Meet the Speakers
Learning Festival 2022: Making the System Shift
We’ve invited 50 of the boldest system innovators to share their stories of doing the practical work of shifting systems around the world, in health, education, food, welfare, justice, work, economic development, reconciliation and beyond. Join us for an inspiring and honest deep-dive into the practical realities of system innovation towards a better future.
Monday, November 28
Bo Lidegaard is a Historian, Lecturer, Author, former Diplomat, former National Security Advisor, and former Editor-in-Chief at the Danish daily newspaper Politiken. He is a frequent figure in current political debates and has published widely on Danish history. Bo has been awarded some of the highest of Denmark's national honours for his writings and his books include among others A Short History of Denmark in the 20th Century, which introduces the particularities of his native country to an English language audience. Bo was born in Nuuk to Danish parents and lived there until the age of 8.
Melanie Goodchild is an Anishinaabe (Ojibway) complexity and systems thinking scholar. Melanie is moose clan from Biigtigong Nishnaabeg and Ketegaunseebee First Nations. Melanie applies Relational Systems Thinking methodologies to support transformational change projects across Turtle Island (North America) and around the world. She is currently a PHD candidate and a Research Fellow with the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation & Resilience, and a faculty member with the Academy for Systems Change, the Wolf Willow Institute for Systems Leadership and the University of Vermont, and an Advisor to the new Systems Awareness Lab at MIT. She is also a proud member of the Iron Butt Association riding her Harley-Davidson motorcycle 1000 miles in 24 hours!
Alvaro Salas MD is former president and Board Member of the Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social (CCSS), the most important public healthcare provider in Costa Rica, where he pioneered the development of Costa Rica’s famous community health system. He is currently a professor at the School of Public Health at the University of Costa Rica, Director of the Strategic Center for Information on Health and Social Security at CCSS and actively participates in the organization of the Central American Healthcare Initiative.
Raquel Mazon Jeffers is a co-director of The Community Health Acceleration Partnership (CHAP), which works with philanthropic investments to catalyze systemic change in community health in the US. Raquel provides strategic guidance to the principal investors on modernizing the public health system, and has led transformative public health initiatives on behalf of Government, foundations and non-profits, with a focus on system reform for vulnerable populations.
Dr Suresh Kumar is Director of the WHO Collaborating Center for Community Participation in Palliative Care. He is the founder of the ‘Kerala Model’: a series of Neighbourhood Networks in Palliative Care that became the foundation of a community-based and volunteer-driven movement that has spread across India, engaging thousands of volunteers and community supporters.
Karen Ingerslev is Head of HR & Innovation at Region Midtjylland in Denmark. An experienced leader of change and innovation, she is leading the region’s 30,000 healthcare staff in a process of collective imagination to create a better future healthcare system for patients and relatives as well as employees.
Valerie Hannon is a global thought leader, inspiring systems to re-think what educational ‘success’ will mean in the 21st century. The co-founder of both Innovation Unit and of the Global Education Leaders Partnership, Valerie is also a Senior Adviser to the OECD in its Education 2030 project and a former secondary teacher. Her recent books include FutureSchool (2022) and THRIVE: the purpose of schools in a changing world (2021). Follow Valerie on Twitter.
Gregg Behr is the executive director at The Grable Foundation and founder and co-chair of Remake Learning, a network of educators, scientists, artists, and makers transforming learning in Pittsburgh. Remake Learning has turned heads everywhere from Forbes to the World Economic Forum for its efforts to ignite children’s curiosity, encourage creativity, and foster justice and belonging in schools, libraries, museums, and more. He’s the co-author of When You Wonder, You’re Learning. Follow Gregg on Twitter.
Rod Allen is an instructor at Vancouver Island University on Transformational Leadership and Reconciliation. Formerly the Assistant Deputy Minister with the BC Ministry of Education, Rod was the architect of British Columbia’s transformation to personalized learning and continues to work closely with the OECD where he leads the Knowledge and Skills team.
Loni Bergqvist was (and always will be) a teacher. After attending night school at the High Tech High Graduate School of Education, Loni became a teacher at High Tech High in San Diego, knowing one day her mission would be to bring project-based learning to students who needed it the most; those in traditional schools. In 2019 she founded Imagine If, a Denmark-based organisation supporting schools with <re>imagining education through Project-Based Learning.
Vishal Talreja co-founded Dream a Dream along with 11 others. Dream a Dream is a registered, charitable trust empowering children and young people from vulnerable backgrounds to overcome adversity and flourish in the 21st century using a creative life skills approach. Vishal is an Ashoka Fellow, an Eisenhower Fellow and a Board Member at PYE Global and Goonj. He has previously been a Founder Director of Unltd India and Board Member of India Cares Foundation.
Tuesday, November 29
Madhav Chavan is a social activist and entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and CEO of the educational non-profit, Pratham, pioneering large-scale innovations to address literacy problems among India’s underserved children, and expanding Pratham’s reach from Mumbai to two-thirds of India. Dr. Chavan combines his scientific training with his creativity (he has written songs about human rights and anchored television shows) to continually seek innovative ways of educating India’s underprivileged children.
Elana Ludman is Vice President, Youth Mental Health at the Graham Boeckh Foundation and has helped to catalyse a new system for youth mental health care in Canada. One of the initiatives supported by the Foundation, calledFoundry, is a province-wide network of integrated health and wellness services for young people. Foundry represents community agencies, government, donors, youth and young adults, and families coming together to improve the wellness of young people in British Columbia.
Julie Repper is Director of Implementing Recovery through Organisational Change (ImROC). Created by the UK’s National Health Service, ImROC works in partnership with communities to develop systems, services and cultures that support recovery and wellbeing for all, notably the widespread Recovery College movement. Julie is also joint editor of the Journal of Mental Health and Social Inclusion and has worked as a nurse, manager, researcher and lecturer in mental health services.
Nikishka Iyengar is the founder and CEO (Chief Ecosystem Officer) of The Guild, which builds community wealth through equitable real estate, entrepreneurship programs, and access to capital for historically marginalized communities. She is also incubating Groundcover, which develops community-owned and controlled real estate. For over a decade Nikishka has worked as a consultant, entrepreneur, and organizer — and uses a systems thinking approach across her work in finance, racial justice, equitable development, and climate action. She is a 2020 Aspen Institute Fellow, 2018 RSF Social Finance Fellow, 2020 Common Future Fellow, 2020 New Leaders Council Fellow, and was a 2016 “30 Under 30” Greenbiz leader in sustainability.
Emmanuel Ansah-Amprofi is CEO of TROTRO Tractor, sometimes called the ‘Uber for tractors’ in Africa. TROTRO Tractor is an agricultural technology company that makes it possible for smallholder farmers to access agricultural machinery services ranging from tractors to combined harvesters. TROTRO’s mission is to improve global food and income security, and attract young people back into agriculture. Emmanuel was named the Agribusiness Young Entrepreneur of the year 2018.
Ahmet Günes is the founder of Lead The Talent, created to help young Danes with foreign backgrounds and companies achieve their full potential through talent development, diversity and innovation. He is a serial social entrepreneur, specialising in starting and developing small and medium-sized organisations to address complex problems, and equality of opportunity, children and young people are the fields of interest closest to Ahmet’s heart. He is a specialist in the field of user-driven innovation and in 2012 he was chosen as one of the top 100 business talents in Denmark by Berlingske Business.
Nathalie Nguyen is the head of Innovation at Gentofte municipality in Denmark and for the last five years she has supported the birth of an experimenting and caring culture. One could say she is on a mission to move the system from being a care machine into a more human friendly support system. With a degree from both a conventional business school and the Kaospilots, she is often brought into the position of bridging worlds and sometimes seen as a trouble maker—luckily most times as a caring one.
Marc Ventresca is Asst. Professor and an economic sociologist in the Strategy, Innovation and Marketing Faculty at Oxford University's Saïd Business School. Marc's areas of expertise include market and network formation, entrepreneurship, governance, and innovation and technology strategy. Marc researches how markets are built and the actors who build them, for example ecosystems services markets in Amazon Peru and inclusive markets in Bangladesh, and sees markets as political and cultural institutions. His TEDx talk ’Don’t be an Entrepreneur, Build Systems’ has been viewed thousands of times.
Nora Bloch is the Initiative Director for Health and Housing at the Center for Community Investment, where she focuses on building and deepening partnerships between affordable housing developers, investors, community leaders, and health institutions. Nora built her earlier career as a community development lender first at Eastern Bank (formerly Wainwright Bank), and then as a Senior Lender at BlueHub Capital (formerly Boston Community Capital).
Kenneth Bailey is the co-founder of the Design Studio for Social Intervention. Devoted to the improvement of civil society and everyday life, DS4SI operates at the intersections of design, social justice and activism, designing and testing social interventions with and on behalf of marginalized populations, controversies, and ways of life. Kenneth’s interests focus on the research and development of design tools for marginalized communities to address complex social issues. His new book is Ideas—Arrangements—Effects: Systems Design and Social Justice (2020).
Christian Bason is CEO of the Danish Design Centre and a leading international authority on design, innovation and leadership in business and government. The Centre works with leaders and organisations to apply design methods, foresight and systems thinking to their most challenging problems and opportunities, in pursuit of the vision "Shaping the Next Society". Christian was previously Director of MindLab, the Danish government's innovation team and his most recent book is Expand: Stretching the Future By Design (2022).
Wednesday, November 30
Zazie Tolmer is the Director of CoIntent. Zazie brings practical evaluation experience built from evaluation projects across different sectors and contexts. An opportune project for Fashion activist Safia Minney launched her into evaluation. Many (mostly) government funded domestic and international evaluation projects later, she has returned to working principally for/with innovators.
Angie Tangaere was born in Papakura and raised in South Auckland with a whakapapa to Ngāti Porou on her father’s side and Pākeha from Taranaki on her mother’s side. She graduated with a law degree from the University of Auckland but decided not to become a lawyer. Angie has worked for Te Puni Kokiri, the Ministry of Social Development and the Māori health NGO, the National Hauora coalition. She is an Intrapreneur on Community and Social Innovation for The Southern Initiative (TSI), where she combines her experience with government agencies, community and whānau to develop and co-design whānau-led programmes, disrupting ineffective ‘business as usual’ systems.
Carolyn Curtis is CEO of The Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI). Carolyn started her career as a social worker, supporting families at risk of having their children removed into state care. Her experience with the limitations of government service systems led her to seek positions where she could transform the system. Under Carolyn’s leadership, TACSI now operates in most major cities across Australia, working on some of the country’s most complex social challenges, alongside the people who face them every day.
Aunty Vickey Charles is an Alawa/Mara woman from the Northern Territory. She has worked across her life to raise awareness of Aboriginal Australia through her lived experience and work in government and not for profit sectors. Aunty Vickey has played a key role in TACSI developing a Reconciliation Action Plan, and has supported the facilitation of self-determined innovation approaches to reduce Aboriginal overrepresentation in justice and child protection systems.
Niall Fay is the CEO of The Fay Fuller Foundation, a private philanthropic organisation in South Australia. The Foundation is the funder of Our Town, an 11-year initiative in partnership with TACSI and Clear Horizon. Shaped with regional communities for regional communities, Our Town aims to build the capabilities of regional towns in South Australia to develop community-based responses to mental health and wellbeing with an eye to scaling what works, and influencing regional policy.
Anna-Jane Edwards is a third generation Cook Islander and a proud Aucklander. She is deeply interested in how government organisations partner with community to enable positive intergenerational social change. Anna-Jane leads Uptempo, an incubator for transformative economic systems change for Pasifika in Aotearoa, as part of The Southern Initiative, a place-based initiative that champions social and community innovation across the Local Board areas of Papakura, Manurewa, Ōtara-Papatoetoe, and Māngere-Ōtāhuhu.
Jess Dart is the Chief Evaluator and founder of Clear Horizon. Inventor of practical methodologies and passionate about developing real-world evaluation, Jess’s focus is working with systems change interventions, large-scale strategy and social innovation. She received the Australian Evaluation Society’s Outstanding Contribution to Evaluation Award in 2018, co-authored the Most Significant Change (MSC) guide and more recently, invented Collaborative Outcomes Reporting (COR), a collaborative form of impact evaluation.
Lee Alexander Risby leads the Laudes Foundation’s Effective Philanthropy team, which provides measurement and evaluation for strategy adaptation, organisational strengthening and learning support and gender, equity and social inclusion advisory for and with The Foundation’s partners. Lee is also a board member of the Center for Effective Philanthropy, the leading advisor and think-tank to philanthropy in North America and Europe.
Ben Ramalingam is a senior leader, innovator, and researcher specializing in international crisis management and development. He is the executive director of the United Kingdom Humanitarian Innovation Hub and in 2020 was named a Humanitarian Change Maker of the 2010s. He is the author of Aid on the Edge of Chaos: Rethinking International Cooperation in a Complex World and Upshift: Turning Pressure into Performance and Crisis into Creativity.
Anne Bergvith Sørensen is Programme Manager of the Home for All Alliance (Hjem Til Alle), an national alliance of 20 partners from different sectors working together on a national level to end youth homelessness in Denmark. Since 2016 Home for All has successfully brought important stakeholders together around this common agenda.
Chris Clements is Chief Finance and Impact Officer at Social Finance, a not for profit organisation well known for its pioneering work in improving outcomes for individuals with complex needs through innovations, including the social impact bond model, which have mobilised more than £500 million globally. Chris leads on measuring the organisation’s social impact and ensuring its financial sustainability. He also leads on thematic initiatives, including some of those developed within SF’s Impact Incubator which partners with foundations to develop sustainable, scalable solutions to entrenched social problems
Søren Vester Haldrup is an Innovation Specialist and Fund Manager at UNDP’s Strategic Innovation Unit. He works with stakeholders across the UNDP and beyond to design and operationalize a new type of innovation facility intended to tackle complex systems challenges such as the impact of automation on labor markets and challenges triggered by COVID. Søren has played a leading role in setting up UNDP’s M&E Sandbox, to nurture and learn from new ways of doing monitoring and evaluation (M&E) that are coherent with the complex nature of the challenges facing the world today.
Yaera Chung is a Portfolio Learning Lead at UNDP Regional Bureau of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, where she guides UNDP Country Offices and regional projects in building systems thinking portfolios for digital transformation, future of work and urban transformation. She is currently working with municipalities to apply systems thinking by building systems learning portfolio through EU Mayor’s for Economic Growth (M4EG) and Cities Experiment Fund, Slovak Transformation Fund initiative.
Nina Strandberg is a Policy Specialist at Sida, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, and Project Manager for Sida's initiative to explore how Sida and partners can support systems transformation through systems innovation. The exploration is carried out through experiments within Sida, with partners in the Systems Innovation Learning Partnership and informed by the working group on Systems Innovation at the International Development Innovation Alliance, co-led by Sida and OECD/DAC.
Indy Johar is an architect and co-founder of Project00 and most recently Dark Matter Labs, a field laboratory focused on building the institutional infrastructures for Radicle Civic societies, cities, regions and towns. Dark Matter works with UNDP, Climate KiC, the Scottish Government and Bloxhub in Copenhagen. Indy has co-founded multiple social ventures including Impact Hub Birmingham and Open Systems Lab and taught at the University of Sheffield, UCL, Princeton, Harvard and MIT.
Anna Folke Larsen is a Senior Research Economist at the ROCKWOOL Foundation Interventions Unit specialised in designing and conducting impact evaluations. Her interest in evaluation grew during her PhD studies in economics at the University of Copenhagen, where she evaluated an agricultural project in Tanzania and visited two MIT professors who excel in Randomised Controlled Trials: Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee. Anna combines her skills for identifying causal impact with her strong motivation for building knowledge mosaics through interdisciplinary work.
Bonnie Chiu is the Managing Director of The Social Investment Consultancy (TSIC), specialised in impact evaluation, equity and inclusion, and impact investing strategies. TSIC has a global team across Asia, Europe, Africa, Middle East and the Caribbean, and has worked with clients including Wellcome Trust and British Council. She is also a serial social entrepreneur, and serves as a Forbes Senior Contributor writing on gender and diversity. She has received multiple accolades for her work, named Asia21 Young Leader by Asia Society, a Forbes 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneur, and winning the Asian Women of Achievement Awards.
Jessica Davies is an Associate Director in Social Finance’s Impact Incubator team, which partners with philanthropy to develop systems-shifting approaches to complex social problems. Since 2015, the Incubator and its partners have brought systems-change approaches to a wide range of issues, including perpetrator violence and domestic abuse, refugee sponsorship and mental health inequalities. Jess led the development of SF’s Routes to Scale framework, and heads up work on systems change methodologies alongside the organisation’s work in refugees and migration.
Beth Smith is Senior Consultant at The Cynefin Company. As Programme Manager for Citizen Engagement, Beth is responsible for the design and delivery of SenseMaker® projects related to citizen journalism and governmental collaborations. Beth was formerly a policy advisor to the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales and holds an MSc in the field of policing and counterterrorism, and a post-graduate qualification in mixed methods research.
Mark Cabaj is the President of the consulting company From Here to There and an Associate of Tamarack - An Institute for Community Engagement. Mark has first-hand knowledge of using evaluation as a policy maker, philanthropist, and activist, and has played a big role in promoting the merging practice of developmental evaluation in Canada, developing and sharing resources on how to evaluate system change. Mark’s current focus is building the practice of Developmental Evaluation integrating real-time feedback and learning in emerging, complex, and fast-moving environments.
Rob Ricigliano is Systems & Complexity Coach at The Omidyar Group where he supports teams as they engage with complex systems to make societal change. Alongside leading this community of practice, Rob enjoys exploring how to use systems and complexity thinking in progressively accessible and practical ways, for example by translating the Omidyar Group practice into an online course at +Acumen. He serves as an Emeritus Board Member on the Alliance for Peacebuilding, and writes regularly for the Kumu blog In too deep.
Emily F. Gates is Assistant Professor in the Department of Measurement, Evaluation, Statistics, and Assessment in the Lynch School of Education and Human Development at Boston College. A practitioner and scholar, Emily conducts mixed-method evaluations in education and public health and publishes research on systems approaches, values, and equity in evaluation. She recently co-authored Evaluating and Valuing in Social Research and co-edited an issue of New Directions for Evaluation featuring international cases of systems- and complexity-informed evaluation.
Thursday, December 1
Simon Baldwin is a systems architect, researcher, and entrepreneur. As the Global Head of Circularity at SecondMuse, Simon leads programs focused on strengthening circular and regenerative economic systems and processes. This work currently includes The Incubation Network in South and Southeast Asia, and the Ocean Plastic Pollution Accelerator (OPPA) in Indonesia, both of which are built around addressing ocean plastic pollution.
Ingrid Burkett is the Co-Director of The Yunus Centre, Griffith University, an innovation center with the purpose of accelerating transitions to regenerative and distributive economies. Ingrid’s work links innovation and entrepreneurship with impact, and her background includes qualifications in design, social work, economics and business. Ingrid has built five social businesses, and much of her work has focussed on how we can address complex problems - from place-based inequities to shifting how we invest and contract better for deeper impact.
Sabina Curatolo is a Partner and Head of Impact at Bridges Australia, an independent affiliate of Bridges Fund Management. Throughout her career, Sabina has worked to drive positive, large scale change to improve people’s lives. Sabina has worked in impact investing for the past 6 years in leadership, market building and advocacy. She is an appointed member of the Advisory Board for the University of Melbourne School of Government and Director of the Brave Foundation.
Robin Hacke is Executive Director and cofounder of the Center for Community Investment. Earlier in her career Robin served as a Senior Fellow at the Kresge Foundation, where she incubated a capital absorption practice to help local leaders strengthen their community investment ecosystems and overcome systemic racism. Whilst managing a blended capital fund and trying to place that money in disinvested cities across the United States, Robin realized that organizing demand for capital was as much of a barrier as finding supply, and this has been the heart of her work for the last few years.
Jeff Cyr is CEO of the Raven Indigenous Impact Foundation and Managing Partner of Raven Capital Partners, an Indigenous-led and owned social finance intermediary. Raven Capital Partners has developed a new model for Indigenous economic growth and operates from an Indigenous worldview, investing according to the values laid out by the Seven Sacred Teachings. Jeff is mixed heritage, Métis and European and hails from the White Horse Plains area of Southern Manitoba. He has been active in supporting Indigenous social innovation and building Indigenous social finance mechanisms in Canada, including the community-driven outcomes contract (a unique pay-for-success social finance model) and the Indigenous Solutions Lab process, which earned him an Ashoka Fellowship.
Willemijn de Iongh is a Landscape Developer at Commonland. As initiator, catalyst and enabler of large-scale and long-term restoration initiatives, Commonland is on a mission to transform degraded landscapes into thriving ecosystems and communities based on sound business cases and aligned with international policies and guidelines. Willemijn facilitates cross-landscape learning on holistic and business-driven landscape restoration with Commonland’s many partners.
Erica Barbosa is Global Head of Innovation and Sustainable Finance at SecondMuse Capital, where she is responsible for the development of innovative financial mechanisms. The purpose of this work is to better connect large asset owners and investors with investment opportunities to advance the SDGs and the development of new economies around the world. Erica most recently served at The J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, where she developed their adoption of responsible investing for 100% of the Foundation’s endowment and set up Canada’s first accelerator program for impact investing funds.
Ben Gales is the acting Chief Strategy Officer at Paul Ramsay Foundation. He is an economist with extensive experience in social, government, and private sectors. During his time in UK government he was involved in the genesis of impact investing with the launch of the Social Investment Taskforce in 2000 and In NSW Government he was responsible for the first Social Impact Bonds in Australia. Ben later led the Office of Social Impact Investment, where he oversaw over $200 million of impact investments and payment by outcome contracts.
Giulio Quaggiotto is the former Head of UNDP’s Strategic Innovation unit, working with governments across the world to develop renewal capabilities and accelerate impact on complex development challenges. Giulio’s career includes stints at Climate KIC, Nesta, WWF and the World Bank. Giulio’s most recent work has focused on portfolio approaches to system transformation. He is also an MIT Research Associate with a focus on lead user innovation.
Adam Spence is the CEO and Co-Founder of Social Venture Connexion (SVX). Adam's career has focused on advancing social, environmental and economic justice through community action, impact investing, and cross-sectoral systems change. SVX recently launched Impact United - a coalition of banks, individuals, foundations and government agencies focused on mobilizing billions in capital towards social, economic and environmental justice. Adam helped startup VERGE Capital, the MaRS Centre for Impact Investing, B Lab Canada, and the School for Social Entrepreneurs – Ontario.
Thomas Bagge Olesen is managing partner and Chairman (chairperson) of Den Sociale Kapitalfond Management. Den Sociale Kapitalfond helps socially impactful businesses and organisations to realize their full growth potential and to increase their positive effects in society. Den Sociale Kapitalfond has 11+ years of experience with impact investing, 3 impact investment funds and a proven social impact investing methodology and framework. Thomas is on the board of Danish government’s Council on Social Responsibility and SDGs. He has a background in strategy consulting and ESG/impact and CEO of FDB (now COOP) among others and has served as chairman of 15+ companies.
Dr. Johan Schot leads the Deep Transitions research project and is academic director of the Transformative Innovation Policy Consortium (TIPC). He is Professor of Global History and Sustainability Transitions at the Utrecht Centre for Global Challenges, Utrecht University and former Director of the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the University of Sussex Business School. Deep Transitions strives to understand how the unsustainable systems our societies are built on emerged, and how they can be unmade, and is soon to launch the Deep Transitions Investment Philosophy for financing long-term systems change.
Amit Shah supports the investment team at Bridges Outcomes Partnerships, a not-for-profit social enterprise working with Government, community groups and specialist partners to help radically change human services and environmental initiatives in order to improve outcomes for citizens & the planet, and value for taxpayers. Prior to Bridges, Amit worked for Social Finance where he designed and set up a number of social outcomes contracts as well as advised local authorities and social enterprises on strategy. Amit has also supported the set-up of a consulting firm and charity focused on innovation in education.
Steve Waddell is Co-founder and Lead Steward of Bounce Beyond, supporting those who wish not to bounce back, or even bounce forward, but to bounce beyond the current exploitive paradigm to one of flourishing of all life. Furthermore, he is Co-founder of Catalyst2030, a global network of social entrepreneurs where he leads their work on financing transformation. Steve has worked on large systems change and transformation for 35 years, as an entrepreneur, consultant, researcher, writer and educator. Globally, he is best known for his work with Global Action Networks (GANs), global multi-stakeholder transformation networks like the Forest Stewardship Council and Transparency International.
Joe Nelson is the Chairman of Sealaska, and board member for a number of organisations and initiatives, including Spruce Root and Sealaska Heritage Institute, that make up the OneSealaska strategy, the mission of which is to strengthen Alaska’s people, culture and homelands. He first found his way to the Sealaska boardroom as an attorney, helping to craft and develop a stock package for the new class of descendant shareholders. Joe continually advocates for younger voices in the boardroom and throughout Sealaska, knowing that decisions made today will impact generations yet to come. Joe is a Brown Bear (Teikweidí) from Yakutat. He is also a Kwáashk’I kwaan yádi. His Tlingit name is Kaaxúxgu.
Cassie Robinson’s work with funders such as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, EarthPercent, and Partners for a New Economy spans funding strategy, innovation in funding and field-building. She is the Co-lead of Philea’s Imagination, Foresight & Regenerative Futures Community of Practice and on the Strategy Group of the Funders’ Collaborative Hub. Until November 2021 Cassie was Deputy Director of Funding Strategy at The National Lottery Community Fund where she ran a £60 Million a year funding portfolio. She is the Co-founder of the Point People, founder of Stewarding Loss, a Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence and has a Policy Fellowship at the Institute of Innovation and Public Purpose at UCL.
Derek A. Bardowell is a writer and CEO of Ten Years’ Time. Ten Years’ Time helps ambitious donors and foundations to repair harm and rebalance power by resourcing racial and economic harm with care and confidence. From 2009 to 2019, Derek directed portfolios for Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Laureus Sport for Good and the National Lottery Community Fund, where he launched seven funding programmes and was responsible for managing the distribution of over £150 million. Derek hosts the podcast Just Cause and his new book is Giving Back, which reimagines philanthropy through a reparative lens (Dialogue Books/Little, Brown, 2022).
Philipp Essl is Senior Social Impact Director at Big Society Capital, focusing on social impact measurement and management across their investment process and portfolio. He is passionate about using impact strategy and evidence to drive social investment decisions and tackle pressing social challenges. Prior to Big Society Capital, Philipp led BG Group’s social performance & human rights work, and lived several years in South East Asia, working with the UN, Oxfam and innovative start-ups on implementing opportunities for private sector-led economic growth and poverty reduction.
Friday, December 2
Rodney Foxworth is CEO of Common Future, founded in 2001 to close the racial wealth gap. By taking a systems approach, Common Future builds the connections and shifts the capital necessary to support solutions that can be recreated at scale across the country. Today, their network of leaders, partners, and grantees spans over 100 communities working together towards a more equitable economy. Most recently, Rodney founded Invested Impact, which connected capital to underrepresented social entrepreneurs. He serves on the board of Nonprofit Finance Fund and Race Forward, and the steering committee of Justice Funders.
Gabriella Gómez-Mont is the former Chief Creative Officer for Mexico City and founder of Laboratorio para la Ciudad, the award-wining experimental arm and creative think tank of the Mexico City government, reporting to the Mayor. The Lab was created to tackle urban challenges explore ways to find common ground in a gargantuan, diverse (and often divided) city. She is now the founder and CEO of Experimentalista, working on projects related to care economies (Bogotá), play (London), and urban(bio)diversity, amongst others.
Carol Anne Hilton has led the establishment of a line of thought called #indigenomics - a movement that focuses on the rebuilding and strengthening of Indigenous economies. As the CEO and founder of the Indigenomics Institute and most recently the Global Center of Indigenomics, Carol Anne is an adjunct professor at the Royal Roads University’s School of Business, and advisor to the Canadian Economic Growth Council. Carol Anne is of Nuu chah nulth descent from the Hesquiaht Nation on Vancouver Island and the author of Indigenomics By Design - A Seat at the Economic Table (2021).
Amahra Spence is the Founding Director of MAIA (2013), a Black-led arts and social justice organisation, whose vision is a world of liberation in which artists are resourced and mobilised to reimagine its possibilities. MAIA explore this practically in community, collaborating with artists to prototype ideas, create spaces, deliver public programmes and share resources. Amahra’s practice is one of poetic pragmatism, exploring transformation and iterating change oriented towards liberation. She engages this through spatial reclamation and social justice, design, performance and storytelling.
Richard D. Bartlett is one of the cofounders of Loomio, a New Zealand based open source software tool for consensus decision-making, and The Hum, which is like a management consultancy for organisations without managers. He's also a Catalyst at Enspiral: a decentralised network of 250 freelancers who have been working without bosses since 2010. His background is in creative activism and DIY open source hardware. He's passionate about co-ownership, self-management, collaborative governance, and other ways of sneaking anarchism into respectable places. He writes about how we work together, at any scale.
Sir Geoff Mulgan CBE is Professor of Collective Intelligence, Public Policy and Social Innovation at University College London (UCL). Prior to that he was Chief Executive of Nesta, the UK's innovation foundation, director of the Government's Strategy Unit and head of policy in the Prime Minister's office. Geoff is the author of Social Innovation: How Societies find the Power to Change and his most recent book is Another World is Possible: How to Reignite Radical Political Imagination, on why political and social imagination has shrunk; the lessons we can learn from history; and the methods to use now to amplify imagination, escape timidity and better prepare for the decades ahead.
Zita Cobb is an eighth-generation Fogo Islander, Founder and CEO of the registered charity Shorefast, and Innkeeper of the award-winning Fogo Island Inn. Following a successful career in high-tech, Zita returned to Fogo Island and established Shorefast to support the island’s delicate fishing ecosystem and local economy. Shorefast is expanding its mission through a Community Economies Pilot – a pan-Canadian initiative to strengthen place-based economic development within the global economy. In 2021, Zita made history as the first social entrepreneur to be inducted into the Canadian Business Hall of Fame.
Ella Saltmarshe is an award-winning writer and founder, pioneering work at the intersection of culture and systems change. She co-founded the Long Time Project - a movement inspiring public imagination and collective action to help us all become better ancestors, alongside presenting the award-winning Long Time Academy podcast. Ella has set up a number of organisations and initiatives, including the Reset Narratives Community with the Environment Funders Network, Uncertain Times Tools, the Comms Lab and The Point People (watch her TEDx talk about being plural here).
Charles Leadbeater has been at the forefront of innovation movements since his report The Rise of the Social Entrepreneur was published in 1997, and advises companies, governments and municipalities around the globe. His best selling books include We Think: Mass Innovation Not Mass Production, and his influential TED talks on education and open innovation have been watched by millions of people. Charles is a visiting professor at the Institute for Innovation and Public Policy at University College London and a partner in the system innovation agency ALT/Now. Charles will be the moderator through the week.
Festival hosts
Jennie Winhall is a leading thinker in system innovation. She designs new services and interventions to create systemic social impact, such as the ROCKWOOL Foundation’s employment efforts for young people, NExTWORK. Jennie has spent many years experimenting with how to design interventions that change systems, previously through her work at Participle, featured in Hilary Cottam’s book Radical Help, which launched a series of new public services across the UK that exemplified a new ‘relational’ welfare system.