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Michael Hayman welcomes Dr. Grace Lordan; an economist, Professor of Behavioural Science and founding director of The Inclusion Initiative at the London School of Economics. Grace’s research has been conducted throughout her career with a singular objective: to establish why some individuals succeed in life and others do not. She is an expert on the effects of bias discrimination and technology changes and sits on the UK Government Social Mobility Task Force and the Women in Finance Charter’s advisory board. The Inclusion Initiative is a research centre established in 2020, aiming to bring behavioural science insights to firms to allow them to enhance the inclusion of all talent. It also provides studies, measurement frameworks and training to create more inclusive business leaders in the UK. Last year, Grace published Think Big, Take Small Steps and Build the Future You Want, a practical framework for aspiring business leaders on how to use behavioural insights to achieve the future that they seek.

Cheryl Giovannoni is CEO of The Girls Day School Trust (GDST), a cohort of 25 independent schools that encourage girls to learn without limits. With alumni including Olivia Colman, Helena Bonham Carter, Afua Hirsch, Miriam Margolyes, and Mary Beard, among many others, the Trust schools look to develop character beyond curriculum and individual progression for each of its students. The GDST was founded in 1872 by four pioneering women and Suffragettes, Mrs Maria Grey, her sister Miss Emily Shirreff, Lady Stanley of Alderley and Miss Mary Gurney. They believed that girls should be entitled to the same academic education as their brothers. Today, with 19,000 students and almost 4000 staff, the Trust has doubled down on its commitment to work with future generations of women who will change the world for the better, for us all. Cheryl joins Michael on Change Makers to discuss the education landscape in the UK today, the power of learning to shape lives, and leadership lessons from her career in advertising as well as education ahead of her speech at the National Coalition of Girls Schools’ Global Forum in Boston, next week.

Michael speaks to Romi Savova, the founder and CEO of PensionBee, the company bringing pensions into the 21st century. Romi’s story is one that begins in Bulgaria and has taken her to the London Stock Exchange, via South Africa and the US, with stops at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley on the road to entrepreneurial success. Founded in 2015 to provide savers with a low-cost, easy-to-use and transparent pension plan, PensionBee today serves 800,000 customers, helping them to be pension confident and put their money towards a better future.

Michael is joined by Tom McGillycuddy, co-founder of CIRCA5000, describing itself as “the investment platform of the human future.” With a vision of a thriving planet in the year 5000, the company asks us to question whether people will be included in that future. And the answer to a certain human future? Impact investing.  CIRCA5000 offers its customers the chance to invest in the sustainable businesses enriching the planet. Launched in 2019 as tickr, alongside business partner Matt Latham, the company now has more than 150,000 investors and has had its own purposeful credentials recognised through B Corp status.

Joining Michael this week is Greg Hoffman, the legendary former Global Chief Marketing Officer of Nike. During almost 30 years with the company, Greg led three Olympic campaigns and worked with global superstars from LeBron James to Serena Williams. He described his approach to brand building as seeking out the day dreamers and taking them seriously, recognising that visionary ideas come not only from ingenious individuals but from whole cultures of innovation. It’s an approach that drove the ideas behind some of the most famous marketing campaigns in history and a story that is told in Greg’s new book, Emotion By Design, described by BT Sport’s Jake Humphrey as “the ultimate playbook to unleashing creativity.”

In 1947, as the then HRH Princess Elizabeth celebrated her 21st birthday, she said: "I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service." 75 years later – an unprecedented 70 of which have been spent on the throne – Her Majesty has left an indelible mark as the defining figure of the United Kingdom's modern history. In June, we will be celebrating that legacy and a lifetime of service with the Queen's Platinum Jubilee. The centrepiece of this landmark moment is the People's Pageant, described as a "once in a lifetime, awe inspiring spectacle filled with wonder, warmth, wit and wow factor." Rosanna Machado is a specialist in the coordination of large scale events and the CEO of the Queen's Platinum Jubilee pageant. She joins Michael on Change Makers to share how the pageant will bring to life iconic moments from the Queen's reign, as well as bringing people together from all over the country, as it showcases our changing society over the past 70 years.

Michael Hayman’s guest today believes we should all be more curious, not judgmental, and that confidence is silent while insecurities are loud. Advice from Milan Kocic, the head of Sixth Sense at Hexagon, which is on a mission to enable an autonomous and sustainable future.    Milan joins Michael to discuss Sixth Sense, a new open innovation platform where ambitious scaling startups can connect with world class companies to solve some of humanity's biggest challenges – and it's a big opportunity. Hexagon’s technologies are used to manufacture 90% of aircraft, 75% of smartphones and 95% of every automobile produced worldwide. 

Host Michael Hayman is joined by Jan Büchsenschütz, co-founder and CMO of RIIICO, a software and AI business aiming to transform the manufacturing industry by delivering cutting edge interactive digital twins of production assets.    A team of engineers, designers, and inventors of reality simulation software; RIIICO aims to set new standards in computer vision, while creating software that is fun to use and easy to work with. Its technology helps manufacturers to manage their factories and accelerate their digital transformation, and its cutting-edge technology is why it was chosen by Hexagon’s Sixth Sense open innovation platform as one of the members of its inaugural startup cohort. Through Sixth Sense, RIIICO has been provided with the tools to scale and roll out its vision to more companies around the world.

Albert Einstein, Whoopi Goldberg, Keira Knightly, Pablo Picasso, and Sir Richard Branson may be notable in their own right, but they also share the condition of dyslexia. For years it’s been portrayed as an obstacle but for Michael’s guest, Kate Griggs, it presents the opportunity of a superpower for life. Kate is a campaigner and the founder of Made by Dyslexia, a leading voice in global advocacy for what she calls the superpower of dyslexia, now in its fifth year. That means disrupting the world's thinking and campaigning for the unique and important skills of people with dyslexia. It's a challenge that Kate has made a lifelong mission and is driven by her own experiences of growing up and the difference identifying a dyslexian made to her own education. With a TED talk that has garnered almost 400,000 views, and Kate’s latest book, This is Dyslexia, she aims to redefine and reshape how it's shaped our past and how harnessing its powers is vital to our future.

Joining Michael Hayman on Change Makers is Kim Polman, co-founder and chair of Reboot the Future, a fellow of the Aspen Institute and co-founder and chair of the Kilamanjaro Blind Trust.  Reboot the Future is a foundation aimed at transforming how people connect to themselves, each other and the planet. Its work is powered by one golden rule; to treat others and the planet as you would wish to be treated. Kim describes this call to action as the only universal principle the world shares and uses it as a roadmap for the conversations and campaigns that will lead to a more sustainable world.  It is this ethos that inspired the book she co-curated Imaginal Cells: Visions of Transformation, a collection of essays from thought leaders and change agents including, Al Gore, Muhammad Yunus and her husband, Paul Polman.

Joining Michael Hayman on Change Makers is Gina Badenoch, the social entrepreneur with a dream to enable social and economic mobility, to build a more inclusive society.  With a primary focus on fostering equality for the visually impaired, through the companies she has founded – Capaxia and Ojos Que Sienten (Sight of Emotion – she creates experiences that change mindsets, to overcome the prejudices that exist between talent, potential and companies.  It is an approach that has seen Gina recognised as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and an Ashoka Fellow, with a changemaking ethic inspired by her quote for life: “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”

Jenny Costa is the founder and CEO of Rubies in the Rubble, the food business that sees wonder where others see waste. Since launching in 2012, Rubies in the Rubble with Jenny at the helm has become one of the pioneering voices in food sustainability, with an award-winning range of “gooder” condiments created from products that would otherwise go to waste. With a brand that is now stocked nationwide, in just a decade the company has saved more than 350,000 individual pieces of fruit and vegetables from the bin, taking food diamonds in the rough and turning them from rubble into rubies.

Alex Wright is the co-founder of Dash Water; the soft drinks brand doing its bit to cut food waste by saying yes to produce that others say no to. Its mission is to make drinks that taste good while raising awareness about food waste: “one bashed up berry, curly cucumber and lopsided lemonade at a time.” Five years on from its launch, Dash Water is a rising star in the soft drinks industry, sold in more than 6000 UK stores and 20 international markets. But this isn’t just a story of drinks sector disruption, it is an entrepreneurial endeavour with a purposeful heart, driven by wonky fruit and a commitment to change.

Building the operating system behind a better future in healthcare is the mission of our guest today, Melissa Morris, the CEO and Co-Founder of Lantum.  Lantum is a total workforce platform for healthcare organisations, reducing spend and empowering healthcare staff. Through its unique end-to-end platform, it has helped to modernise how healthcare organisations connect with the workforce and fix what Melissa describes as “the broken system” of NHS staffing. Recognised as one of the of the UK’s top female tech leaders and healthtech innovators, this is the story of a founder with a mission to support the NHS and other healthcare organisations find the people they need, when they need them.

Juergen Maier is the former CEO of Siemens UK, the UK Chair of Digital Catapult, Vice Chair of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, and co-founder of vocL, which works with the next generation of business leaders to help them find their voice and enable them to have a more positive impact on society.  Named as the most influential businessperson in North West England, Juergen describes himself as an industrialist, with a purpose to provide leadership, encouragement and critique for UK policies and activities that support green re-industrialisation, particularly in northern regions and in the context of a post-pandemic economic landscape.

Garvita Gulhati is an Ashoka Young Changemaker and founder of the ‘Why Waste?’ campaign. She has lived up to her own quote for life that change starts alone, but happens together, dedicating the prime of her youth to causes that bring people together to make the world a better place for future generations. Having started ‘Why Waste?’ at just 15 years old with the aim of tackling global resource waste, at 22, Garvita is showing no signs of slowing down. She was awarded the ‘Young Social Changemaker of The Year 2021’ and is continuing to build communities and projects focussed on creating systemic change for the better.

Mark Campanale is a leader described as opening “a different front in the fight against global warming.” He is an Ashoka Changemaker and the founder of the Carbon Tracker Initiative, an independent think tank that looks at the impact of clean energy transition and a move away from fossil fuels on the financial markets. The aim is to change how financial analysts and fund managers determine investment risk and mobilise shareholders to align their business priorities with the climate agenda. And as co-founder of Planet Tracker, Mark’s goal is to align capital markets with natural ecological limits to growth, based on his ‘unburnable carbon’ thesis, which identified that up to 80% of proven fossil fuel reserves are effectively unusable, if we are to stay within the planet’s Carbon Budget.

Joining Michael to celebrate International Women’s Day is Jude Kelly CBE, the award-winning theatre director, producer and founder of WOW (Women of the World) Foundation, the global movement that says a gender equal world is desirable, possible and urgently required. Through its flagship WOW festivals as well as year-round events and school programmes, WOW was designed to ensure a high-profile cultural space existed for women's stories to be shared.  Described by the Financial Times as someone who has never changed down a gear in her life, Jude describes that moment in 2010 when WOW was launched as the moment that she “truly came out as a woman” and, in 2018, she chose to step back from her role as Artistic Director of the Southbank Centre to focus on growing this incredible initiative, which is now the world's biggest and most comprehensive festival, celebrating women girls and non-binary people.  With WOW Festival 2022 set to kick off next Friday, Jude joins us to share her journey from artist to activist, the cultural moments and movements that shaped her world view, and the importance of self-identity.

On this week’s Change Makers episode in collaboration with the University of London’s School of Advanced Study, looking at addressing the question, “How has Covid changed us?” host Michael Hayman is joined by Cephas Williams, who describes himself on his website in just one word: human. But one word doesn’t quite do justice to someone with a career as extensive as any campaigner in the UK today. As founder of the Black British Network, he aims to use the collective influence of business leaders across the UK to keep the conversation going around the challenges of systemic racism we see here and around the world, beyond moments of trauma and public traction. And as well as convening and inspiring corporate leaders, Cephas has a track record of impacting the public consciousness with his photography campaigns Portrait of Black Britain and 56 Black Men, and the open letter he penned to his new-born son in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020, ‘Letter to Zion’.

Joining Michael today is Andrew Roughan, the managing director of the innovation centre and co-working space in the heart of East London, Plexal. Part of the Here East campus in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Plexal supercharges collaboration, working with government and the UK’s best and brightest start-ups and scale-ups, to foster a new era of innovation and solve the challenges that matter most to society. Andrew was part of the founding team that secured Here East’s 200-year lease from the London Legacy Development Corporation to transform the former press and broadcast centre at the Olympic Park into an ecosystem and community that delivers on the legacy of the Games. A decade on and the campus is now a home to almost 4,000 people working and studying on-site, changing the face of East London by opening up new opportunities to the wider community.