Speakers
Lord Victor Adebowale CBE
Chief Executive, Turning Point
Victor Adebowale is Chief Executive of Turning Point, the UK’s leading social care organisation, which has more than 200 services nationwide. Turning Point works with people facing a range of complex needs including substance misuse, mental health problems and learning disabilities.
Professor Paul Dolan
Professor of Economics at Tanaka Business School, Imperial College
The general theme of his research is how individual and social well-being should be defined, measured and distributed for the purposes of informing public policy.
Claire Fox
Director, Institute of Ideas and journalist
Claire Fox is the director of the Institute of Ideas (IoI), which she established to create a public space where ideas can be contested without constraint. Claire initiated the IoI while co-publisher of the controversial and ground-breaking current affairs journal LM magazine (formerly Living Marxism). The IoI has since worked with a variety of prestigious institutions in Britain and abroad.
Ailon Freedman
Wellbeing Expert & CEO of The Lotus Exchange
Ailon Freedman is the Founder and Director of The Lotus Exchange - the UK’s most diverse corporate wellbeing service. Its mission is to improve the health, wellbeing and happiness of individuals in their workplace through the delivery of “Corporate Chill” and “Corporate Funk” activities.
Enrico Giovannini
Chief Statistician, Organisation for Economic Cooperation & Development
Born in Rome on 6th June 1957, he graduated in Economics from “La Sapienza” University of Rome in March 1981. He continued his studies at the Institute of Economic Policy at the same Faculty, specialising in econometric analysis.
Lucy de Groot
Executive Director, IDeA
Lucy de Groot became Executive Director of the IDeA in September 2003. She was previously Director of Public Services in HM Treasury for three and a half years, responsible for major areas of public expenditure, as well as the delivery of public service agreements and a range of strategic policies including the Voluntary Sector and Every Child Matters.
Ian Johnston
Consultant
Dr Ian Johnston CB is a lifelong advocate of the value of vocational education and training.
Professor Lord Richard Layard
Founder and Director of LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance,
author of ‘Happiness: Lessons from a New Science’
Richard Layard is Emeritus Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, where he was until 2003 the founder-director of the Centre for Economic Performance. He now heads the Centre's Programme on Well-Being. Since 2000 he has been a member of the House of Lords.
Sir Richard Leese CBE
Leader, Manchester City Council
Sir Richard grew up in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire. After graduating from the University of Warwick, Richard worked as a teacher in Coventry and as an exchange teacher in the USA before moving to Manchester to take up a post as a youth worker.
Irene Lucas
Chief Executive, South Tyneside Council
Irene Lucas was appointed as Chief Executive of South Tyneside Council in 2002. She has had a long successful career in local government, spanning 34 years and a variety of local authorities. She is renowned for her passion for the improvement agenda through consultation with communities and inspiring those leading and delivering services to excel by working as One Team.
Rosie Milner
Positive psychology researcher, University of East London
Rosie Milner read philosophy at Cambridge University and was a student in the first cohort of Europe’s first Masters course in Applied Positive Psychology – the science of well-being – at the University of East London.
Geoff Mulgan
Director, Young Foundation
Since late 2004 Geoff Mulgan has been director of the Young Foundation. Between 1997 and 2004 Geoff had various roles in the UK government including director of the Government’s Strategy Unit and head of policy in the Prime Minister’s office. Before that he was the founder and director of the think-tank Demos and chief adviser to Gordon Brown MP. He has also worked in local government, the European Commission, and as a reporter for BBC TV and radio.
Paul Ormerod
Economist and author of “Why Most Things Fail... And how to avoid it”
Paul read economics at Cambridge and took the MPhil in economics at Oxford. He worked initially as a macro-economic forecaster and modeller at NIESR before moving to the private sector. He was Director of Economics at the Henley Centre for Forecasting for a decade.
Professor Anne Power
Professor of Social Policy and Deputy Director of the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE
Since 1965 Anne has been involved in European and American housing and urban problems. In 1966 she worked with Martin Luther King's 'End Slums' campaign in Chicago, and on her return to Britain organised community-based projects in Islington, Hackney and Tower Hamlets. From 1979 to 1989 she worked for the Department of the Environment and Welsh Office, setting up Priority Estates Projects to rescue run-down estates all over the country.
Rt Hon James Purnell MP
Secretary of State for Department of Work and Pensions
James Purnell was appointed Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in January 2008 following the resignation of Peter Hain.
Yvonne Roberts
Senior Associate, Health Launchpad
Yvonne's role in the Health Launchpad team is to seek out projects, social entrepreneurs and embryonic ideas to tackle chronic long term illness outside the mould of the NHS.
Dr Martin Seligman
Director of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Centre, and founder of Positive Psychology
Martin E.P. Seligman, Ph.D., works on learned helplessness, on depression, on optimism and pessimism, and on positive psychology. He is currently Fox Leadership Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. He is well known in academic and clinical circles and is a best-selling author.
Nicola Steuer
Head of nef's Centre for Wellbeing, New Economics Foundation
Nicola Steuer joined nef in June 2006 and is Head of the Centre for Wellbeing. Nicola contributes directly to the research and advocacy activities of the centre as well as managing the centre’s finances and overseeing the work of the centre’s research staff.
Professor Sarah Stewart-Brown
Chair of Public Health, Warwick University Medical School
Sarah Stewart-Brown is Professor of Public Health at Warwick University and Director of the Health Sciences Research Institute at Warwick Medical School. She has a longstanding interest in the promotion of mental wellbeing and has been particularly concerned with parenting as one approach to improving the nation’s health.
Caroline Tapster
Chief Executive, Hertfordshire County Council
Caroline joined Hertfordshire County Council in 1995 becoming Director of Adult Care Services in 2001 and was appointed Chief Executive in September 2003. She has previously worked in Dorset, East Sussex, and Kent County Council.
Diana Whitworth
Consultant
Diana co-ordinates the older people’s strand of the Wellbeing programme for the Young Foundation. Until recently she was co-director of Grandparents Plus, a charity that aims to raise awareness of the role of grandparents and the extended family in the lives of children.
Dr Chris Williams
Senior Lecturer in Psychiatry and Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist, University of Glasgow
Dr Williams' His main clinical and research interest is in the development and evaluation of the Five Areas CBT model - which aims to provide wider access to CBT approaches
