free world of Seedlip in January 2018 to head up the brand’s sister company, Æcorn Drinks. Æcorn launched in May 2019 to London’s Selfridges & Waitrose nationwide. Æcorn will extend ‘what to drink when you’re not drinking’ from the bar to the table. Æcorn aims to create more meaningful connections by ensuring non-drinkers feel included in social settings. Claire is acknowledged as an early advocate for better wellbeing in the drinks industry and has spent years speaking to those working in the on-trade about topics including excess sugar in both soft drinks and cocktails, excessive alcohol consumption, and spending more time in nature.

Credited as the new face of American fashion by Vogue at the start of her career, Arizona Muse first gained exposure in 2010 when she was chosen to open and close Prada’s Spring-Summer 2011 catwalk show in Milan. She has since fronted advertising campaigns for the likes of Chloé, Karl Lagerfeld and Louis Vuitton, and has been in cast in shows for Burberry, Chanel and Dior. She was signed as the face of Prada in early 2011 and shortly after, the face of Yves Saint Laurent. She's since covered every major Vogue, including its American and British editions. Recently, Arizona has dedicated her efforts towards sustainability in fashion and is an advocate for better environmental practices, urging the fashion industry to examine its relationship with the world. She has protested alongside Extinction Rebellion and has adopted the role as a sustainability-consultant for fashion companies who wish to lower their environmental impact. Arizona sits on the board of The Sustainable Angle, a non-profit organisation that initiates and supports projects that minimise the environmental impact of the fashion industry, and contributes to Fashion Revolution, a team of business leaders, policymakers and brands who work together towards radically changing the way clothes are sourced, produced, and consumed.  

Mark Cuddigan joined Ella’s Kitchen in August 2011, drawn to a company whose founding mission is to improve children’s lives through developing healthy relationships with food. This purpose permeated throughout the business and continues to be a guiding principle today. Mark is a passionate advocate of business being used as a force for good and through his leadership at Ella’s, he exemplifies how a business can be both profitable and purposeful. In February 2016 Ella’s Kitchen certified as a B Corporation, becoming only the second company to do so whilst part of a PLC. Mark is a member of the B Lab board, a UK registered charity that supports certified B Corps in the UK - businesses that give equal standing to people, planet and profit. A demonstrative example of this is that Ella’s have committed to becoming net zero by 2030. Ella’s Kitchen was acquired by The Hain Celestial Group Inc. in May 2013. The brand is now sold in over 33 countries; every second of every day someone, somewhere around the world, eats an Ella’s Kitchen product. Mark previously worked in FMCG and ran his own companies like Dormen’s for 15 years.

Throughout her career, Imandeep Kaur has focused on convening and building community, the role of citizens in radical systemic change, and how we together create more democratic, distributed, open source social and civic infrastructure. Immy is a co-founder and director of CIVIC SQUARE, a public square, neighbourhood lab, and creative + participatory platform focused on regenerative civic and social infrastructure within neighbourhoods. Immy is part of a creative and dynamic leadership team who work alongside the local neighbourhood, to offer a bold approach to visioning, building and investing in civic infrastructure for neighbourhoods of the future. Immy was a founding director of Impact Hub Birmingham, which was open from 2015-2019. Impact Hub Birmingham was on a mission to help build a fairer more equal and just city, through people place and open movements. Immy’s work has been recognised with a series of notable honours and awards. In 2018, Impact Hub Birmingham was named a NESTA New Radical. For her services to the city of Birmingham, Aston University’s School of Life & Heath Sciences granted Immy an Honorary Doctorate in 2019 and in 2020, Immy was awarded a prestigious Ashoka Fellowship.

Paul Drechsler was appointed the Chair of London First in 2018. He is Chairman of the International Chamber of Commerce ICC (UK), Non-Executive Director of Greencore Plc, and Independent Director of Schroder & Co. Ltd. Paul is Chancellor of Teesside University and a member of the Global Advisory Board of Trinity College Dublin. Paul was Chairman of Bibby Line Group from 2014 to 2020. Before that he was Chief Executive of the privately-owned construction firm Wates Group. He joined Wates in September 2004 and became Chairman and Chief Executive in April 2006 until 2014. Prior to joining Wates, Paul worked for ICI PLC, spending the first ten years of his career on Teesside. That was followed by 14 years holding various senior positions and living in Brazil, the USA and the Netherlands, which concluded with five years as Chief Executive of one of ICI’s principal international businesses and as a Main Board Director.

Dame Evelyn Glennie is the first person in history to successfully create and sustain a full-time career as a solo percussionist, performing worldwide with the greatest orchestras, conductors and artists. Evelyn paved the way for orchestras globally to feature percussion concerti when she played the first percussion concerto in the history of the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall in 1992. Evelyn has commissioned over 200 new pieces for solo percussion from many of the world’s most eminent composers to vastly expand the percussion repertoire. She regularly provides masterclasses and consultations to inspire the next generation of musicians. Leading 1000 drummers, Evelyn had the honour of a prominent role in the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games. Evelyn was awarded an OBE in 1993 and now has over 100 international awards, including the Polar Music Prize and the Companion of Honour. She was recently appointed the first female President of Help Musicians. Evelyn is creating The Evelyn Glennie Collection with a vision to open a centre that embodies her mission to 'Teach the World to Listen'. She aims to ‘improve communication and social cohesion by encouraging everyone to discover new ways of listening', as proven in her book Listen World.

John Rutter was born in London and studied music at Clare College, Cambridge. He first came to notice as a composer during his student years; much of his early work consisted of church music and other choral pieces including Christmas carols. From 1975–79 he was Director of Music at his alma mater, Clare College, and directed the college chapel choir in various recordings and broadcasts. Since 1979 he has divided his time between composition and conducting. Today his compositions, including such concert-length works as Requiem, Magnificat, Mass of the Children, The Gift of Life, and Visions are performed around the world. His music has featured in a number of British royal occasions, including the two most recent royal weddings. He edits the Oxford Choral Classics series, and, with Sir David Willcocks, co-edited four volumes of Carols for Choirs. In 1983 he formed his own choir the Cambridge Singers, with whom he has made numerous recordings, and he appears regularly in several countries as guest conductor and choral ambassador. He holds a Lambeth Doctorate in Music, and in 2007 was awarded a CBE for services to music.

Obsessed with cows as a little girl, Ara Kusuma asked for a cow of her own when she was 10. She and her parents set off to Central Java to visit a few farms and learn the best way to raise and care for farm animals. The first farm they went to had 1,500 cows living in clean, healthy conditions. But at the next stop, they found a different reality. Ara wanted to know, “What if all animals could live on farms like that first one?” With support from her parents to lay out a plan, Ara started Project Moo: For the Welfare of All. The goal? To surface and share innovations among village farmers to increase dairy production in a more sustainable way. In the four years that followed, Project Moo brought together 150 farmers, many of whom became leaders in the community, testing the new approaches and spreading what worked for the benefit of all. The community became cleaner and saw more income from new dairy products and sustainable fertiliser. In 2008, at age 11, Ara was recognised as an Ashoka Youth Venturer. Following her studies in marketing and management in Singapore, she returned to Indonesia and aged 21, she has started a travel-learning project URTravelearner to help others envision changemaker lives by seeing social entrepreneurs in action. In 2020, she launched Aha! Project, a scheme to improve the access of study resources for children during the pandemic.

Bill Drayton is a social entrepreneur with a long record of founding organisations and public service. As a student, he founded organisations ranging from Yale Legislative Services to Harvard’s Ashoka Table, an inter-disciplinary weekly forum in the social sciences. After graduation from Harvard, he received an M.A. from Balliol College in Oxford University. In 1970, he graduated from Yale Law School. After working at McKinsey & Company, he taught at Stanford Law School and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. From 1977 to 1981, while serving the Carter Administration as Assistant Administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency, he launched emissions trading (the basis of Kyoto) among other reforms. He launched Ashoka in 1981. He used the stipend received when elected a MacArthur Fellow in 1984 to devote himself fully to Ashoka. Bill is Ashoka’s Chair and Chief Executive Officer. He is also chair of three other organisations; Youth Venture, Community Greens, and Get America Working! Bill has won numerous awards and honours throughout his career. In 2005, he was selected one of America’s Best Leaders by US News & World Report and Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership. Other awards include the Yale Law School’s highest alumni honour, the National Wildlife Federation’s Conservation Achievement Award International; and the National Academy of Public Administration National Public Service Award. 

In 2012 Richard joined Iceland Foods, the company established by his parents Malcolm and Rhianydd in 1970. He worked full-time as a shelf-stacker and cashier in Iceland stores in London for a year, before becoming a store manager in Swiss Cottage and moving to Iceland head office at Deeside, Flintshire, in 2013. After various head office roles, including a spell running Iceland’s International division, Richard became Managing Director of The Food Warehouse, Iceland’s chain of more than 70 larger format stores, in 2015. He was promoted to his current role as Managing Director of Iceland Foods in August 2018. Since November 2017 Richard has taken the board lead on sustainability issues across the Group. Under his leadership, Iceland has taken a range of world-leading sustainability initiatives that include becoming the first major retailer globally to commit to eliminating single-use plastic packaging from its own label range, to be completed by the end of 2023; taking action against continuing destruction of tropical rainforests as the first UK major UK supermarket to announcing the removal of palm ingredients from its own label food by the end of 2018; becoming the first UK retailer to adopt the Plastic Free Trust Mark; and being the first retailer to install trial Reverse Vending Machines for plastic bottles in stores in England, Scotland and Wales.

Amy Williams is on a mission to convert people’s attention and data into funding for good causes around the world. She co-founded Good-Loop in 2016 after turning her hand from advertising at Ogilvy to volunteering at a soup-kitchen in Argentina. Today working with the likes of Nestlé, Unilever, the Co-Op, Coca-Cola and H&M, Amy’s ‘ethical ad platform’ rewards consumers who choose to engage with advertising by donating to their chosen charity, whilst delivering better ROI for advertisers. Amy is one of Forbes Europe’s 30 under 30, eConsultancy’s Rising Star of 2019, listed as part of the BIMA 100 and a face of the United Nations #SheInnovates global campaign.

Terry Waite has a long and distinguished record as a former hostage negotiator (having been a hostage), humanitarian, and author. Terry comes from Cheshire, where he was born in 1939, and on was first appointed as Education Advisor to the Anglican Bishop of Bristol. He and his family moved to Uganda in 1969 where he worked for the first African Anglican Archbishop of Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. Around this time he founded the Southern Sudan Project, setting up aid and development programmes in the region. In 1980 Terry joined the Private Staff of the Archbishop of Canterbury, successfully negotiating the release of several hostages from Iran and Libya and gained public attention. In January 1987, while negotiating for the release of Western hostages in Lebanon, he himself was taken captive and remained in captivity for 1,763 days, the first four years of which he spent in solitary confinement. Terry was released in November 1991. Terry co-founded Y Care International in 1984, serving first as Chair, and now as President. Terry is also President of Emmaus UK (for homeless people), Chairman and co-founder of Hostage UK, and has been actively involved with Prison reform. He was awarded the MBE in 1983 and the CBE in 1992 and has received many awards including honorary doctorates from British and foreign universities.

Our guest today is the award-winning Times journalist and bestselling author, Melanie Reid. In 2010, a riding accident saw Melanie break both her neck and back, leaving her paralysed. Since then, she has written about her attempts to come to terms with her disability in her weekly ‘Spinal Column’ for The Times. Her bestselling memoir ‘The World I Fell Out Of’ won the Saltire Scottish non-fiction book of the year, for its heart-wrenching and humorous account of her lifechanging accident. Outside of her writer’s room, Melanie is the patron of numerous charities including Spinal Research, the Association for Continence Advice, the Colostomy Association and Friends at the End, all matters she never expected to be expert in. She is renowned for her dry humour and authenticity and her tip is simply this: ‘do a lot of dancing.’ Melanie Reid MBE is a writer with The Times. Since 2010, when she broke her neck in a riding accident, she’s written Spinal Column, an award-winning account of life with disability. Born in London, resident in Scotland, she’s spent 40 years as a journalist, newspaper executive, broadcaster and self-styled “slayer of waffle”. She’s a patron of Spinal Research, the Association for Continence Advice, the Colostomy Association and Friends at the End. The paperback of her best-selling memoir The World I Fell Out Of, which won the Saltire prize for non-fiction, is out now.

I. Stephanie Boyce is a solicitor, an experienced general counsel and governance expert. Stephanie has worked in-house at the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) and the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. She currently sits on the Law Society of England and Wales Council holding one of the seats from the Women Lawyers Division and is a Fellow of the the Chartered Governance Institute, formerly ICSA. Stephanie was elected as deputy vice president of the Law Society of England and Wales, the professional body for solicitors in 2019. She is currently the Vice President and in October 2021 she will become the 177th, the sixth female and the first black, the first ethnic minority to become president of the Law Society.  

For Michael Grade, a distinguished and highly successful career in showbusiness appeared to be in the genes. Born in 1943 in London, England, his father was Leslie Grade and his uncles were Lew Grade and Bernard Delfont. Michael became a trainee journalist on the Daily Mirror in 1960, before becoming deputy controller of entertainment programmes at London Weekend Television in 1973. In 1984, he gained one of the most prestigious positions in British broadcasting when he became controller of BBC One and BBC TV's director of programmes two years later. In 1988, he was named chief executive at Channel 4, responsible for bringing ER and Friends to British TV. He left in 1997 and has since taken major roles at numerous companies, including Ocado, Camelot and the Millennium Dome project. He was appointed chairman of the BBC in 2004 and executive chairman of ITV in 2007. His remarkably successful career in broadcasting was recognised by a CBE in 1998, and a life peerage in 2011.

Colleen is the CEO of the Amos Bursary, founding the charity due to her passion for education and tackling underachievement. Through her expert skills of bringing together elite universities and leading international firms, providing internships and personal development programmes, she has transformed the live of countless young men to secure professional careers by developing them into the UK’s future leaders.   Baroness Amos, now a patron of the charity she co-founded, has been widely recognised as one of the world’s great humanitarians. Whether as UN-Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, in the Cabinet as a member of the House of Lords, or any of a countless list of non-governmental international development, charitable and educational roles – including as the first black woman to lead a British university as director of SOAS – Baroness Amos has been a pioneer for equality everywhere.

Since 2009, The Amos Bursary has been helping Britain’s talented young men of African and Caribbean heritage, who attend state schools from challenging environments, fulfil their academic potential, attend top universities, secure good professional jobs and give back to society. In 2021 for the first time it will also be welcoming young women to apply. The Amos Bursary brings together universities and businesses looking to diversify their student intake and workforce, with a pool of exceptional talent. It is transforming lives and changing the negative narrative and perceptions surrounding young black men and women, normalising success.

Mark rose to prominence 25 years ago, as part of the hugely influential team behind The League of Gentlemen. Alongside Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith and Jeremy Dyson, the four brought their unique brand of humour to the mainstream, creating a critically-acclaimed series combining laughter, irreverence and horror. Mark’s career has taken him from Dr Who to Dracula, Wolf Hall to Westeros and perhaps most notably, 221B Baker Street as the co-creator of the BBC’s Sherlock alongside Steven Moffatt, where he also took a star turn as the eponymous Holmes’ brother, Mycroft. A story Mark is helping to tell today is that of Britain’s LGBTQ+ history, as a supporter of Queer Britain.

Joseph Galliano is the co-founder and CEO of Queer Britain, the charity working to establish the UK’s first national LGBTQ+ museum – a place as exciting as the people, stories and ideas it explores and celebrates. It will be an essential place for all regardless of sexuality or gender identity, to find out about the culture they have been born into, have chosen or seek to understand. It will help complete the nation’s family tree. Joseph is also the former editor of Gay Times and freelance writer whose work has been published in, amongst other places, The Times and the Guardian.

Sir Michael Morpurgo, began writing stories in the early '70's, in response to the children in his class at the primary school where he taught in Kent. One of the UK’s best-loved authors and storytellers, Michael was appointed Children’s Laureate in 2003, a post he helped to set up with Ted Hughes in 1999. He was awarded an OBE in 2007 and a Knighthood in the New Year’s Honours in 2018 for services to literature and charity. He has written over 130 books, including War Horse, which was adapted for a hugely successful stage production by the National Theatre and then, in 2011, for a film directed by Steven Spielberg. His book, Private Peaceful was adapted for the stage by Simon Reade and a film, directed by Pat O'Connor. With his wife Clare, he set up the charity Farms for City Children, which offers children and teachers from inner-city primary schools the chance to live and work in the countryside for a week on one of the charity’s three farms in Devon, Gloucestershire and Wales. Over 100,000 children have visited the three farms run by the charity since it began in 1976.  

Yanis Varoufakis is a member of Greece’s Parliament and parliamentary leader of MeRA25, the Greek political party belonging to DiEM25 – Europe’s first transnational paneuropean movement. Previously, he served as Greece’s Finance Minister during the first six months of 2015. Yanis read mathematics and economics at the Universities of Essex and Birmingham and subsequently taught economics at the Universities of East Anglia, Cambridge, Sydney, Glasgow, Texas and Athens where he still holds a Chair in Political Economy and Economic Theory. He is the author of a number of best-selling books, including Another Now: Dispatches from an alternative present, Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: A brief history of capitalism and And the Weak Suffer What They Must? Europe, Austerity and the Threat to Global Stability. In February 2016 Varoufakis co-founded DiEM25, the Democracy in Europe Movement – Europe’s first transnational movement. In March 2018 DiEM25 founded MeRA25, its Greek political party. Led by Varoufakis, MeRA25 entered Parliament with nine MPs in the July 2019 General Election.

Lord O’Neill is currently the vice-chair of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, chairman of Chatham House and a member of Shelter Social Housing Commission. Since leaving government in September 2016, having been Commercial Secretary to the Treasury, Jim moved to the crossbenches of the House of Lords. He led an independent review into antimicrobial resistance (AMR) for David Cameron from late 2014 to September 2016, and remains focused on this challenge. Jim worked for Goldman Sachs from 1995 until April 2013, spending most of his time there as chief economist. He is also the creator of the acronym BRIC and has conducted much research about these and other emerging economies. Jim also served as a non-executive director of Manchester United before it returned to private ownership in 2005. 

Dr Pippa Malmgren is an American economist, policy analyst and best-selling author. She served as Special Assistant to the President of the United States, George W. Bush, for Economic Policy on the National Economic Council and is a former member of the U.S. President's Working Group on Financial Markets. On top of being a Board member for the Department for International Trade, Pippa is the founder of the DRPM Group and co-founder of H Robotics, a robotics company which makes AI-led, commercial-use drones. She has been named a leading Woman in Tech by We Are Tech Women and the top 50 Women in Tech by AccelerateHer. 

Ryan C. Crocker is a career ambassador within the U.S. Foreign Service. Ambassador Crocker was in the Foreign Service for 37 years and, after retiring, was recalled to active duty by President Obama in 2011 to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan. His previous appointments included service as the U.S. Ambassador to Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Lebanon. Crocker has received many of the nation’s highest honours, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In September 2004, President Bush conferred on him the personal rank of Career Ambassador, the highest in the Foreign Service. In May 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the establishment of the Ryan C. Crocker Award for Outstanding Achievement in Expeditionary Diplomacy. In July 2012, he was named an Honorary Marine.

Alison Goldsworthy is CEO of The Depolarization Project. A former Deputy Chair of the UK Liberal Democrats, she previously led the team that built the fastest growing campaigning NGO in the UK. Ali is Vice Chair of the grant-giving Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, and sits on the board of global media outlet Open Democracy. Born and brought up in Wales, in 2017 she was a Sloan Fellow at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, co-creating its first depolarization course. Ali is a frequent media pundit, and has written for the Telegraph, Times, Independent, New Statesman and Financial Times.

Tamara Lohan is an entrepreneur and technology strategist who co-founded the boutique hotel travel specialists Mr & Mrs Smith with her husband James. As CTO, Tamara was responsible for evolving the company's digital infrastructure. She became CEO of the company in 2020. Today, Mr and Mrs Smith operates from offices in London, New York, Los Angeles, Singapore and Ibiza and has more than 1.5 million members world-wide. In 2014, Lohan was awarded an MBE for services to the British travel industry.

Anna Brailsford is the CEO of Code First: Girls, a social enterprise that looks to increase the amount of women in tech, by training women in IT skills and helping companies to develop more inclusive recruitment policies. Anna is also a Board Member for the Institute of Coding. Before joining CF:G Anna was the CEO and co-founder of Founders Factory incubated EdTech startup Frisbee. Prior to that, Anna was the Commercial Director of Lynda.com and LinkedIn.

Professor Muhammad Yunus established the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh in 1983, fuelled by the belief that credit is a fundamental human right. His objective was to help poor people escape from poverty by providing loans on terms suitable to them and by teaching them a few sound financial principles so they could help themselves. From Professor Yunus’ personal loan of small amounts of money to destitute basketweavers in Bangladesh in the mid-70s, the Grameen Bank has advanced to the forefront of a burgeoning world movement toward eradicating poverty through microlending. Replicas of the Grameen Bank model operate in more than 100 countries worldwide. Professor Yunus is the recipient of numerous international awards for his ideas and endeavors, including the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.

Nigel was appointed Group Chief Executive in 2012 having joined as Group Chief Financial Officer in 2009. He is leading the 50/50 by 20/20 gender diversity initiative. Nigel was awarded City AM’s “Business Personality of the Year” in 2014. Nigel also won the ‘Most Admired Leader’ award at Britain's Most Admired Companies Awards 2017, for Management Today. In 2019 Nigel won ‘Change Maker of the Year’ at the Seven Hills Change Makers Summit. In 2015-2016 Nigel was a member of the Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Group. Qualifications include a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he was a Kennedy Scholar. Nigel has won numerous national masters Athletics Championships. He has five daughters. 

Sharmadean Reid is the Founder and CEO of Beautystack. Her mission is to use technology to economically empower women in the beauty and wellness industries, globally. A former fashion stylist and brand consultant who started WAH as a hip hop magazine for girls in 2006 while still at university, she then founded WAH Nails as a side project in 2009. WAH completely changed the beauty landscape with its millennial voice, feminist attitude and innovative salon space. In 2016 she opened a  salon in Soho, London, showcasing a Virtual Reality Nail Design app in collaboration with DVTK and is constantly looking for ways to push the salon experience further through technology. With her experience from WAH, she founded Beautystack, a new way to book beauty through images. Alongside all of this she shares her journey by organising business events for young female entrepreneurs, culminating in futuregirlcorp.com.

This week, Michael is joined by music maestro turned tech titan Jeremy Silver, CEO of Digital Catapult. He has used his remarkable creativity to boost the UK’s digital sector, helping the UK's best tech entrepreneurs transform some of their brightest ideas into reality. He started his career in the 1990s, working with Genesis, Meatloaf and Brian Eno as a music executive, before turning his attention to the country’s thriving tech ecosystem. Here Jeremy reflects on his career and that transition, what he’s learned from his own podcast, trends in the digital landscape, his new book, and delivers a positive message about why people should always do what they love.

Canadian-British, London-based Edeline Lee graduated from Central Saint Martins and launched her eponymous label in 2014. In between her degrees, she apprenticed in the studios of Alexander McQueen in London and John Galliano in Paris. She is known for her immersive and performative shows at London Fashion Week. Edeline has received strong support from the women of the art world, who naturally gravitate towards her aesthetically sophisticated signature of structured, feminine shapes, clean modernist lines, and precise attention to craftsmanship. She has gained international recognition for her fashion presentations which have the immersive quality of film and live performance.  

Founding editor of Country & Town House, Lucy Cleland has been in the glossy magazine business for around 20 years, and divides her time between the glamour of Acton and the mud and wellies of the New Forest with her husband and two children. She founded Country & Town House with her husband back in 2007, a year before the huge financial crash – originally launched as Country House, before rebranding. Sustainability is also a passion of Lucy's and this summer, she pledged that 25% of the magazine's content would reflect the ways we should learn to live – whether that's the brands we buy, how we consume things or the way we travel.

Charmian believes in the power of business as a force for good and has first-hand experience in what it is like to be an entrepreneur, an intrapreneur and a systempreneur. Charmian is the Co-Founder and Chair of B Lab UK, where she supports the growth of B Corps across the UK (and beyond) and is Co-Chair of B Lab’s Global Climate Taskforce where she is a member of the UNFCCC’s Marrakesh Partnership. Charmian is committed to helping accelerate the transition to a more regenerative, circular and inclusive economy. In her role as Social Entrepreneur in Residence at the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, Charmian is guiding the development of the Circular Economy Lab and designed and teaches MBA and Executive MBA courses on this subject.

Holly Tucker MBE is a British entrepreneur, philanthropist, and UK Ambassador for Creative Small Businesses. She is founder and chief inspiration of the online marketplace, notonthehighstreet.com and founder of Holly & Co, a small business advice and inspiration platform. notonthehighstreet.com has grown to become an award-winning online marketplace, providing a retail platform for 5,000 curated small creative and entrepreneurial businesses, collectively offering more than 200,000 original and innovative products. Holly was awarded an MBE for services to small businesses and enterprise as part of the Queen's Birthday Honours List in June 2013

General Petraeus served over 37 years in the U.S. military, culminating his career with six consecutive commands, five of which were in combat. Following retirement from the military and after Senate confirmation by a vote of 94-0, he served as Director of the CIA. Today, he is a Partner with the global investment firm KKR and Chairman of the KKR Global Institute, which he established in May 2013.  He is also a member of the boards of directors of Optiv and FirstStream, a venture investor in more than 15 startups, and engaged in a variety of academic endeavours. Over the past 15 years, General Petraeus has been named one of America’s 25 Best Leaders by U.S. News and World Report and a runner-up for Time magazine’s Person of the Year, amongst other accolades. He has earned numerous honours, awards, and decorations, including four Defense Distinguished Service Medals. 

Sir Max Hastings is an author, journalist and broadcaster whose work has appeared in every British national newspaper.  He now reviews regularly for the Sunday Times. He has published 27 books and three collections of writing about the British countryside and field sports. He spent most of his early years as a foreign correspondent for BBC TV and the London Evening Standard, reporting eleven conflicts, notably including Vietnam and the 1982 South Atlantic war. He was editor, then editor-in-chief, of The Daily Telegraph from 1986-1995, and of the Evening Standard 1996-2002. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Honorary Fellow of King’s College, London, he has also received honorary degrees from Leicester and Nottingham universities.

Whitney Bromberg Hawkings is the founder of the online luxury florist FLOWERBX. Her career began aged 23 as assistant to Tom Ford during his time as creative director of Gucci. After he left to establish his eponymous label in 2005, Whitney joined him and worked her way up to become Ford's senior vice-president of communications. After realising that flowers were the one product she couldn't buy in an elegant and consistent way online, she set up FLOWERBX in 2015 in her spare time, before eventually leaving her role with Tom Ford the next year. FLOWERBX is now an award-winning brand and has been described as the 'go-to florist in Europe for the fashion set'.

As founding director of Foundervine, Izzy provides founders with access to training, mentoring and funding opportunities. Since 2018, 2,000 young people have been skilled by Foundervine programmes, $230,000+ raised with 62% female participation. She is an experienced public speaker and has helped people grow at global brands such as Just Eat, Facebook, PwC, Google, AirBnB and more. Izzy is a Non-Executive Director for Capital Enterprise, a body that has raised £814.7m for UK startups and a former trustee for Parkrun. In 2019, Izzy was named by Tech Nation as one of the 50 most influential black voices in UK tech. She now divides her time between the UK and West Africa, delivering start-up and scale-up acceleration programmes designed to transform the digital innovation ecosystem.

Nana Badu is founder of Badu Sports & Badu Community, providing top quality PE specialists, who mentor and develop the children and young people we work with, while simultaneously extending their learning on matters both within and beyond the classroom walls. At Badu Community he and his team support the transition young people go through during critical stages of their lives, starting from primary age and working with them as individuals as well as working with their families. 

Gavin is CEO of Here East – the 1.2 million sq ft technology and Innovation campus on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London, and one of the fastest growing business clusters in the UK. Recently, Gavin has been at the forefront of developing the concept of creating London’s first digital games and esports cluster. Prior, Gavin served as an engineering officer in the UK Royal Air Force for over 20 years before leaving following tours as a Wing Commander. Upon leaving military service, he ran the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) and helped form major policy initiatives including the introduction of the Modern-Day Slavery Act within the UK. Gavin is a board member of Plexal, sits on the Advisory Board of Global Tech Advocates and is a London Technology Ambassador for London & Partners. In addition, he sits on the Advisory Board for London Tech Week.

This week, multi-talented entrepreneur, Poppy Jamie, the founder of wellness start-up Happy Not Perfect and co-founder of fashion accessories brand Pop & Suki joins Michael on Change Makers. The influencer and former TV presenter discusses mental health and how to help us feel happier, less anxious and more positive. Poppy shares her story of why she launched her app back in 2018 after experiencing anxiety in her career, juggling multiple roles and eventually reaching burnout. This led her to launch a mindfulness app designed for millennials and Gen Z. During the interview, Poppy demonstrates techniques designed to soothe the soul and shares lifestyle tips on how to train our brains to have a happier mindset.    Poppy is an entrepreneur who has founded two start-ups. She became the youngest entertainment presenter at ITN at 19. By 23, she had moved to the USA to work for MTV International, ITV2, Extra and launched the first ever talk show on Snapchat. She has delivered a TEDxHollywood talk entitled ‘Addicted to Likes’ where she explored the psychological impact technology has had on our lives. In 2017, Forbes named Poppy one of their ‘30 under 30’.

This week, professional footballer Mathieu Flamini speaks to Michael about his career and co-founding GF Biochemicals, a fast-growing producer of levulinic acid. From growing up on the beaches of Marseille to a football career at the highest level, in this episode, Mathieu demonstrates he is an athlete with a difference who has a huge amount of drive and ambition to put people's health and our planet on the right path to a sustainable future.    A World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, Mathieu played as a midfielder for Marseille, Arsenal, Crystal Palace, AC Milan, Getafe and the French national team. While football is a huge passion for Mathieu, his interest in climate change and the environment began as a young child. Mathieu co-founded GF Biochemicals in 2008 shortly after moving to AC Milan. The company is the world’s first commercial producer of levulinic acid, a substance that could provide the world with a substitute for oil.

Born in Asia, raised in Africa and educated in Europe and the US, James Chen is a venture philanthropist with a global outlook. The importance of giving back was instilled in him by his father, Robert Yet-Sen Chen, whose lifetime of philanthropic work led to the creation of The Chen Yet-Sen Family Foundation, which focuses on improving early childhood literacy. As chairman of the Foundation, James continues the work his father started. For the last 15 years, James has championed the cause of vision correction with campaigns Adlens, Vision For A Nation, and Clearly – to inspire new innovation and promote greater awareness of the global vision issue.

IMAGINE Co-Founder and CEO, Valerie helps leaders use their power for good. With deep expertise in transformation, she helps global corporations become purpose-led and future-fit, and convenes cross-sector coalitions to accelerate tipping points for humanity’s Global Goals. Valerie is an Associate Fellow of the University of Oxford Saïd Business School where she directs executive education programs. Founder of Veritas and of Beacon Institute, she served as EY Global Markets Executive Director and CEO of US-based social enterprises addressing homelessness, healthcare and housing. She was selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and serves on the Harvard Kennedy School Women’s Leadership Board.

Maurice Ostro, OBE, is a serial entrepreneur, philanthropist and chair of the Business Action Council. He has fused the two major strands of his career to create eg (Entrepreneurial Giving), a movement to help entrepreneurs to be more successful and encourage them to embed purpose within their businesses.On the one hand, Ostro is a successful entrepreneur. His business ventures have ranged from frozen yogurt to gemstones, media distribution and airline catering. On the other hand, Ostro is a philanthropist. He founded the Fayre Share Foundation with his wife Katy, serves as Vice Chair of the Council of Christians and Jews and created Collaboration House, a charitable co-working space in London.

Anne Sebba is a biographer, lecturer, journalist and former Reuters foreign correspondent. She has written 10 critically-acclaimed books of non-fiction, mostly about iconic women who enjoyed using power and influence in different ways such as Enid Bagnold, Mother Teresa, Laura Ashley and Jennie Churchill, as well as her 2016 book Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died in the 1940s. Her biography, That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, quickly became a bestseller on publication in 2011.

Justin Webb is a journalist and anchor for the Radio 4 Today programme. He joined the BBC as a graduate trainee in 1984 working in Northern Ireland for BBC Radio Ulster based in Belfast, before joining Today as a reporter. He later worked as a foreign affairs correspondent based in London, followed by stints presenting BBC Breakfast news and the Six O'Clock News, and three years working as the BBC's Europe correspondent based in Brussels. He was posted to Washington as the BBC's chief radio correspondent in 2001, with his time across the Atlantic bookended by some of the most powerful events in US history, 9/11 and the election of Barack Obama.

Baroness Ruby McGregor-Smith CBE was appointed President of the British Chambers of Commerce in March 2020. She was the CEO of Mitie Group PLC from 2007 to 2016, the first Asian female chief executive of a FTSE 250 company. During the decade she spent at Mitie, the firm increased its turnover by £1.5bn, which passed the £2bn mark for the first time in 2012. She was nominated as a Conservative life peer in August 2015 and awarded a CBE in 2012 for services to business and promoting diversity. She previously chaired the Women's Business Council and in 2017, conducted the McGregor-Smith Review into race in the workplace.

Matt Scheckner is CEO of Stillwell Partners, a New York City-based boutique consultancy. Stillwell is best known as the producer of Advertising Week, the world’s largest creative industries summit. Matt's signature recipe of blending thought leadership with one-of-a-kind evening experiences for the entire industry ecosystem propels Advertising Week. In addition, with Stillwell he produces the annual Nathan’s 4th of July Hot Dog Eating Contest which includes a one hour ESPN broadcast. Matt has served on the Board of Governors of the Friars Club and is active with many causes, including War Child, Comic Relief UK, London’s Roundhouse and Tuesday’s Children.

Paul Lindley is an award-winning British entrepreneur and children's welfare campaigner. He founded organic baby and children's food brand Ella's Kitchen in 2006, and is an author of a best-selling book Little Wins: The Power of Thinking Like a Toddler. Since exiting Ella's Kitchen in 2018, he has remained an active campaigner as Chair of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights UK, co-founder of social enterprise The Key Is E alongside musician and social activist Emmanuel Jal, Chair of the London Child Obesity Taskforce, trustee of the Sesame Workshop, and founder of enterprise competition Just IMAGINE If. WATCH: Every Child's Plate – Emmanuel Jal ft. Paul Lindley and Tanika Charles https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rx2RbeuFflc

Kerry Kennedy is President of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights. A human rights activist and lawyer, she authored New York Times best seller Being Catholic Now, as well as Speak Truth to Power and Robert F. Kennedy: Ripples of Hope. Kerry, the seventh of Ethel and Robert F. Kennedy’s eleven children, has devoted more than 40 years to the pursuit of equal justice, the promotion and protection of basic rights, and the preservation of the rule of law. She works on a range of issues, including child labor, women’s rights, disappearances, indigenous land rights, judicial independence, freedom of expression, ethnic violence, criminal justice reform, immigration, impunity, and environmental justice. She has led hundreds of human rights delegations in support of these causes.  WATCH: I Cannot Stand Aside – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE2jqa6cqp8 FIND OUT MORE: The Ripples of Hope Festival, Manchester 2021 – https://www.ripplesofhopefestival.org/

The mission of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) is to enrich lives through orchestral experiences that are uncompromising in their excellence and inclusive in their appeal. Performing approximately 200 concerts each season and with a worldwide audience of more than half-a-million people, the Orchestra embraces a broad repertoire that enables it to reach the most diverse audience of any British symphony orchestra. The RPO is unafraid to push boundaries and is equally at home recording video game, film and television soundtracks and working with pop stars, as it is performing the great symphonic repertoire. As a respected cultural ambassador, the RPO enjoys a busy schedule of international touring, performing in the world’s great concerts halls and at prestigious international festivals. The RPO aims to place orchestral music at the heart of contemporary society, collaborating with creative partners to foster a deeper engagement with communities to ensure that live orchestral music is accessible to as inclusive and diverse an audience as possible. In 1986 it was the first UK orchestra to launch its own record label. The RPO has gone on to embrace advances in digital technology and now achieves nearly thirty million downloads of its recorded music each year.

Rory Bremner is widely regarded as Britain’s top satirical impressionist. As a mimic, he’s provided definitive impersonations of PMs and Presidents from Major to Mandela, Blair to Brown, Clinton to Cameron and Bush to Trump. As himself, he’s been presenter, writer, quiz-show host, actor, translator and even (briefly) ballroom dancer. In a TV career of over 30 years, he’s won numerous awards, including three BAFTAs for his long-running Channel 4 satire series Bremner Bird & Fortune. In addition, he’s written and starred in satirical specials covering four elections, the Blair Government, the Iraq War, the financial crisis, and the Scottish Referendum. He’s guested on many other comedy shows (Whose Line is it Anyway, Spitting Image, Have I Got News for You, and Mock the Week, where he was team captain for two series), and has frequently appeared on Radio 4’s Newsquiz. He’s also written diaries and columns for the FT, New Statesman, and Daily Telegraph.

Eileen Burbidge is a Partner at Passion Capital, the pre-eminent early-stage technology venture fund based in London. She brings extensive operational experience to her investment activities gleaned from business and product roles at Yahoo!, Skype, Apple and elsewhere. On behalf of Passion, Eileen has served as non-executive director on a number of fast growing SMEs including Monzo Bank, Digital Shadows, Tide, Butternut Box, Prowler.io and Focal Point Positioning, among others.  In addition to Passion Capital, Eileen was until 2020 the Chair of Tech City UK, which is the British government-backed organisation supporting the digital economy across the UK. She is also the UK Treasury’s Special Envoy for FinTech appointed by the Chancellor; Tech Ambassador for the Mayor of London’s office and served on former UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s Business Advisory Group. 

Sir Anthony Seldon, Vice-Chancellor of The University of Buckingham since 2015, is one of Britain’s leading contemporary historians, educationalists, commentators and political authors. He was a transformative head for 20 years, first of Brighton College and then Wellington College. He is author or editor of over 40 books on contemporary history, including the inside books on the last four Prime Ministers, was the co-founder and first director of the Institute for Contemporary British History, is co-founder of Action for Happiness, honorary historical adviser to 10 Downing Street, UK Special Representative for Saudi Education, a member of the Government’s First World War Culture Committee, was chair of the Comment Awards, is a director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, the President of IPEN, (International Positive Education Network), Chair of the National Archives Trust, is patron or on the board of several charities, founder of the Via Sacra Western Front Walk, and was executive producer of the film Journey’s End. He appeared on the Desert Island Discs in 2016.  For the last fifteen years he has given all his money from writing and lecturing to charity.    He has three children; his wife of 34 years, Joanna, died of cancer in December 2016.

Natalie Campbell was appointed CEO of Belu Water in 2020. She is an award-winning social entrepreneur and HarperCollins author. She is co-founder of A Very Good Company, a global social innovation agency that has worked with brands like Virgin Media, Marks & Spencer, W Hotels, the Guardian and Channel 4. As a non-executive director, she chaired the Nominet Trust and National Council for Voluntary Youth Services and she was on the board of UnLtd, the Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs, for 10 years

As a Senior Vice President of Dell EMC’s Enterprise Sales Division, Dayne Turbitt is responsible for leading the transformation of the UK and Ireland organisation into a company that is dedicated to helping its Enterprise customers achieve success and to be leaders in their industry. Margarete McGrath works with a diverse group of Dell Technologies clients to support them with their digital and security transformations. She is a champion of diversity in digital and a strong advocate of STEM, a big believer in female entrepreneurship and green technology, and an advocate of Mental Health and Wellbeing in Dell. 

Cephas is the founder and photographer of the 56 Black Men movement and Drummer Boy Studios. After taking a series of portrait photographs of 56 black men in hoodies, he launched '56 Black Men' as a campaign in the UK focusing on changing the narrative of black men in the media as an introduction to a much wider conversation. The campaign was a response to the question of why the prevailing headline news about black men was always surrounding knife crime or violence, and challenges these negative stereotypes, while spotlighting the positive achievements of the black men in the series.

Born in the USA, today Russ Shaw is the man on a mission to turn London into the world-beating home of tech. Launching Tech London Advocates seven years ago to give the tech sector an independent voice, it has since been described by the Evening Standard as "London's most influential business network”. Now an established titan of tech himself, Russ has taken the Advocates model around the world to help more cities build their tech ecosystems.

One Young World’s mission is to create a better world, with more responsible and more effective leadership. Every year, One Young World achieves this by identifying, promoting and connecting the world’s most impactful young leaders. Kate Robertson launched the summit in London in 2010 with David Jones, and each year since it has brought more than 2,000 young leaders and hundreds of influential global counsellors to cities around the world from Bangkok to Bogota, to drive solutions to the world’s most pressing issues. Ella has overseen the annual summit as its managing director for the past five years.

Wayne Hemingway is the fashion founder who shook up an industry with the socially conscious label Red or Dead. Founded with his wife Gerardine, to this day Wayne continues to drive businesses to be more purposeful with Hemingway Design and The Good Business Festival – set to take place in Liverpool this October. With music, fashion and family at the centre of his journey, it's a story you don't want to miss.  Check out Wayne's lockdown list mentioned in today's episode right here! https://www.mixcloud.com/hemingwaywayne/ 

Caroline Casey is an activist with a global call to action, who says if disability is not on your board agenda, then neither is diversity. With The Valuable 500, she put disability inclusion on the main-stage agenda at the World Economic Forum for the first time, and continues to call on 500 global corporations to recognise the social, economic and business value of the one billion people living with a disability.

Change Makers will be back next week with more brand new episodes with the mission-driven leaders making a difference. Coming soon you'll hear from The Valuable 500 founder Caroline Casey, Hemingway Design and Red or Dead founder Wayne Hemingway, and One Young World's co-founder and managing director Kate Robertson and Ella Robertson. Stay tuned and subscribe now to get these episodes as soon as they are released.

Will Butler-Adams is the CEO of the folding two-wheeled wonder Brompton Bicycle. Since jumping into the saddle as the company’s managing director in 2008, Will has flown the flag for British ingenuity and turned ‘Brompton’ into a byword for creativity and innovation – taking the company from bicycle business to cycling sensation with over £25 million in turnover and more than 200 staff.

In 1995, Renée Elliott founded Planet Organic, the first organic supermarket in the UK and now a successful multi-million-pound brand. From an early age she was asking: is there a better way? And she has been committed to that ethos ever since. Hers is a healthy living story that has created a haven for food and encouraged more of us to make the right choices. Together with Sam Wigan, she is co-founder of business and life skills academy Beluga Bean.

Stephen is responsible for the overall management and strategic direction of the the world's largest active growth investor, BGF. The company believes in the power of brilliant businesses to drive innovation, generate progress and deliver prosperity. In less than a decade it has grown from 1 to 14 offices across the UK and Ireland, with nearly £2bn invested and a team of 170.

In parliament he’s a peer of the realm, in business he provides beer for the nation, Lord Bilimoria is the founder of one the UK’s most iconic brands, Cobra Beer. The Cobra taste is described as impossibly smooth, and you’d be hard pressed to find a better description for its founder. As a campaigning member of the House of Lords, chancellor of the University of Birmingham and now president of the CBI, his is a career of achievement and navigating change.

Dame Helena Morrissey has a mission to level the playing field. With the 30% Club, she is helping to bring more women into boardrooms and as the 'unofficial queen of the City', who better for the job? Helena has been named one of Fortune magazine’s World’s 50 Greatest Leaders and the Financial Times’ 2017 ‘Person of the Year’. Her first book ‘A Good Time to be a Girl, Don’t Lean In, Change the System' was described by Forbes as 'one of the five most empowering books for women' in 2018. Just don't call her superwoman!

Since co-founding WANdisco in Silicon Valley in 2005, David Richards has led the company on a course for rapid international expansion, opening offices in the UK, Japan and China. David spearheaded WANdisco to a hugely successful listing on the London Stock Exchange. A passionate advocate of entrepreneurship, David has established and successfully exited several highly successful Silicon Valley technology companies.

EPISODES 1-3 OUT FRIDAY This is Change Makers – the brand new podcast from the campaigns firm Seven Hills. Hosted by Michael Hayman MBE DL, this is the podcast for those who want to hear challenging ideas and amazing stories, from those who are making a difference in extraordinary times. The aim? To help you find your mission. Each episode features an exclusive interview with leaders from business, government and society; in these interviews you will hear lessons from lockdown, from those who are living it, learning from it and leading organisations through it. Michael Hayman is an entrepreneur, broadcaster and author; co-founder of Seven Hills, author of Mission: How The Best In Business Break Through (Penguin, 2015) and host of London Live's Capital Conversation. Change Makers: Find Your Mission