Let’s Reboot the Future

What if nature could teach us not just how to learn, but how to live in greater harmony with each other and the world around us?  In this episode Richard Dunne founder of The Harmony Project , shares how a childhood shaped by kindness, a life-changing experience working with Mother Teresa in Kolkata, and 18 years as a headteacher inspired him to rethink education. Drawing inspiration from Harmony:...

From a childhood fascination with wildlife and David Attenborough's Life on Earth to helping restore rivers and Sussex's lost kelp forests, Sean Ashworth has spent much of his career challenging the way we think about and care for the natural world. Now working as a Catchment Strategy Manager with Southern Water, Sean shares how a determination to question the status quo has taken him fr...

Charmian Love is a leading voice in reimagining the role of business in creating a thriving future. Alongside her work as the Global Ambassador with Brazilian beauty and wellbeing company Natura, she serves as Mother Nature & Future Generations Director at House of Hackney - bringing the voice of nature into the boardroom and helping businesses think differently about the impact they have on t...

Professor Steve Waygood is Chief Executive of The Finance Transition Centre and a leading voice in sustainable finance. Having spent his career exploring how capital and markets can support sustainable development, Steve reflects on what he has learned about our financial systems - and how we can harness them to help create a better future. But Steve’s story begins far from the world of finance, w...

This week's Reboot Forum series episode features Ben Goldsmith , who talks about growing up fascinated by wildlife and refusing to let go of a vision of Britain living with wildlife. Visits to France as a child showed him it was possible, and by his teens he was writing to park rangers and Country Life magazine to make the case for bringing back species like wild boar. Ben is hopeful about wh...

This week’s guest is Aimee Felus, CEO of the Western Sussex Rivers Trust. Aimee loves working for Rivers Trusts, drawn to the reciprocity and energy she finds there. She and her team know the value of the work they do, for rivers and for people, particularly through the ecosystem services that help mitigate environmental issues like flooding and biodiversity loss. She finds it challenging when oth...

Hitendra Wadhwa has spent his career exploring what it really takes to live and lead well, work he now leads at Columbia Business School and through the Mentora Institute , which he founded. In this episode, he talks about the years he spent pulling back from the world (leaving strategy consulting and a Silicon Valley startup behind) to go deeper into his own inner life, and what that inner work e...

David Bell , creator of Belly Bugs , has found a way to get children genuinely excited about eating well. After thirty years in advertising, David turned his skills to a new challenge: gamifying the science of gut health for kids. He introduces children to the “gang of little helpers" living inside them, turning gut microbes into characters they want to feed with colourful fruit and vegetable...

This week we're joined by Jon Conradi , founder of Wild Mosaic , who is getting people rewilding without needing to own acres of land or live beside a nature reserve. Rewilders choose a three-metre by three-metre tile to follow, and Jon sends personal updates on their patch, the wildlife spotted there, and the progress of the land. It began with a nature club he set up at primary school, spar...

Filippa Brundish, founder of The Kindness Cooporation, learned early just how much listening matters. A quiet child raised with little money but plenty of love, she spent her early years absorbing the world rather than speaking up in it, taking it all in like a sponge. In time, she wanted to put that attentiveness to work. A project manager who loves getting things done, she took the brave, some m...

Oliver Lloyd i s a designer and systems thinker, with sustainability as the starting point of his work. He was once advised to "meet people where they are, but don't leave them there," and you get a strong sense of his enthusiasm for collaborating on projects where our connection to and care for nature is front and centre. Oliver shares how he's used this approach with a brand...

Mary Ann Clements , Co-CEO of ADD International , has spent her whole life refusing to accept that "this is just the way the world is." As a child in a small Oxfordshire village, she felt every injustice keenly and couldn't fathom why the grown-ups had all given up. That refusal became her work. At ADD, a participatory grant maker for disability justice across Africa and Asia, she l...

Photo by Carles Rodriguez Marin Peace pilgrim, lifelong activist, former monk and founder of The Resurgence Trust , Satish Kumar has been inspiring global change for over 50 years, and at 90 he is still choosing to be, in his own words, a naïve idealist. At nine he renounced the world to become a Jain monk, against the wishes of his businessmen brothers, who thought him too idealistic. He decided...

This week we're joined by Xander Beks , founder of Eye For Nature , whose whole way of working began with a simple willingness to step up. As a teenager, when others met a good idea with "that will never happen," his instinct was different: nothing is impossible until we have tried. More often than not, it became a success. He puts it down to an open, generous approach, one he trace...

Explorer, TV presenter and author Alice Morrison joins us this week, fresh from a world first: becoming the first recorded person to cross Saudi Arabia from north to south on foot. For Alice, the heart of adventure is understanding, and not only of the people next door. Through the stories she gathers and shares from her journeys, she helps us get to know other people, countries, religions and pla...

Award-winning author and co-founder and director of the pioneering Black Mountains College, Ben Rawlence joins us this week. He shares how his life has been guided by a need for fairness for all and a deep commitment to morally important campaigns. That work in policy and human rights has taken him to the USA, to his beloved Tanzania, and across Africa, a career that someone recently described to...

This week we're joined by Joshua Ford , an award-winning actor and filmmaker whose work explores kindness, vulnerability, human connection and the belief that creativity can change lives.  In 2024 he made a film called Hey You, Yes You, Open Me , dropping a hundred handwritten notes of kindness across London's tubes and buses, each one a message of hope and an invitation to connect. It w...

Ben Peers, Creative Director, Designer and Videographer, believes that nothing ever really changes for the better without a little bit of shameless, idealistic creativity. He also believes that our fixation on metrics and the bottom line can stifle our ability to challenge the status quo and shame idealism out of us. He recalls the same trajectory in his own life: creativity that flourished in pri...

What happens when you stop trying to fit in and start trusting your own way of seeing the world? Dr Lucy Wallace, a convenor and peacebuilder in food systems, has spent her career bringing people together in rooms thick with conflict, holding to one quiet belief: everyone deserves a seat at the table. In this conversation she takes us from a childhood spent hunting out small pockets of nature in t...

What happens when you refuse to accept that nothing can be done? In this episode, we hear from Samantha Ward OBE, Deputy CEO of Royal Voluntary Service , whose lifelong conviction that the world can be changed for the better has shaped an extraordinary career in service and volunteering. From childhood, Sam had a powerful sense of right and wrong and the grit to go with it, always asking not just...

Before he made it to the boardroom, David Butcher managed the stage at a Jimi Hendrix concert. What he learned backstage on a Baltic island about motivation, leadership and getting the best out of people stayed with him through three CEO roles and a lifetime in business. In this episode, David makes the case that the most effective leaders are not the loudest ones. Kindness, compassion and the cou...

What does it look like to build a business where people truly matter? Edwin Booth CBE , Executive Chairman at E.H.Booth & Co ltd, shares his journey from arriving as an 18 year old into his family's business, shaped immediately by the sheer kindness of the people around him, to becoming a leader who puts people at the heart of everything. Edwin reflects on how culture is built from the in...

Gemma Lannon has created a wonderful gathering space in London for people channelling their work towards sustainability and climate solutions - it's called Treo House. In this episode, Gemma shares how the sudden loss of her father at 15 reshaped her understanding of the world, teaching her to hold two things at once: the uncertainty of outcomes, and the courage to act anyway. She reflects on...

Michael Macy may describe himself as having a minor role, but a front row seat in establishing peace across some of the world's most complex conflict zones - but the lessons he carries from those experiences are anything but minor. At the heart of this conversation is a deceptively simple but profound insight: "Too often people think you have to resolve all the conflicts before you can h...

Felicity Aston MBE is a climate scientist, polar explorer, expedition leader and record-breaker. She was the first woman to ski across Antarctica alone. Most recently, she led the B.I.G. (Before It’s Gone) Arctic Research Expedition, gathering vital material for Arctic sea ice research. In this episode, Felicity shares the importance of using what you’re good at to address the issues facing our wo...