The Commission

Sara Bryson is the Community Organiser for the newly formed Tyne & Wear Citizens. Citizens UK organises communities to act together for power, social justice and the common good. Launched by Citizens UK in 2001, the Living Wage campaign has won over £210 million of additional wages, lifting over 70,000 families out of working poverty.

Sara has worked with children, young people and communities to ensure their views and experiences inform policy, practice and research for over 15 years - both regionally and nationally within Sure Start Children’s Centres, Children’s Fund, The Children’s Society and the Office for the Children’s Commissioner for England. 
As the Policy & Research Manager at the regional children’s charity Children North East, Sara led on the child poverty programme of work. Developing ‘Poverty Proofing the School Day,’ a nationally celebrated programme to remove barriers to learning for disadvantaged pupils; managing Community Action on Poverty, community led solutions to poverty at a neighbourhood level; and coordinating Poverty Ends Now (PEN), a youth led initiative to tackle child poverty. PEN developed a children’s manifesto on poverty for the All Party Parliamentary Group on Poverty. Sara was born and raised in the west end of Newcastle and studied at the London School of Economics. She is a 2016 (North East Specialist) Clore Social Leadership Fellow.

Matt Clifford co-founded Entrepreneur First in 2011. It is a London-based startup accelerator which assists promising UK and Central European tech graduates and those already working in technology firms to design and run their own startups. The program has helped establish 75 startups valued at $450 million in its first four years, including Magic Pony Technology, Tractable, StackHut, Pi-Top, OpenCosmos, Status Today and Cloud NC.

Matt is a trustee and non-executive director at techfortrade and an advisory board member for Sillicon Valley Comes to the UK.

In 2016, Matt was awarded an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours for services to business.

Claire Dove OBE, DL, has been a key player in the social enterprise movement since the early 1980s and has led the award-winning Blackburne House Group, one of the leading providers of adult and community education in the country, since its inception.

Blackburne House is a Beacon status college with a wide training remit for the women of Merseyside. The School for Social Entrepreneurs provides services across the Northwest of England. Over the past 30 years, the Blackburne House Group has successfully established a number of highly acclaimed, award winning social enterprises, whose products and services are sought throughout the country.

Claire has also worked to form national, regional and local policy that supports the right to education and training and promotes entrepreneurship and social enterprise. Claire was one of the three commissioners on the National Worklessness Panel that produced the Houghton Review.

From December 2007 to January 2017 Claire was Chair of Social Enterprise UK (SEUK). She is a member of the Alder Hey Hospital Trust and, until recently, was a Board Member for the Charity Commission. She has chaired the Liverpool Fairness Commission on behalf of Liverpool City Council, is currently serving on the Liverpool Mayoral Development Board and is chair of the Society Advisory Board for the British Council.

Claire was awarded an MBE for her work in the mid-nineties. She received an OBE in 2013 and was given the Queens Lifetime Achievement Award for Enterprise Promotion. She has an Honorary Fellowship of Liverpool John Moores University, a Fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts and was voted nationally as an exemplary leader in Regeneration. Claire is Deputy Lieutenant for Merseyside.

Lord Eatwell is president of Queens’ College, and emeritus professor of financial policy, University of Cambridge. He is also a visiting professor at the University of Southern California.

From 1985 to 1992 John Eatwell served as economic adviser to Neil Kinnock, leader of the British Labour Party. In 1992 he entered the House of Lords, and from 1993 to 1997 was Principal Opposition Spokesman on Treasury and Economic Affairs, a position he resumed from 2010-13.

In 1988 he, with others, set up the Institute for Public Policy Research, one of Britain’s leading policy think-tanks, where he remains a trustee. He was a member of the Board of the Securities and Futures Authority, 1997-2001, and of the Regulatory Decisions Committee of the Financial Services Authority from 2001 until 2006. He is now Chairman of the Jersey Financial Services Commission.

Sandra Kerr is the National Campaign Director for Business in the Community’s Race Equality campaign, a business-led network of organisations from the private and public sector committed to race equality as part of good business practice.

Previously, Sandra worked in the Cabinet Office advising on diversity and policies on race, disability, gender, and work life balance across Whitehall. She also chaired the Ethnic Minority Employment Stakeholder Group (EMESG), sponsored by the Department for Work and Pensions, which advised Government on issues related to the employment and progression disadvantages that individuals from ethnic minority backgrounds face.

Sandra is Chair of the Trustee Board for Elevation Networks, an award-winning youth employment charity, and is a member of the Royal Society Diversity Committee.

In 2012 Sandra was awarded an OBE in the Queens New Year’s honours list for services to Black and Minority Ethnic People, and in April 2015 she won the Women: Inspiration and Enterprise (WIE) Equality Award.

Sandra is the driving force behind the groundbreaking Business in the Community Race at Work survey in partnership with YouGov. This report and the related outputs are key contributions to the UK national debate on Race Equality in the UK workplace today.

Lord Kerslake is Chair of Peabody, Chair of the Centre for Public Scrutiny (CfPS), Chair of London CIV, and is President-Elect of the Local Government Association.

A former Head of the Civil Service, Lord Kerslake led the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) from November 2010, stepping down in February 2015.

Prior to his DCLG role, Lord Kerslake was the first Chief Executive of the Homes and Communities Agency, where he was responsible for promoting new and affordable housing supply; supporting the regeneration of cities, towns and neighbourhoods; improving existing housing stock, and advancing sustainability and good design.

Before joining the Civil Service Lord Kerslake received a knighthood for his services to local government; spending eight years serving the London Borough of Hounslow and then a further 11 years leading Sheffield Council.

In early 2015, he was made a life peer, taking the title Baron Kerslake, of Endcliffe in the City of Sheffield.

Catherine McGuinness is an elected member of the City of London Corporation and current chairman of the City’s Policy Committee. She has been very involved in the City’s relationship with London more widely, particularly in the fields of education and the arts and open spaces.

Professionally she is a specialist in financial law. For several years Catherine was a partner in a City law firm, advising a number of international financial institutions. She headed the London legal department of a major European bank and now works as a consultant in the financial sector.

Catherine is also a member of the governing body for The City Academy, Hackney, which is co-sponsored by the City and by KPMG, as well as the board of the Barbican Centre. In addition to her City of London appointments, Catherine is also appointed to the United Westminster Schools, Guildhall School Development Trust and the Barbican Centre Trust.

Professor Mariana Mazzucato (PhD) holds the Chair in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value, University College London (UCL) where she is establishing a new Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose (launching Autumn 2017). Mazzucato’s highly-acclaimed book The Entrepreneurial State: debunking public vs. private sector myths (Anthem 2013; Public Affairs, 2015) was on the 2013 Books of the Year list of the Financial Times. She is winner of the 2014 New Statesman SPERI Prize in Political Economy and the 2015 Hans-Matthöfer-Preis and in 2013 she was named as one of the '3 most important thinkers about innovation' in the New Republic.

She has advised policy makers around the world on innovation-led growth and is currently a member of the Scottish Government’s Council of Economic Advisors; the World Economic Forum’s Council on the Economics of Innovation and SITRA’s (Finnish Innovation Fund) Advisory Panel.  Her current research projects include two funded by the EC Horizon 2020 programme:  Innovation-fuelled, Sustainable, Inclusive Growth (ISIGrowth) and Distributed Global Financial Systems for Society (Dolfins) and a new project on Rethinking Medical Innovation by the Open Society Foundations. Her recent research includes projects funded by the Ford Foundation and the Institute for New Economic Thinking, and work commissioned by NASA, the European Space Agency and the Brazilian Ministry for Science and Technology.

She is co-editor of a new book Rethinking Capitalism: Economics and Policy for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth (Wiley Blackwell, July 2016), and is currently writing The Value of Everything, which will be published by Penguin’s Allen Lane in 2017.

Helena joined Legal and General Investment Management in May 2017. Prior to that, she worked at  Newton Investment Management; a global fund manager which manages £47 billion of assets as of 31 December 2015, from 1984. She was CEO at Newton for 15 years from 2001 – 2016  and then took the role of non-executive chairman during 2016. 

In June 2014 Helena was appointed Chair of the Investment Association, the UK’s industry trade body whose members manage £5 trillion.

Recently, Helena was appointed by the Chancellor to the UK’s Financial Services Trade and Investment Board.

In 2010 Helena established the 30% Club, an organisation that campaigns to make boardrooms 30 % female.

She is a trustee at the Eve Appeal, which raises money for gynaecological cancers, and chairperson of the corporate board of the Royal Academy of Arts. Helena has been named one of Fortune Magazine’s World’s 50 Greatest Leaders.

In 2013 and 2014 she was voted one of the 50 Most Influential People in Finance globally by Bloomberg Markets. A leading voice for a British exit from the EU, Helena argued passionately in favour of Brexit in several national newspapers ahead of the UK’s June referendum.

Frances O’Grady has been an active trade unionist and campaigner all her working life. She has been employed in a range of jobs from shop work to the voluntary sector.

Prior to joining the TUC in 1994, Frances worked for the Transport and General Workers Union. At the TUC, Frances has been Campaigns Officer; headed up the New Unionism campaign and launched the TUC’s Organising Academy; and led the TUC’s organisation department.

In 2003, Frances became Deputy General Secretary, notably securing the 2012 Principles of Cooperation Agreement with the Olympic Authorities, ensuring good standards and decent pay.

Frances has also led on industrial policy, arguing the case for a strategic approach to rebalancing the economy in the wake of the financial crash.

In January 2013, Frances became the General Secretary of the TUC, the first woman ever to hold this post. Frances took a leading role in the campaign for Britain to Remain in the European Union, and was selected to speak in the final debate.

She is passionate about economic justice, joining commissions on living standards, low pay, and high pay.

Mary Senior is the Scotland Official of the University and College Union (UCU), the trade union representing 110,000 academic and related members in post-16 education across the UK, and the largest union in the higher education sector in Scotland.

Mary leads the union’s bargaining, campaigning and organising work in Scotland; notably taking forward UCU’s campaign to democratise university governance, resulting in the Higher Education (Scotland) Governance Act 2016; and leading the union’s work to eradicate casual worker contracts within the university sector.

Mary is a member of the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) General Council, and a board member of Workplace Chaplaincy Scotland.

Prior to joining UCU, Mary worked for the STUC where she led the trade union organisation’s equality and international work, including chairing the groundbreaking Close the Gap gender pay partnership; representing trade union women on the Scottish Women’s Convention; and campaigning against the detention of refugee and asylum seeking children and families.

Originally from the West Midlands, Mary is a graduate of the University of Sheffield, and has lived in the west of Scotland for over 20 years

Hetan is Executive Director of the Royal Statistical Society, a body with over 8,000 members with a vision to put data at the heart of understanding and decision-making. He is chair of the Friends Provident Foundation, a grant making trust seeking to create a fairer economy. Hetan is a visiting senior research fellow at the Policy Institute, Kings College London and is Honorary Vice President of the Geographical Association. He is a member of the Social Metrics Commission which is designing new poverty indicators for the UK, and sits on the Big Lottery Fund's Impact Advisory committee.

Neera Tanden is the President and CEO of the Center for American Progress and the Center for American Progress Action Fund. She has served in both the Obama and Clinton administrations, as well as presidential campaigns and think tanks. Most recently, Neera served as the Chief Operating Officer for the Center, where she oversaw strategic planning, operations, and fundraising.

Tanden previously served as senior advisor for health reform at the Department of Health and Human Services, working on President Barack Obama’s health reform team in the White House. Prior to that, she was the director of domestic policy for the Obama-Biden presidential campaign, where she managed all domestic policy proposals. Neera also served as policy director for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, where she directed all policy work, ranging from domestic policy to the economy to foreign affairs, and managed day-to-day policy announcements.

Before the presidential campaign, Neera was Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at CAP. Prior to that, she was one of the first senior staff members at the Center, joining as Senior Vice President for Domestic Policy when CAP first opened its doors. In between, Neera was legislative director for Sen. Clinton, where she oversaw all policy and legislation in the Senate office. In 2000, she was Hillary Clinton’s deputy campaign manager and issues director for her Senate campaign in New York. Neera also served as associate director for domestic policy in the Clinton White House and senior policy advisor to the first lady.

Neera was named one of the “Most Influential Women in Washington” by National Journal and received the India Abroad Publisher’s Award for Excellence in 2011. She was recently included on Elle magazine’s “Women in Washington Power List” and recognized as one of Fortune magazine’s “Most Powerful Women in Politics.” She received her bachelor of science from UCLA and her law degree from Yale Law School.

Justin Welby is the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury. He is Primate of All England and spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

After graduating from Trinity College, Cambridge, Archbishop Justin worked in the oil industry for over a decade, becoming group treasurer of an oil exploration firm.

During his time as Dean of Liverpool Cathedral and Bishop of Durham, he became well known for increasing the church’s engagement with the local community.

From 2012-2013, he was a member of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, and has written and spoken on the relationship between faith, wealth creation, and inclusive economic growth.