Archives: Ambassadors

Tom Levitt is a writer and consultant on responsible business, a field he has worked in since 2010 following 13 years as a Member of Parliament. In 2015 he helped to found the anti-poverty social enterprise, Fair for You, and has held several positions as a charity chair and company director. His books include ‘The Company Citizen’ and ‘The Courage to Meddle’, a biography of FDR’s Labor Secretary, Frances Perkins. As a consultant his clients have included major businesses, think tanks, councils and charities, and he’s carried out ground-breaking research on the role of small businesses in the community.

He is an advisor to the Lloyds Bank Centre for Responsible Business at Birmingham University and sat on the British Standards Institute committee looking at the measurement of social value.

Until recently he was a member of the independent sustainability advisory panel for Walgreen Boots Alliance.

Starting his career as a science teacher in secondary schools, Tom lives in West London and is a season ticket holder at Brentford FC. He has written stage plays and, most recently, a political thriller.

Edward Lucas is a writer and consultant specialising in European and transatlantic security. His expertise also includes energy, cyber-security, espionage, information warfare and Russian foreign and security policy.

Formerly a senior editor at The Economist, the world’s foremost newsweekly, he is now a senior vice-president at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). He writes a weekly column in the London Times.

In 2008 he wrote The New Cold War, a prescient account of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, followed in 2011 by Deception, an investigative account of east-west espionage. His latest print book is Cyberphobia. He has also written two e-books on espionage: The Snowden Operation and Spycraft Rebooted. He has contributed to books on religion, on media ethics and on the significance of Andrei Sakharov’s legacy.

An experienced broadcaster, public speaker, moderator and panelist, Edward Lucas has given public lectures at Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge and other leading universities. He is a regular contributor to the BBC’s Today and Newsnight programmes, and to NPR, CNN and Sky News.

For many years a foreign correspondent, he was based in Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Moscow and the Baltic states. He now lives in London. He concluded his time at The Economist as the editor responsible for the daily news app Espresso. He also wrote obituaries. A weekly syndicated column has appeared in English and other languages since 2005. In 1992 he co-founded an English-language weekly in Tallinn, Estonia: the Baltic Independent.

His undergraduate degree is from the London School of Economics and he speaks five languages — German, Russian, Polish, Czech and Lithuanian.

He is married to the writer Cristina Odone and has three children. His father is the Oxford philosopher JR Lucas.

With a background as a Lawyer, David has spent the last 20 years working in the Pensions and Financial Services Sectors. He is a champion of positive consumer outcomes and in that regard has been an advisor to the FCA, the Pensions Regulator, the Dormant Asset Commission, the Pensions Dashboard project, TISA’s BSI tracing guidelines, PASA Pensions Dashboard Working Group and Friends of Auto Enrolment.

David has been involved with The Transparency Taskforce since its inception and strongly believes it is a fantastic force for good.

For too long the consumer has suffered, often unknowingly, from industry sectors that fail to treat their customers fairly.

Rachel is a Researcher at the High Pay Centre, an independent think tank campaigning for more responsible business with a focus on executive pay and intra-company inequality. The High Pay Centre aims to influence both business practice and policy-making in these areas. Rachel has recently written research reports on the new pay ratio disclosures for UK companies and on the use of employee metrics in performance-related executive pay.

She has a long-standing interest in work and pay: prior to joining the High Pay Centre, she was a researcher in Lord Robert Skidelsky’s parliamentary office, where she looked at the impact of automation on work and contributed to a report commissioned by John McDonnell MP, ‘How to Achieve Shorter Working Hours’.

Rachel is keen to continue working with like-minded people from the Transparency Task Force to hold employers to account on their social and environmental practices.

William leads the University of Surrey’s Technology Transfer Office: managing and growing the pipeline of University-wide commercialisation opportunities through development of policy frameworks, governance structures and communication plans; raising finance; ensuring intellectual property is protected; exploiting University research/expertise to generate income & impact via licensing technology and creating spin-out companies.

Previously, in 2014, with financial support from Innovate UK (the UK Government’s innovation agency) William created an R&D project called ‘systemsync’ which harnessed cloud technology to reduce costs associated with transfer of business data between organisations. This lead to the creation of a technology start-up known as pensionsync which pioneered the electronic transfer of financial data between payroll software and pension providers. In August 2019 pensionsync was acquired by Australian cloud payroll provider KeyPay.

William has a Ph.D and a 1st BSc (hons) in Computer Science from the University of Nottingham.
He is a member of the Money and Pensions Service ‘pensions dashboard’ Steering Group, and has a lifetime achievement award from the Chartered Institute of Payroll Professionals.

Steve has managed the Secretariat of the UN Global Compact Network UK since 2008, connecting UK companies and other organisations in a global movement dedicated to driving corporate sustainability and the Sustainable Development Goals. He also Chairs UNGC’s Global Network Council and sits on the UN Global Compact Board.

He was previously a Programme Director at the International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF) leading projects across a wide range of responsible business issue areas. Prior to joining IBLF, Steve was the founder and Managing Director of a successful retail sports equipment business in Canada.

Steve has a B.Comm from the University of British Columbia and an MSc in Business & Environment from Imperial College London.

Jide is currently a Senior Investment Stewardship Analyst with Vanguard, covering both EMEA and APAC regions. In this role, he is responsible for engaging with companies on topical ESG issues with a view to ensuring their long term success.

Jide has over 5 years governance experience, joining Vanguard’s Investment Stewardship team from a position as Senior Governance Analyst at Grant Thornton UK’s Governance and Board Advisory team; providing Board evaluation and governance benchmarking services to some of the UK’s largest companies.

Jide began his governance career at the UK proxy advisory firm, PIRC and with time was tasked with leading the North American and UK Governance services in that order. He has an LLM in Law from the University of Aberdeen as well as Associate status (ACG) with the Chartered Governance Institute.

Steve has over thirty years’ experience working in the life insurance market in the UK, Europe and the Far East. A Chartered Insurer, he has been responsible for some of the more innovative developments within the protection market specifically wrapping around the customer. Originally trained as an underwriter, Steve has extensive experience of working in product development, distribution management and risk assessment. He is the current Chairman of ILAG and also an Advisory Director for LegaCare, the legal charity based in the North East of England, whose aim is to provide peace of mind, dignity and quality of life to people diagnosed with life limiting/life threatening illness.