Headline Keynote Speakers

In 2012, we had a very different conference structure with exceptional headline keynote speakers inspiring us each day with their view on sustainability and the way forward. Below is a short biography of our speakers:

Dame Ellen MacArthur

Ellen MacArthur Foundation

Dame Ellen MacArthur first hit the headlines in 2001 when she single-handedly raced non-stop around the world in the Vendee Globe when only 24 years old. In February 2005 she set a new world record aboard her 75ft trimaran B&Q of 71 days, 14 hours, 18 minutes and 33 seconds.

In 2003, she set up the Ellen MacArthur Trust, to take young people recovering from cancer, leukaemia and other serious injuries sailing. Ellen now has her sights set on a new course. Lessons learnt from managing her resources at sea and three years of research have resulted in the recent creation of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation to focus on providing people with the right tools to re-think, re-design and ultimately build the low-carbon, sustainable future economy.

The Foundation’s Education Programme – Vision and Scope

The Foundation’s goal is an education which sees the challenges of a resource-constrained world as an opportunity to innovate and accomplish remarkable things in the redesign of our industrial systems. It is about a changed education perspective first and foremost -moving from an emphasis on ameliorating the effects of the ‘take-make- dispose (linear) economy’ to the search for virtuous cycles of economic development (the ‘circular economy’).

The Foundation’s education programme is not about the environment, saving the planet, a culture of less and less, about guilt management or about being green. Rather, it is about a design philosophy, about how we produce and consume and how we enable the transition to a prosperous, sustainable, low carbon economy and the skills, innovations, technologies and systemic changes which will be needed.

In communicating the ‘closed loop economy’ argument in our education work we recognise that it is only one perspective of many, one aspect of the complex global set of issues surrounding transition. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation wishes to position this circular economy framework as a way of enriching the debate and encouraging the discussion around the task of creating the conditions for a new industrial revolution necessary for a low carbon economy.

The Foundation, working with its business and education partners, wishes to be identified as an organisation helping to make sense of the question ‘which way forward?’ It intends to focus on the big picture, on systems and citizenship and the role of leadership in the achievement of ‘a new industrial revolution, by design’.

For more information visit www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org

Sara Parkin OBE

Founder Director, Forum for the Future

Sara Parkin is a Founder Director of Forum for the Future (1995-). She is also a Trustee of the St Andrews Prize (1998-), sits on the board of the European Training Foundation (2009-) and and advises on science in society for the Living With Environmental Change research programme (2009-). Recently she has completed terms on the boards of the Natural Environment Research Council (2003-2009) and the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education (2003-2009). She sits on the Advisory Committee of the Finance South East Community Generation Fund (2011-).

After starting her working life as a nurse, in various roles she has campaigned for the environment and sustainable development for over 40 years, including playing leading roles in the UK Green Party and international green politics during the 1970s and 1980s. She has served terms on the boards of New Economics Foundation (1994-1995), Groundwork (1997-1999) and Friends of the Earth (1996-2002) and written several books, the latest being The Positive Deviant: Leadership for sustainability in a perverse world published by Earthscan in July 2010.

Sara is an honorary companion of the Institution of Civil Engineers and of the Institute of Energy, and became a Founding Fellow of the Engineering Council in 2009. In 2001 she was awarded an OBE for services to education and sustainability.

For more information visit https://www.forumforthefuture.org/

Martyn Hulme

Director (Estates), The Co-operative Group

Martyn qualified as an accountant with British Coal in late 1980s. He joined Greater Nottingham Co-operative in 1990, and became Regional Finance Director in 1992 and Regional Chief Officer in 1997. He was appointed Director of Strategic Planning and Change in 2002 and Managing Director, Co-operative Estates in 2010. Career highlights include Integration Director for Group/United merger in 2007.

Married with two sons, Martyn enjoys golf, watching sport and painting.

Co-operative Estates is the Co-operative Group's property, services, land and farming business. The portfolio under management consists of c7,500 properties and 20,000 acres of land. Co-operative Estates is responsible for the Group's 4,500 trading properties operating across the food retail, pharmacy, funerals and banking sectors. Estates also manage the Co-operative Group's property investment portfolio, it's surplus property portfolios, services provision, the renewables business, and development sites such as the Central Manchester Estate and the eco-town proposal at Stoughton, Leicestershire.

For further information visit www.co-operative.coop/estates

Simon Fanshawe

Writer, Broadcaster & Chair of Sussex University

Simon Fanshawe is a writer, broadcaster and a non-executive director in the public and private sector. Currently Chair of the University of Sussex and of the Brighton and Hove Economic Partnership, he writes in The Guardian and other publications on innovation and leadership in public services.

He was formerly Chairman of War on Want and a co-founder of Stonewall, the lesbian and gay equality lobby.

Simon is a consultant on leadership and change in business and public and third sector organisations. He also makes TV and radio programmes.

For more information visit www.simonfanshawe.com.