Dr Frances MacGuire’s career on climate change climate spans over three decades in research, policy, education and advocacy in academia, international NGOs and the NHS. Trained in the life sciences and public health, Frances has worked at the interface between science and policy making in climate change, air pollution and biodiversity protection taking a risk management perspective. Frances has led teams of climate advocates working within the UN climate negotiations and national teams in the UK, Australia, and the Pacific Island region. She has a strong interest in south/north collaboration, capacity building and health and social equity. In her current role as Policy Manager within the Lancet Countdown, Frances also chairs a WHO/Unicef/Lancet Working Group on children and climate change advocacy, as part of the global CAP2030 initiative.

As Director General of BEUC, Monique Goyens represents 46 national consumer associations in 32 European countries, acting as a strong consumer voice in Brussels, ensuring that consumer interests are given weight in the development of policies.

Monique is a member of the EU Platform on Sustainable Finance and of the Euro Retail Payments Board. She is a member of the European Commission’s Consumer Policy Advisory Group, High-Level Roundtable on the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability, and Structured Dialogue on Security of Medicines Supply.

Monique is Co-Chair of the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD) a network of EU and US consumer organisations.

Kate Crawford is a leading scholar of the social and political implications of artificial intelligence. Her latest book is Atlas of AI: Power, Politics and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence (Yale University Press, 2021), The book has been described as "trenchant" by the New York Review of Books, “a fascinating history of data” by the New Yorker and a “timely and urgent contribution” by Science. Crawford is a Research Professor at USC Annenberg, a senior principal researcher at MSR-NYC, an Honorary Professor at the University of Sydney, and the inaugural Visiting Chair for AI and Justice at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. Her academic research has been published in journals such as New Media & Society; Science, Technology & Human Values; Information, Communication & Society; and Nature. Crawford’s work also includes collaborative projects and visual investigations. Her project Anatomy of an AI System with Vladan Joler — which maps the full lifecycle of the Amazon Echo — won the Beazley Design of the Year Award in 2019, and is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the V&A Museum in London. Her collaboration with the artist Trevor Paglen, "Excavating AI," won the Ayrton Prize from the British Society for the History of Science.

Stefan Dercon is Professor of Economic Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government and the Economics Department, and a Fellow of Jesus College. He is also Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies.

He combines his academic career with work as a policy advisor, providing strategic economic and development advice, and promoting the use of evidence in decision making. Between 2011 and 2017, he was Chief Economist of the Department of International Development (DFID), the government department in charge with the UK’s aid policy and spending. Since 2020, he has been the Development Policy Advisor to successive Foreign Secretaries at the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. 

His research interests concern what keeps some people and countries poor: the failures of markets, governments and politics, mainly in Africa, and how to achieve change. 

His latest book, Gambling on Development: Why some countries win and others lose will be published in May 2022. It draws on his academic research as well as his policy experience across three decades and 40-odd countries, exploring why some countries have managed to settle on elite bargains favouring growth and development, and others did not. Previously, Dull Disasters? How Planning Ahead Will Make A Difference  was published in 2016, and provides a blueprint for renewed application of science, improved decision making, better preparedness, and pre-arranged finance in the face of natural disasters.

He is a Fellow of BREAD, a Research Fellow of CEPR and of IZA, an Affiliate of J-PAL, a Non-resident Fellow, Centre for Global Development, Washington and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and Manufacture (FRSA). He studied economics and philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium) and holds an MPhil and DPhil in Economics from the University of Oxford. Before re-joining the University of Oxford, he held positions at the University of Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), the Catholic University of Leuven, and WIDER (Helsinki), part of the United Nations University. 

In 2018, the Queen awarded him as an honorary Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) for services to economics and international development.

Dr. Margaret Heffernan produced programmes for the BBC for 13 years. She then moved to the US where she spearheaded multimedia productions for Intuit, The Learning Company and Standard&Poors. She was Chief Executive of InfoMation Corporation, ZineZone Corporation and then iCast Corporation, was named one of the "Top 25" by Streaming Media magazine and one of the "Top 100 Media Executives" by The Hollywood Reporter.

The author of six books, Margaret’s third book, Willful Blindness : Why We Ignore the Obvious at our Peril was named one of the most important business books of the decade by the Financial Times. In 2015, she was awarded the Transmission Prize for A Bigger Prize: Why Competition isn’t Everything and How We Do Better, described as "meticulously researched... engagingly written... universally relevant and hard to fault." Her TED talks have been seen by over twelve million people and in 2015 TED published Beyond Measure: The Big Impact of Small Changes. Her most recent book, Uncharted: How to map the future was published in 2020.

She is a Professor of Practice at the University of Bath, Lead Faculty for the Forward Institute’s Responsible Leadership Programme and, through Merryck & Co., mentors CEOs and senior executives of major global organizations. She holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Bath and continues to write for the Financial Times and the Huffington Post.