Annabel Deas is an investigative journalist at BBC Radio 4 based in Salford. In 2018 she was awarded funding by the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust to travel to the US to research best practice for telling the stories of marginalised people. She won The Orwell Prize for Exposing Britain’s Social Evils 2021 for her BBC Radio 5 Live seven-part podcast series, ‘Hope High’.
As Director of Partners for a New Economy, Jo leads a grant-making fund seeking to catalyse transformational change in our economy so that nature and all people can flourish. She is also a Visiting Professor at Cranfield University and the author of Equal Power: Gender Equality and How to Achieve It (Atlantic Books, 2018). Jo was previously an MP, Business Minister and Leader of the Liberal Democrats.
Kirsty McNeill is Save the Children’s Executive Director for Policy, Advocacy and Campaigns. Previously, she founded a consultancy advising some of the world’s leading social purpose organisations and spent three years as a Special Adviser in Number 10. She chairs Larger Us, the Civic Power Fund and the Aid Alliance and is on the boards of the Holocaust Educational Trust, the Coalition for Global Prosperity, IPPR, and the Center for Countering Digital Hate. She tweets at @kirstyjmcneill.
Sophia is a multi-award winning campaigner and currently the Head of Advocacy and Communications at the anti-poverty organisation Little Village. Sophia’s specialism is Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, which is threaded into her work in various sectors over the past 10 years. Sophia has a background in investigative journalism, research and participation, which she uses to build public will and tackle inequalities.
Sophia leads a major new programme of work at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, to imagine, seed and grow radical new approaches to tackling poverty. Previously, Sophia was CEO of Little Village, a London-based charity that she set up in 2016 that works to tackle child poverty. She’s held senior roles at the thinktanks Resolution Foundation and Demos.
Alice Miles is Director of Strategy and Policy for the Office of the Children’s Commissioner. Alice leads on setting and implementing the strategy and business plan for the Children’s Commissioner, oversees policy development and communications, and has deputising responsibilities for the Commissioner. Former Associate Editor for The Times and national newspaper columnist of the year, Alice also has a wealth of experience gained at the heart of Government. She was senior policy advisor to the Secretary of State for Education and Minister for Children and Families from 2012-15, focusing on child protection and social work reform, and has also acted as senior policy advisor at the Ministry of Justice and Cabinet Office.
Professor Donna Hall has been described as a “public service pioneer” by the Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham. She was awarded a CBE in 2009 for innovation in public service. She was CEO of Wigan Council for 8 years and developed The Wigan Deal – a new relationship with residents which delivered 160 million savings and improved services and resident satisfaction. She is now the chair of the innovative national think tank New Local and the Chair of Bolton NHS Foundation Trust. She was appointed as an Honorary Professor of Politics at the University of Manchester in August 2019 and is a Non-Executive Adviser to Birmingham City Council. Adopted as a child she is passionate about person-centred public services and communities.
Ian Birrell is a columnist and foreign correspondent who won the 2020 Orwell Prize for Exposing Britain’s Social Evils for his searing investigation into the abuse of vulnerable people within the healthcare system. Ian is a contributing editor of The Mail on Sunday in foreign reporting and investigations, has a weekly column in the ‘i’ paper and regularly writes for UnHerd. He has also written for The Times, The Washington Post, The Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Sun, The Spectator, Tortoise and The Wall Street Journal among others.
Paul Kissack was previously a Director General in the UK Government working on the national response to the COVID-19 crisis. He has held Director General roles at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and the Department for Education (DfE) and was Deputy Chief Executive for Policy and Organisational Strategy at the Ministry for Children in New Zealand. He has also held senior roles in HM Treasury, the Cabinet Office, and a local authority, and has worked throughout his career on economic and social policy issues and public service reform.
Rianna Croxford is an award-winning investigative journalist at BBC News. In March 2020 she was appointed as the BBC’s Community Affairs Correspondent with a remit to report on diverse and underserved audiences across the UK and has since also reported for BBC Panorama. She was a Gold Winner in the News category at the MHP “30 to Watch” awards for her news coverage of the coronavirus pandemic and recently won “New Journalist of the Year” at the British Journalism Awards 2020. Rianna worked at the Financial Times while training to become a journalist after graduating from Cambridge University with a degree in English Literature in 2017.
Farrah Storr is the Editor-in-Chief of ELLE. Prior to this, Farrah was the Editor in Chief of Cosmopolitan from July 2015 until April 2019 and in that time, Farrah grew the brand to become the No.1 UK women’s glossy. Previously, Farrah was the launch Editor of Women’s Health magazine. Under her direction, Women’s Health became the most successful women’s magazine launch of the decade. Her achievements were recognised by the British Society for Magazine Editors when she won the prestigious award ‘New Editor of the Year’ in 2014.
In 2019 Farrah was awarded Editor of the Year at the PPA Awards, for the second year running and most recently was included in the Evening Standard’s Progress 1000 list of London’s most influential people of 2019. In 2018, Farrah was named Editor of the Year at the BSMEs and was also named as one of the 36 BAME people on the Guardian’s list of the 1,000 most powerful people in Britain. She is the author of The Discomfort Zone.
Abigail is Deputy Director of Advocacy and Public Engagement at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. She is driving JRF’s strategy to reframe the public conversation and narratives about people and communities trapped in poverty.
Abigail works with filmmakers, writers, the media, cultural institutions, social influencers and activists, to commission and produce authentic and diverse stories with the purpose of reaching new audiences, opening up minds and shifting attitudes. She recently collaborated with BAFTA nominated documentary maker Sean McAllister on A Northern Soul.
Max Daly is a journalist and author specialising in illegal drugs and crime. He is the Global Drugs Editor at VICE Media and the co-author of ‘Narcomania: How Britain Got Hooked on Drugs’. He is the winner of the 2019 Orwell Prize for Exposing Britain’s Social Evils for ‘Behind County Lines’.
Professor Rosie Campbell is Professor of Politics and Director of the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership. Prior to joining King’s in 2018 she held positions at Birkbeck and UCL. She is a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. She has recently written on barriers to participation in politics, gendered patterns of support for the populist radical right and what voters want from their elected representatives.
Her publications cover the subjects of voting behaviour, public opinion, the politics of diversity and political recruitment. She is the principle investigator of the ESRC funded Representative Audit of Britain, which surveyed all candidates standing in the 2015 and 2017 British General Elections, and co-investigator of a Leverhulme funded study of British parliamentary candidates and MPs from 1945-2015: www.parliamentarycandidates.org.
Rosie has co-authored reports for the Fawcett Society, The Expert Panel on Electoral Reform for the Welsh Assembly, the EHRC, BBC Radio Four’s Woman’s Hour, The Electoral Commission, The Fabian Women’s Network and The Hansard Society.
Iain Dale presents the Evening Show on LBC Radio (Monday-Thursday 7pm-10pm). He was named Radio Presenter of the Year for 2013 & 2016 at the Arqiva Awards and was shortlisted for Speech programme of the year at the 2013 Sony Radio Awards. He joined LBC in 2010 and presented the Drivetime show for five and a half years, from March 2013 until August 2018. He has presented three LBC General Election Night Shows, two American Presidential Election overnight shows, as well as the stations Scottish and Brexit referendum night shows. Iain is a panellist on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays on CNN Talk at 12 noon on CNN International.
Iain is a regular contributor to Newsnight, the Andrew Marr Show, Good Morning Britain and Channel 5’s Jeremy Vine (formerly The Wright Stuff). Iain co-hosts a weekly podcast with former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith called ‘For the Many’, the ‘Iain Dale Book Club’ podcast, and also a podcast of his weekly ‘Cross Question’ political panel show – all available through iTunes, Google Podcasts and all other major podcast platforms.
Until June 2018 Iain was managing director of Britain’s leading political publisher, Biteback Publishing. He formed the company in 2009 and published more than 600 books including Power Trip by Damian McBride and the bestseller, Call me Dave: The Unauthorised Biography of David Cameron by Michael Ashcroft and Isabel Oakeshott as well as The Alastair Campbell Diaries.
Sarah O’Connor writes about the changing world of work for the Financial Times, where she is an investigations correspondent and columnist. She joined the FT in 2007 as a graduate trainee, and in the subsequent decade she has covered the US economy from Washington, the UK economy from London and the financial crisis from Reykjavik. Her coverage of the labour market won the Wincott Prize for Financial Journalism in 2017, while her regular op-ed column won Economics Commentator of the year at the 2017 Comment Awards and Business Commentator of the year at the 2018 Comment Awards. Her story about “Shit Life Syndrome” in Blackpool won the Orwell Prize for Exposing Britain’s Social Evils in 2018.
Rosie Millard OBE is CEO of Children and the Arts, a national charity which works to engage all children with great art across the country. One of HRH Prince of Wales’ charities, Children and the Arts has worked with over 10,000 children to enable them to have transformative, inspiring and creative arts experiences in all fields of art. She is also Chair of BBC Children in Need, the BBC’s charity which every year helps bring happiness and transform outcomes for children across the UK.
From 2014-2018 Rosie Millard was the Chair of Hull City of Culture 2017, a £32.5 million programme which opened in January 2017. Darren Henley, CEO of the Arts Council of England has called Hull’s year an “unmitigated, rip-roaring, awe-inspiring, life-enhancing success.” Being City of Culture has had a transformative effect on the Yorkshire city, achieving 90% engagement amongst its citizens, involving every single one of its 55,000 children and bringing in millions of tourists. Rosie was called upon to speak at a vast array of public events on a national level, championing Hull and its unique cultural offer in the national media including all the broadsheets, the Today programme, BBC News, Sky News, and ITV. She is a Trustee of Opera North, which brings opera to communities and audiences largely (but not exclusively) across the North of England.
Nick is a Senior Fellow at The King’s Fund, where he works on a range of policy projects. Between 1996 and 2011, he was Public Policy Editor of the Financial Times. He is also the author of The Five Giants: A Biography of the Welfare State (new edition, 2017).