Change Makers: Leadership, Good Business, Ideas and Innovation

Over the course of this new Change Makers series in collaboration with Mr & Mrs Smith, the travel club for hotel lovers, we explore the travel industry’s role in delivering a more sustainable future in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic and the growing climate emergency. Each week, host Michael Hayman virtually visits a double act behind one the most innovative and sustainable hotels from Mr &a...

Gavin Esler is an award-winning television and radio broadcaster, journalist and author. His 40-year career at the BBC included a decade as one of the anchors of its flagship news and current affairs programme Newsnight , prompting the Financial Times to note that Gavin “understands the political beast better than anyone.” It is an understanding that has focused his thinking on the power of storyt...

Joining Michael is US entrepreneur, Phil Libin, Co-Founder & CEO of mmhmm. Phil was born in the USSR and lives in the USA, completing the story of arrivals and departures from Leningrad to the Bronx to Arkansas. From going on to capitalise on the smartphone revolution as CEO of the software sensation Evernote to powering better productivity in the pandemic, this is the story of someone who has...

Leena Nair is the Chief Human Resources Officer for the global giant Unilever. Her work sits at the heart of a team of more than 150,000 people, serving two and a half billion customers – one of the many reasons why she speaks of a personal purpose to “ignite the human spark for a better business and better world”.   And igniting a spark is something she knows a good deal about. She has been descr...

The Queen appointed Sir Ken Olisa OBE as Her Majesty’s Lord-Lieutenant of Greater London in 2015. Sir Ken is a businessman and philanthropist, the founder of two technology merchant banks and the first British-born black man to serve as a Director of a FTSE-100 company. An advocate of social inclusion, he is Chair of Thames Reach, a charity working to shelter and resettle the homeless; Chair of th...

Honoured by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader, David Jones is an industry visionary, proponent of corporate responsibility and social change, and The Guardian’s 2013 Sustainable Business Leader. David was the youngest global CEO in the history of advertising, heading both Havas and Havas Worldwide, and the only British CEO of a French publicly traded company. David is co-founder of...

Listed as one of the UK's Top Most Influential Women in Tech & an international multi-award winner for her services to Diversity & Inclusion in industry, Sheree Atcheson is a Global Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Senior Executive; Advisory Board Member, Women Who Code; and a contributor for Forbes . She is the Author of Demanding More, a book which aims to teach readers about how delibera...

Kenneth Cukier is senior editor and the host of the weekly podcast on technology, Babbage. He is the co-author of the New York Times Bestselling book Big Data with Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, which was translated into over 20 languages. In 2021, he co-authored Framers: Human Advantage in an Age of Technology and Turmoil , alongside Mayer-Schönberger and Francis de Vericourt. Previously Kenn was the...

Gordon Brown is the United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education and former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He served as Prime Minister and Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 to 2010 and is widely credited with preventing a second Great Depression through his stewardship of the 2009 London G20 summit. He was one of the first leaders during the global crisis to initiate calls for globa...

Mary Ann Sieghart is an experienced journalist, broadcaster and author. Today, she makes programmes for BBC Radio 4, is a Visiting Professor at King’s College London and is a trustee of a large portfolio of organisations and charities. She spent 2018-19 as a Visiting Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, where she researched her latest book, The Authority Gap, on why women are taken less seriously...

Richard Curtis is a film writer and director, responsible for some of Britain's best-loved romantic comedy films, such as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones’ Diary, Love Actually , About Time and Yesterday . He is also known for the drama War Horse and as co-writer of the sitcoms Blackadder, Mr Bean and The Vicar of Dibley . His early career saw him write material for the BBC...

Deborah Williams founded The Women's Association in 2018, after being "awakened" by the realisation that being a woman in the world and especially in the corporate landscape comes with many challenges. This realisation came when she embarked on a journey of discovery for her dissertation, which explored the stories of women in leadership across industries. As Deborah embarked on her journey to cre...

Charley Boorman is a modern-day adventurer, travel writer and entertainer. His charismatic “let’s just do it” approach to challenges has won him over to a massive TV and literary audience. His acting career started as a child, appearing in the film Deliverance in 1972, with others following. In 1997 he met Ewan McGregor the star of Train Spotting, Star Wars and Moulin Rouge amongst others, who bec...

Nick English co-founded the award winning British luxury watch brand, Bremont, manufacturing mechanical watches in Henley-on-Thames, England alongside his brother Giles. The brand was founded in 2002 and after five years in development the first watch hit the market in 2007 and has made a substantial impact on the watch industry in a short period of time. Passion and dedication has grown Bremont t...

Three times Nobel Peace Prize nominee for her work with Oxford Research Group to develop effective dialogue between nuclear weapons policy-makers worldwide and their critics. She now leads The Business Plan for Peace to help prevent violent conflict and build sustainable peace throughout the world, because it is possible, see three minute video ; this work is based on her latest books The Business...

Revd Joanna Jepson is an Anglican priest, author, broadcaster and coach. She trained at Bristol and Cambridge and, following her ordination in 2003, served in parishes in Chester and London. Joanna has since worked speaking, coaching and leading groups across the UK, USA, West Africa & Australia. In 2006 she set up the first chaplaincy in the British Fashion Industry, based at London College o...

Lord Alf Dubs was born in December 1932 in Prague, and was one of the Czech children rescued from the Nazis in the Kindertransport. He had no idea of the identity of his rescuer until 1988, when a relative spotted his name on Esther Rantzen’s That's Life  television programme featuring English former stockbroker Nicholas Winton, who had arranged for the transport of 669 children out of Nazi-occupi...

Lord William Waldegrave of North Hill is the Provost of Eton College, a post he has held since 2009. He is a Distinguished Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford and an Honorary Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Lord Waldegrave served as a Conservative Member of Parliament from 1979 to 1997 (representing the Bristol West constituency) including 16 years service as a Minister, of which seven y...

Carl Schramm is University Professor at Syracuse University and former president of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. A $2 billion endowment, Kauffman is the world’s largest philanthropy dedicated to promoting entrepreneurship. Carl is recognised internationally as a leading authority on innovation, entrepreneurship and economic growth, referred to by The Economist as the “evangelist of entrep...

Neeta Patel CBE is CEO of Centre for Entrepreneurs and New Entrepreneurs Foundation, and an experienced executive with over 25 years of strategy and operational leadership experience in launching new ventures, business turnarounds and change, with a sharp focus on impact, growth and revenues. Prior to joining the New Entrepreneurs Foundation, Neeta worked in Private Equity advisory, matching techn...

Sir Charlie Mayfield chairs Be the Business and the Productivity Leadership Group, which focus on stimulating and encouraging competitiveness and growth in businesses across the UK. He was Chairman of the John Lewis Partnership from 2007 to 2020, having joined the Partnership in 2000, with responsibility for business strategy and development for both John Lewis and Waitrose and for developing the...

James O'Brien is an award-winning writer and broadcaster whose journalism has appeared everywhere from the TLS to the Daily Mirror. His daily current affairs programme on LBC has over 1.2 million weekly listeners and his first book, How To Be Right , was a Sunday Times bestseller, which won the Parliamentary Book Award for Best Political Book by a non-politician. He is often to be found on Twitter...

”Musical weirdo and visionary" Beatie Wolfe is an artist who has beamed her music into space, been appointed a UN Women role model for innovation, and held an acclaimed solo exhibition of her ‘world first’ album designs at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Named by WIRED Magazine as one of "22 people changing the world,” Beatie is at the forefront of pioneering new formats for music that bridge th...

Founder and CEO of BioSure UK, Brigette Bard has carved a successful, entrepreneurial career in the FMCG sector. Based on her experience with pregnancy testing, she is passionate about the role self-testing has to play in allowing people to make informed choices and assume responsibility for their own healthcare. She is actively and dynamically involved in normalising the conversation around HIV,...

Baroness Nicola Blackwood is a leader in health innovation policy and entrepreneurship. She is Chair of Genomics England and a Member of the House of Lords Science & Technology Select Committee. Nicola served as Minister for Innovation in the Department for Health and Social Care (UK) under two Prime Ministers where she led on Life Sciences, NHS Data and Digital Transformation and Global Healt...