Wavelength - connecting visionary companies

During his 25 years experience in the media and publishing industry, Mike Anderson developed significant and varied operational experience and a reputation for success. A particular specialist in national newspapers, where the core focus has been to retain a competitive advantage, he has successfully driven businesses, been the creator of new brands, managed start ups and re-positioned transitions, whilst always managing tight budgets and profit expectation. His versatility and ability to interpret brand values, along with his passionate and instinctive management style, took him to the top as Managing Director of The Sun, The News of the World, The Evening Standard and Metro working alongside some of the most notable names in the media world. 

In these roles, Mike’s absolute understanding of all the relevant competitive environments enabled him to respond to a fast and constantly changing market with innovative management concepts and an absolute strategic belief.

In October 2009, Mike Anderson set up Frank, a strategic business and communications consultancy where he mentors businesses to maximise their potential for growth and success, using inspirational and unique techniques. He was immediately retained by News International.

In March 2010, Mike founded the Chelsea Apps Factory. His ambition is to professionalise the Apps space and bring order to the disorder by recruiting senior executives from commerce and blending them with world class technologists. The Chelsea Apps Factory already has a number of blue chip clients, Vodafone, Telegraph, RBS and CNBC. 

This is his first venture outside of the corporate environment which he has personally funded.

Mike lives in London with three daughters and has an all round enthusiasm for life!

Jacob has no formal education, but since he is probably not like anyone you’ve met before, that doesn’t matter. He is the founder of Copenhagen-based consultancy Wemind that helps organisations around the world involve their customers or colleagues through social media. He was one of the first people to podcast, tweet and blog, and along the way he’s been reflecting on what it means for business. Since 2005 he has been consulting businesses and prime ministers on how to use social media.

Invite Jacob to your event for a jolt of inspiration on how you could radically change the way you do business through social media and start building your organisation’s social capital. Jacob brings to life examples of how companies like Skype and Threadless are disrupting entire industries through a completely new model of doing business. We guarantee you’ll be left with at least five new ideas on how to improve your business, once Jacob has left the room.

Sam is a GP and an extraordinary man. Totally committed to the health of the poor and highly innovative in the ways he delivers health care.

His medical centre is used by the government as a model for "healthy living centres" and NHS Lift premises. It was formally designated by Government as a ‘healthy living centre’ in 2000 and achieved Beacon Status in 2001. In 2003 it was designated by government as a national "children’s centre".

The centre recognizes the holistic approach to health and health care and the importance of education, the environment, arts and employment. The centre includes over one hundred projects and social enterprises including complimentary therapies, art studios, a nursery, community care projects, landscape and graphic design, public art and a community café. It is a unique partnership between the private, public and voluntary sector, the community and patients. The majority of the centre's users come from minority ethnic groups living in one of the most deprived areas of the country.

Sam is a qualified Barrister and a member of BMA and GMC Council. In 1999 he received an OBE for services to inner city primary care and in 2006, and The International Award of Excellence in Health Care. He is a director of Community Health Partnerships (NHS Lift).

Sam was the first medic on scene at the 7/7 bus bombing in London.

Andy is a luxury brand architect and customer-champion with a background in automotive marketing and management and customer experience delivery - he has had a 20-year career in the luxury automotive industry working with Aston Martin, Rolls-Royce, Lamborghini, Bugatti, and Bentley. Andy has been a catalyst for change within each organisation.

Carole Stone for many years was the producer of BBC Radio 4's flagship current affairs discussion programme Any Questions?, inviting the most interesting and influential people in the country to discuss the issues of the day.

Since leaving the BBC Carole has worked as a freelance journalist and broadcaster, and as a self-employed media consultant to chairmen and chief executives of major British companies. With more than 40,000 names in her electronic address book she’s been called London’s networking queen – she’s famous for putting people together to their mutual advantage. Carole calls that ‘good networking’.

She is an elected governor of the Tavistock  & Portman NHS Foundation Trust;  patron of the two mental health charities SANE and Triumph over Phobia;  a patron of the Facial Surgery Research Foundation, Saving Faces;  a partner in the debating forum Intelligence Squared;  a Counsellor for One Young World and a member of the Appeals Committee for Combat Stress, The Enemy Within.

In April 2007 Carole became Managing Director of YouGovStone, a joint venture with the online market research agency YouGov plc, where she established the YGS ThinkTank – a global panel of over 4,000 people who are leaders in their field – the ‘influentials’.   The panel includes people from the world of politics, business, media, academia and charities who are based both in the UK and throughout the world.   YouGovStone carries out opinion research surveys both online and face-to-face.

In May 2009 Carole formed TheStoneClub – a private members club, part social, part business, where members meet to discuss social issues that concern us all - what she calls a meeting of minds.

Dan has been with innocent since the company started and has helped to create the quirky, successful, and much loved brand innocent is today. Learn how they came to be one of the top three fastest growing companies in the UK - a story that involves innovation, entrepreneurial spirit, and fruit!

Andy Parfitt is among the UK's most experienced leaders in media. He holds the record as the longest serving Controller of the BBC's youth orientated Radio 1 and has held the positions of Controller Popular Music, Radio 1Xtra, the Asian Network, and caretaker Controller 5 Live at the BBC. He has recently been appointed the Director of Executive Talent for Saatchi & Saatchi/FallonGroup.

Andy is widely credited with leading an extraordinarily successful period of re-generation of Radio 1 - he left thepost in July 2011 with audiences for all his stations at record levels and crucially the web performance of Radio 1 the biggest, by far, in the sector. In summary he has created one of the biggest youth brands in Europe through a period of seismic change in the media landscape.

Andy has a wide ranging set of experiences to draw on; from the Wharton Business School and The Stanford Research Institute - to John Peel's recording studio or backstage at the Glastonbury Festival. And now at the UK's most famous advertising and creative agency Saatchi & Saatchi.

He has a thoughtful contribution to make on leadership and successful team development, particularly in younger, creative organisations. He has trained and practices as an Executive Coach and practices with a wide range of clients and organisations such as Comic Relief, and the BBC.

David Smith has 34 years Corporate experience of change management, the last 15 years of which were spent in the turnaround of the Asda Retail Business. Asda has been transformed from a bankrupt broken business to the highly successful retailer it is today, and has also achieved the status of being the Best Place to work in the UK Sunday Times Survey. David and his Team led many of the changes which created a highly productive performance based culture, and laid the foundations for commercial success.

David was People and IT Director at Asda, and was on the Executive Board for 10 years.

Today, David is a highly respected Author, Business Speaker and Consultant. He has also been requested to Mentor a limited number of CEOs and HRDs. He is also the Chairman of the Institute for Employment Studies.

David speaks to both UK and International Conferences about the 7 Principles of Building a High Performance Culture, utilising the Asda case study and other International examples. He runs Masterclasses on these Principles, including the very important topics of Performance Management; Style of Leadership for effective change and powerful business Communication. David also speaks on Leadership in Tough Times; effective Execution and other facets of People Management.

David's style is to engage with his audience and to tell stories to bring his points alive. He is impactful, taking a simple and practical approach to complex issues.

Doug Richard tells stories: stories drawn from 25 years of experience in starting and growing high technology businesses. In his time he has started, grown and sold 4 companies, run a NASDAQ listed public software company, invested in over 20 startups, invested over $120Million USD into high tech companies in the UK as an institutional investor and taught over 10,000 people how to start their own company through his social enterprise School for Startups.

Due to his development and leadership of technology and software ventures, Doug featured in the first two TV series of Dragons’ Den. He is an active angel investor, the Founder of School for Startups, was Chairman of the Conservative Party Small Business Task Force, is non-executive director of BrightPearl Software Love2scoot . Between 1996 and 2000 Doug was President and CEO of Micrografx, a US publicly quoted software company. Prior to that he also founded and subsequently sold two other companies: Visual Software and ITAL Computers.

Doug holds a BA in Psychology from University of California at Berkeley and a Juris Doctor at the school of Law, University of California at Los Angeles. In 2006 Doug was the first American to receive The Queen's Award for Enterprise Promotion, in 2007 he became a fellow of the RSA. In 2009 Doug received an Honorary Doctorate of the University of Essex for his contribution to entrepreneurship education. In 2010 Doug was awarded Enterprise Educator of the Year. In 2010 and 2011 he was a guest lecturer on Entrepreneurship at Cambridge University for the Nanotech Masters and PHD programme.

One of the UK’s most successful social and philanthropic entrepreneurs, Emma Harrison CBE has spent 21 years in business, helping individuals in disadvantaged situations find work and rediscover their ambition and motivation.

As founder, chairman and owner of A4e she has transformed the business from a Sheffield based training company to the current global leader in social and welfare reform. 

Emma created A4e in her home town of Sheffield, with the aim to ‘improve people’s lives'.  A4e has now helped over 1m people back in to work and operates in 11 countries, employs over 3,300 staff and has a turnover close to £200million.

Emma’s latest endeavour has seen her appointed as David Cameron’s ‘Family Champion’ in December 2010. She is volunteering her time to spearhead the ‘Working Families Everywhere’ campaign, which aims to help more than 100,000 unemployed families working within five years.

A committed supporter of the third sector, she founded the Foundation for Social Improvement (FSI) a charity which supports small charities in the UK to increase their knowledge to make them more effective and ultimately self sustaining.

She has won a whole host of awards for her achievements -including:
2007 The NatWest Everywoman Award, 2007 Credit Suisse Award for the Outstanding Woman in Business Award finalist, 2006 Veuve Clicquot finalist, 2004 Management Today Top 100Entrepreneurs, 2004 Regional Entrepreneur of the Year, 2003 Inner-City UK Woman Entrepreneur of the Year Presented by Gordon Brown, 2002 Richard Branson's Fast Track 100 Motivation Award and The International Chamber of Commerce has named her the UK's Outstanding Businessperson of the Year.

She lives at Thornbridge Hall, Derbyshire with her husband Jim and their four children.

After working at the Grameen Bank and World Bank in Bangladesh, Faisel Rahman developed the first microcredit program in the UK 2000. Over 5 years he helped hundred of excluded women start businesses and received accolades from the Bank of England and the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Realising that many potential and poor entrepreneurs suffered debt and financial management problems, Faisel proved that paying for debt counselling today saved Housing Associations money in the future. The project saved hundreds from eviction and dealt with millions of pounds of overindebtedness through a sustainable business model.

In 2005 he created Fair Finance its aim is to revolutionise personal finance to make it more inclusive and equitable, starting with the people the banks have left behind. Its products include personal finance, money advice and microfinance. Fair Finance has grown to become one of the most innovative and respective community finance initiatives in the country that has successfully raised commercial finance and social investment to become sustainable. Its rapid growth has seen it receive much recognition both in the media and within the third sector, and also locally where it has helped thousands of financially excluded residents in East London.

Faisel was a founding board member of the London Community Recycling Network, and is currently a board member the European Microfinance Network. In 2007 he was elected one of the first UK Ashoka Fellows in recognition of his work in social enterprise and the potential to make system changing impact. In 2009 he was elected a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. He is also currently a columnist for the Guardian on financial exclusion issues.

Many people say they know how to lead in extraordinary circumstances. Many people claim they can get the best out of people under intense pressure. Floyd Woodrow who has seen combat as a member of the SAS – he was the youngest recruit at 22 for the elite force – has indeed led in extraordinary circumstances and led people in life or death situations. Decorated for gallantry during his time in the armed forces, Floyd is now an international businessman and is operations director for Cerberus.

Whether negotiating the release of hostages in Nigeria, advising his corporate clients on security, or coaching Olympic athletes, Floyd draws on an amazing breadth of experience to address his favourite themes of creating a clear vision which is understood by people with their heads and their hearts; how to be decisive, robust and flexible in decision making; and how to be ruthless when necessary, all whilst still holding on to your values.

During the last six years Floyd has become an international coach and developed a unique insight into areas of psychology working with social enterprises, blue chip companies and sports men and women. He enables people to gain a powerful insight into how they lead themselves and others. He combines a rare blend of emotional intelligence with a demand for excellence.

www.chrysalis-worldwide.com

Gay Coley joined the Eden Project in 1997 after five years as Director of Finance at the University of Plymouth, one of the most successful new universities in the UK. She describes the move as “like stepping from an oil tanker onto a small speedboat with no petrol”. Her first job was to make the Project financially and commercially secure and she led the delivery of the groundbreaking public and private sector funding programme for the £140 million Project, winning Finance Team of the Year in 2001.

Eden has been an inspiration to many and over the last ten years under Gay’s commercial leadership as MD, Eden has attracted over 10 million visitors and has been a major economic engine, adding over £9m to the local economy.

Gay has a passion for education as a tool of transformation and after growing up in South Wales, studied Economics at London University.

She went into the City to understand how to unlock resources and qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Touche Ross. She moved to the West Country in 1987 and was voted Best Chartered Accountant in the 2005 ICAEW Regional Awards.

In 2009 Gay received the CBI Real Business First Women Award in Tourism and Leisure.

She is currently leading the strategy to extend Eden’s influential environmental brand and programmes across the world.

Netherlands-born Gerard van Grinsven, a former Ritz-Carlton executive, has much of his career in the hospitality, food and beverage industry, traveling on an incredible global odyssey through many of the world’s most acclaimed hotels–The Mandarin in Jakarta, The Oriental in Bangkok, the Ramada Renaissance in Hong Kong, the Peninsula in Manila and the Hotel Inter-Continental in Berlin.

Wherever he goes, van Grinsven’s commitment to service excellence is legendary. In all, he has opened 20 Ritz-Carlton hotels worldwide, with each achieving the highest level of customer satisfaction.

“To be successful and provide great customer service, it all starts with creating a positive environment for your employees.” he says.

“If they feel like they are being treated with trust, respect and dignity and are empowered to make decisions, the service they provide to customers will be exceptional.”

Taking this philosophy of employee and customer engagement, van Grinsven parlayed his experience in the luxury hotel business to an industry where he takes care of a different type of “guest.”

In 2010, amid the worst economic downturn in more than a generation, the grand, $360-million Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital opened in West Bloomfield, Michigan. It’s a LEED (Leadership in Energy Efficiency and Design)-certified, Feng Shui-designed hospital and community wellness centre with private rooms overlooking a pond, landscaped courtyards and 160 acres of wetlands and woodlands. With 24-hour room service, WiFi and live feeds of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, it’s an extraordinary example of what healthcare can look like. And it’s all being managed under the leadership of now ex-hotelier Gerard van Grinsven.

For three years prior to opening, van Grinsven used his entire skill set to plan and design the hospital. “From the get-go, I said that the food in the hospital would be the finest in the country,” he says. Gone are the deep fryers and freezers, and ingredients are fresh, and all meals are prepared on demand. “Food in the old days was medicine; it was healing. We feel strongly that we must be proactive through food and educate the community on how to avoid or better manage chronic diseases.”

And the focus on wellness doesn’t stop there.

From a full service wellness and integrative medicine centre Vita, to a destination healthy café, Henry’s, to retail shops focused on healthy living adjacent to a 90 seat kitchen auditorium that holds cooking classes for patients and the community, this is not your typical hospital. “We’re about to build a state-of-the-art green house which will give us another incredible opportunity to educate our community,” van Grinsven points out.

“In addition to the great clinical excellence we bring to the table, we are really creating a community centre for well-being, instead of just a hospital,” says van Grinsven. “When people walk through our doors we have a window of opportunity to help them think differently about how they can change their lives.”

“Members of the community can come to us when they are healthy to learn about and participate in activities and programs that will help them in their pursuit of living a healthy, optimal life. This is a hospital designed to keep you well.”

Ultimately, van Grinsven is not interested in simply running the Taj Mahal of hospitals. Many of the innovations are geared toward improving outcomes and reducing costs. For example, having all private rooms decreases the chances of infection, meaning less patients getting sick while they are in the hospital and a reduction in readmission rates and length of stay. 

The ultimate goal, van Grinsven says, is for the hospital to catalyze the development of a new model for the delivery of health care, one that lowers costs through wellness prevention.

“If we combine the very best clinical programs with exceptional service and a focus on wellness, we can challenge the entire health care industry and set a new standard for care in this country.”

Helena Kennedy is a leading barrister and an expert in human rights law, civil liberties and constitutional issues. She is a member of the House of Lords and chair of Justice – the British arm of the International Commission of Jurists. She is a bencher of Gray's Inn and President of the School of Oriental and African studies, University of London. She was the chair of Charter 88, the Human Genetics Commission, and the British Council. She also chaired the Power Inquiry, which reported on the state of British democracy and produced the Power Report in 2006. She has received honours for her work on human rights from the governments of France and Italy and has been awarded more than thirty honorary doctorates.

In Helena's practice of law as a barrister – she is a member of the Doughty Street Chambers in London – she has acted in many of the most prominent cases of the last 30 years including the Brighton Bombing, the Michael Bettany espionage trial, the Guildford Four appeal and the bombing of the Israeli embassy. She has also acted in many homicide trials with a domestic setting. She was the British member of the recent International Bar Association Task Force on Terrorism. As a life peer she also participates in the House of Lords on issues concerned with human rights, civil liberties, social justice and culture. She has led the opposition to encroachments on the right to jury trial and for her courageous stand against the government was awarded the Spectator's Parliamentary Campaigner of the Year Award in 2000.

Helena was a seminal force in promoting equal opportunities for women at the Bar. Ahead of her time, she was a singular voice in the seventies and eighties, writing and broadcasting on the discrimination experienced by women in the law, as lawyers but also as users of the law - victims and defendants. She became a member of the Bar Council to champion women in the profession and called for research into the experience of women lawyers and particularly their absence on the Bench. This led to changes in policy in the Lord Chancellor's Department and codes of practice at the Bar. For her work for women she received the Times Newspaper's Lifetime Achievement award in 1999.

Helena was a commissioner on the National Commission for Education 1991—1993 and then chaired the Further Education Commission into Widening Participation which produced the seminal report Learning Works 1997. As a result the sector created a trust in her name - the Helena Kennedy Foundation - which provides bursaries to help the most disadvantaged in society move into Higher Education.

She is currently on the board of the Independent newspaper, a member of the Media Standards Trust, a trustee of the British Museum and of the Booker Trust. She is a patron of many charities, including Poets in the City, Safe Hands( a charity which supports maternal and infant health in Ethiopia), MAP (Medical Aid for Palestinians of which she is President) the Civil Liberties Trust and the Patients Association.

www.helenakennedy.co.uk

John Timpson is the Chairman of Timpson, the family owned, fiercely independent and proudly maverick high street retailer. For nearly 140 years, the company has made, sold or repaired shoes. Today it offers cobbling, key cutting, engraving and watch repairs through its 850 stores. John is renowned for his Upside Down Management philosophy that pushes as much control as possible to the guys running the shops. He has championed a culture in which store managers set prices, order the stock, and have huge scope to provide excellent customer service.

A best selling author, Daily Telegraph columnist and sought after speaker, John is a no nonsense man, his insights rooted in many years at the sharp end of retailing. He has bought failing high street brands – Speilmann, Mister Minit among them – and breathed new life into them.

John talks with great insight and humour about leadership, achieving and sustaining service excellence and how to create a level of employee engagement which has made Timpsons officially one of the best companies to work for again and again – placed in top ten of Sunday Times Great Place to Work awards every year they have entered.

John is a renowned philanthropist and has aligned the business’s drive for profitability and excellence with its social mission. One of his recent innovations is a training scheme inside Liverpool Prison.

James is MD of Timpson, one of the most successful retailers in the UK, a company with an outstanding reputation for employee engagement, service excellence and social innovation. Timpson has a unique culture based on recruiting personalities and is famous for its 'upside down management'.

Jude Kelly is the Artistic Director of Britain’s largest cultural institution, Southbank Centre. She is an award-winning director of over 40 productions for stage and screen. In her 30-year career, Jude founded Solent People's Theatre and then Battersea Arts Centre, establishing it as a national venue.

In 1985, she joined the York Festival as Artistic Director and then the Royal Shakespeare Company, before becoming the founding director of the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds. As Artistic Director and then CEO of the country’s largest regional theatre, she established the West Yorkshire Playhouse as an acknowledged centre of excellence on a local, national and international scale, developing an ever-expanding policy of access for all. In 1997, she was awarded the OBE for her services to the theatre.

Jude left the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 2002 to found METAL, artistic laboratory spaces in London and Liverpool. METAL provides a platform for creative 'hunches' and ideas to be pursued. It also involves cross-art collaborations at an international level and developing strategic projects to affect the built environment, people, communities and philosophies. Amongst her many successes as a director, Jude’s production of Singin’ in the Rain transferred twice to the Royal National Theatre and was awarded the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Musical Production in 2001. She directed Ian McKellen in The Seagull and The Tempest, Patrick Stewart in Johnson over Jordon and Othello, Dawn French in When We Are Married, and the English National Opera in The Elixir of Love (South Bank Award - Newcomer Opera) and On the Town, which was one of the ENO’s most successful productions.

Jude is much in demand as a commentator and spokesperson for the arts, often appearing on national television and radio. She has represented Britain within UNESCO on cultural matters, served on the Arts Advisory Committee for Royal Society of Arts, and jointly chaired with Lord Puttnam the Curricula Advisory Committee on Arts and Creativity.

Jude is chair of Metal, a member of the London Cultural Consortium, a member of the Dishaa Advisory Group, sits on the board of Creativity, Culture & Education, the board of New Deal of the Mind, she is Chair of the Trustees for World Book Night, and sits on the on the Cultural Olympiad Board which is responsible for the ongoing framework for delivering the creative, cultural and educational aspects of London’s Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012. She is visiting Professor at Kingston University, Leeds University and Shanghai Performing Arts School and holds several honorary degrees from national and international universities.

Kresse is an environmental entrepreneur – she builds businesses that both make money and have a positive impact on the environment. Recent recognition of her work includes winning 2007’s Shell Entrepreneurial Woman of the Future Award, being named in Management Today’s 35 Women Under 35 in 2008, in 2009 she Featured in the Real Business report, Britain’s 100 Most Entrepreneurial Women.

In Hong Kong in 2002, Kresse founded Bio-Supplies, an environmental packaging alternatives company. In 2004 she launched this business in the UK and has helped to build 2 other green business projects; Babaloo, a mother and baby business and Yew Clothing, a line of eco sports and casual wear. In 2007 Kresse launched Elvis & Kresse, which turns industrial waste into innovative lifestyle products and returns 50% of profits to charities and organisations related to the waste. Elvis & Kresse’s first line is made from decommissioned fire hose, 50% of the profits from this line are donated to the Fire Fighters Charity. Elvis & Kresse won the 2008 HSBC Start-Up Stars Green Award and the company is a finalist in the 2011 Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards.

From 2008-2010 Kresse served a Cabinet Office appointment as a Social Enterprise Ambassador, one of a dynamic group of inspiring entrepreneurs focused on promoting the "good business! model. She is currently serving on Vince Cable’s entrepreneur’s forum. She and a fellow Dorset coast lover and entrepreneur have also launched a charity to support climate change initiatives and have raised over £200,000 so far.

Lorraine Heggessey is a trailblazing media executive with unparalleled experience of broadcasting and production in both the private and public sectors. She has taken on some of the most challenging roles in the industry. She was appointed as the first woman Controller of BBC1 in September 2000 and became the first woman Chief Executive Officer of a major independent production company when she joined talkbackThames in 2005. Lorraine has a great instinct for popular programming and has been directly associated with many of the biggest television hits of the past decade. She is an expert in talent management having worked closely with many star performers from Simon Cowell and Alan Sugar to Johnathan Ross and Rob Brydon

Lorraine is a dynamic leader with a strong track record of spearheading radical change. At BBC 1 she led a comprehensive shake up of the channel’s schedule and branding that turned it into the most watched channel in the UK, overtaking its commercial competitor ITV for the first time. She moved the news from 9pm, revamped Saturday nights introducing shows like Strictly Come Dancing and Dr Who and launched a raft of new dramas including Spooks and Waking the Dead. At that time, GQ named her as the third most influential woman in Britain!

At talkbackThames, Lorraine used her creativity and talent management skills to drive commercial success. She took over the leadership of the company at a critical period, just as its founder and several key executives were leaving. She brought in a new team, revitalized the programming portfolio and increased profits by over 50 percent in her first two years. She was responsible for around 800 hours of television a year, including the UK’s two most popular shows X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent and other hits such as The Apprentice, Grand Designs and QI. Under Lorraine’s leadership, the company trebled its entertainment output, set up a digital division, launched dozens of new titles and won numerous Bafta and Royal Television Society awards. It was named Best Independent Production Company at the Broadcast Awards in 2009 and was chosen by freelancers as the place they would most like to work.

No stranger to controversy, Lorraine sacked Richard Bacon for taking cocaine when she was Head of Children’s BBC. In the early 90s, she produced a series on the history of crime in Britain since the second world war that featured interviews with many notorious criminals, including the first ever interview with ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser. She also turned the tables on Roger Cook by door-stepping him for a Channel 4 Dispatches programme. Whilst working in the BBC’s Science Department, she was executive producer of the Bafta award winning series ‘The Human Body’ presented by Robert Winston, which filmed a man dying and came up with the idea of using Rolf Harris to present Animal Hospital.

Lorraine has always thrived on new challenges. Her early career was as a current affairs producer on ‘Panorama’ and ‘This Week’ where she filmed undercover in Brezhnev’s Soviet Union, went to the Falklands straight after the war and was held under house arrest in Zaire.

Lorraine was Woman of the Year at the Women in Film and Television Awards 2005. She has won the Media Award at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) First Woman Awards and the Bertelsmann Entrepreneur Award.

She is a member of Great Ormond Street Hospital’s Corporate Board, a school governor and mentor to underprivileged teenagers.

Martin Narey is the Government’s Adoption Czar, appointed in July 2011 after The Times published his 22,000 word blueprint for adoption in the same month. He is also a Board Member of the Advertising Standards Authority. He stepped down as Chief Executive of Barnardo’s in January after five very successful years at the helm during which Barnardo’s grew in size and influence becoming, once again, the biggest children’s charity in the UK. Before that he was Director General of the Prison Service and then the Chief Executive of the National Offender Management Service and a Permanent Secretary at the Home Office.

When running prisons he was widely recognised for his commitment to transforming and motivating prison staff, and for his clarity of vision and determination to drive through improvements in the way in which prisoners were treated. He established the Decency Agenda in prisons, which led to significant improvements in prison conditions. He was appointed as the youngest ever Director General of the Prison Service in 1998.

Martin paints a portrait of the challenges of the Prison Service, contrasting that with the management of a large charity, outlines why no one wanted the Prison job, why he did want it, and then, how very difficult it was to do. He talks frankly about the many challenges, including things he got badly wrong. From that, but also reflecting on his wider managerial experience, he draws up a list of ten simple leadership rules which, he argues, apply in good times and bad and in any type of management job and which, he believes helped him to win the Chartered Institute of Management’s gold medal for leadership, the first public sector recipient of this for ten years.

Martin has a deep and passionate concern for disadvantaged young people. It is this thread (in addition to a growing frustration with the political process), which brought him to Barnardo’s which works with 111,000 disadvantaged children and young people with a staff of nearly eight thousand and with 16,000 volunteers.

Mel Young is recognized as one of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship.

It was in Cape Town, at the end of the 2001 INSP conference, that Mel and Austrian born Harald Schmied attempted to invent an international language to enable homeless people to communicate with each other around the world. When they realized one already existed – football – the Homeless World Cup was born. The first tournament was held in Austria in 2003 with 18 nations. The annual event has grown and 64 teams will take part in the 2011 Homeless World Cup in Paris.

The Homeless World Cup is creating a level of change never before seen by social inclusion initiatives. More than 94% of participants say that it has a positive impact on their lives and over 70% make significant changes in their lives as a direct result of their involvement, such as coming off drugs and alcohol, moving in to homes, jobs, education, becoming coaches and players. It has triggered and supports grass roots football projects in over 75 nations involving over 50,000 players every year.

Previously he worked as a journalist; co-founded The Big Issue in Scotland in 1993; co-founded Senscot (Social Entrepreneurs Network Scotland); former President and Honorary President of INSP (International Network of Street Papers); also set up City Lynx magazine and New Consumer Magazine; worked on a community newspaper in Wester Hailes in Edinburgh in the 1990’s.

Also a non-executive director on two boards: Sportscotland and Glasgow Life; member of the World Economic Forum Sports Agenda Council.

He is a lifelong supporter of Hibernian Football Club and is the author of Goal: the story of the Homeless World Cup.

Richard Sambrook is Global Vice Chairman and Chief Content Officer for the world's largest independent PR company, Edelman. He is responsible for overseeing all content produced for their major corporate clients and also leads their crisis and issues management practise.

From 1980 until 2010 he was a journalist for the BBC. During this time he edited the Nine O'Clock News, was the BBC's News Editor, Head of News-gathering and then led three different divisions - Sport, News and Global News. He has had a hand in the news coverage of most major events of the last 30 years. As a manager, he led global teams of up to 3000 people and delivered radical change in a fast- moving competitive industry. He was instrumental in the development of the BBC's live news channels and internet sites and the introduction of digital services and technology. He helped change industry practise for protecting journalists in war zones and hostile environments and has campaigned for journalists' safety. He is a Fellow of The Royal Television Society and of the Royal Society of Arts.

He is an advocate of the internet and social media and was an advisor to the UN's Internet Governance Forum on the future of the internet.

He is a frequent speaker at international conferences, including the World Economic Forum in Davos.

When asked what kind of business she’s in, the answer is, “The People Business.”

Her personal mission is to Liberate the Greatness in Individuals and Organizations.

As the Founder of QVF Partners, Ltd. and Co-Founder of Up To Something Partners, LLC, she establishes relationships with individuals and organizations committed to creating People centric cultures and leveraging their greatest strengths.

Rita is co -author of Destination Profit – Creating People-Profit Opportunities in Your Organization. She has been quoted in several business magazines, newspapers and interviewed on a host of radio programs on topics of developing people oriented cultures that engage employees and connect them to the business. She is currently co-authoring a book about People who are “Up to Something”.

During her 25 years at Southwest Airlines, Rita enjoyed a wide range of professional experience, from Customer Service to Sales & Marketing, from Public Relations to Human Resources, culminating in her appointment as head of Southwest Airlines University for People. In that capacity, she directed a 36-member team that focused on Leadership and Career Development for over 32,000 employees, helping it emerge as one of the premiere businesses in America and consistently cited among the “Best Places to Work”.

She served as past Chair for ASTD (American Society of Training and Development) and currently serves on advisory boards and committees for various industries including healthcare, technology, manufacturing and training.

Rita travels worldwide, sharing a passionate message of encouragement for organizations and individuals who want to transition or transform their cultures. She not only tells you “what” but also provides the “how to” for people-profit results.

She is a faculty contributor at SMU, Cox School of Business in Dallas, Texas, where she designs and facilitates Customized Executive Leadership programs.

As Relationship Manager, Steve Nevey is responsible for developing and managing relationships with Red Bull Racing’s technical sponsors and various engineering and IT suppliers. As Steve puts it, “If somebody knows something that we don’t, we want to talk to them!”

Prior to starting this role in January 2003, Steve was Computer Aided Engineering Manager and was responsible for specifying, procuring and maintaining CAE hardware and software for the team, then Jaguar Racing.

Steve joined Red Bull Racing (then Stewart Grand Prix) as IT Manager in 1996, when the team was first established. He has, therefore, seen the team develop from its humble beginnings to become 2010 Formula 1 World Champions; and knows what it takes to get the best out of the best.

In stark contrast to the fast-paced world he now finds himself in, Steve started his career, a long way from the race track, in the shipbuilding industry, as a Ship Designer, where he worked mainly on submarine structures, including the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile submarine, Trident. His initial foray into the challenging world of Formula 1 was with the Footwork Arrows team, where he worked as a Design Engineer for three years, back in the days of Senna, Mansell and Prost, when teams were smaller and the cars were much simpler.

Immediately prior to joining Stewart Grand Prix, Steve taught Design and Design Management to post-graduate degree level at the University of Warwick, where his responsibilities also included consulting with engineering companies throughout the world, notably in India, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia.

Steve now works with the Team’s many sponsors and Innovation Partners to help them showcase their products and services in an environment that, apart from being exciting and glamorous, is very representative of the real world of product design and manufacture. Steve is able to draw some interesting comparisons between the worlds of Formula 1 and more conventional business.

Tim Smit KBE was born in Holland, read Archaeology and Anthropology at Durham University and then worked for ten years in the music industry as composer/producer in both rock music and opera. In 1987 Tim moved to Cornwall he and John Nelson together ‘discovered’ and then restored the Lost Gardens of Heligan. Tim remains a Director of the gardens to the present day.

Tim is Chief Executive and co-founder of the Award winning Eden Project near St Austell in Cornwall. Eden began as a dream in 1995 and opened its doors to the public in 2000, since when around 13 million people have come to see what was once a sterile pit turned into a cradle of life containing world-class horticulture and startling architecture symbolic of human endeavour. Eden has contributed over £1 billion into the Cornish economy. Eden is proud of its success in changing people’s perception of the potential for and the application of science, by communicating and interpreting scientific concepts through the use of art, drama and storytelling as well as living up to its mission to take a pivotal role in local regeneration. It demonstrates once and for all that sustainability is not about sandals and nut cutlets, it is about good business practice and the citizenship values of the future.

Tim has received a variety of national awards including The Royal Society of Arts Albert Medal. In 2002 he was awarded an Honorary CBE and in 2011 he was appointed an honorary Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (KBE). Tim has received Honorary Doctorates and Fellowships from a number of Universities. In 2011 Tim was given a special award at the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards. Tim has taken part in a quantity of television and radio programmes and has been the subject of ‘This is Your Life’ and a guest on ‘Desert Island Discs’. Tim is the author of books about both Heligan and Eden and he has contributed to publications on a wide variety of subjects.

Louise shares a vast international experience with a global approach to business given her unique in-depth understanding of cultures and the hospitality industry derived from more than 18 years experience working for the world leading hotel groups including The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, L.L.C., Marriott International and Hilton International.

Liam Black is one of the UK’s best-known social entrepreneurs, having led some of the country’s most successful social enterprises, most recently Fifteen which, with Jamie Oliver, he grew into a global brand with businesses in Europe and Australia. He is author of There’s No Business Like Social Business, a board member of the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) and speaks and writes widely on leadership, enterprise and social change.

Drawing on his unparalleled access to the boardrooms and shop floors of iconic businesses, Adrian Simpson speaks with huge passion, insight and humour about what it takes to create and sustain world class businesses. Adrian created the exceptionally successful TopDog brand at ?Whatif! before co-founding Wavelength in February 2008.