Advisory Board
Rushanara Ali is the Labour Member of Parliament for Bethnal Green and Bow. She was elected in May 2010 with a majority of 11,574 having defeated George Galloway’s Respect Party. She was reelected in 2015 with an increased majority of 24,317, again in 2017 with a majority of 35,393, and increased her majority still further, to 37,524, in the 2019 General Election.
In October 2013 Rushanara was appointed Shadow Minster for Education and young People, until stepping down in September 2014. Previously she served on the Labour front bench as Shadow Minister for International Development. As part of this role she was the Labour spokesperson on international development matters for Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, International Finance and Trade Wealth Creation and the Private Sector, Gender, Climate Change, Conflict and stabilisation, and the Middle East Peace Process. From October 2016 - May 2017 Rushanara was a member of the Communities and Local Government Select Committee.
Prior to her election in May 2010, she was Associate Director of the Young Foundation. She previously worked at the Communities Directorate of the Home Office, leading a work programme in response to the 2001 disturbances in the north of England (2002-2005). She has also worked on human rights issues at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (2000-2001); as a Research Fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research (1999-2002) and as Parliamentary Assistant for Oona King, former MP for Bethnal Green & Bow (1997-1999).
Rushanara also worked for Michael Young (author of the 1945 Labour manifesto) on a project that paved the way for Tower Hamlets Summer University, now called Futureversity, which has helped cut youth crime in Tower Hamlets and which has been replicated around London.
She helped develop Language Line, a pioneering telephone interpreting company founded by Michael Young to ensure equal access to public services for people facing language difficulties. She is co-founder of the UpRising leadership project which works to develop community and public leadership skills of talented 19-25 year olds from diverse backgrounds to enter politics and public life.
She also founded the Fastlaners project which provides rapid and intensive training to support unemployed graduates in East London. She has previously served as a Commissioner for the London Child Poverty Commission, Chair of Trustees of Futureversity, a Board Member of Tower Hamlets College, a Trustee of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, and an advisor to the Spitalfields Festival.
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Rushanara Ali
MP for Bethnal Green & Bow
Mr Afolami is the Member of Parliament for Hitchin and Harpenden and first elected in 2017. Since he has taken a particular interest in energy and decarbonisation, chairing the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Renewable and Sustainable Energy and net zero champion for the APPG for Fair Business Banking. He is also Vice Chair (Youth) for the Conservative Party.
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Bim Afolami
MP for for Hitchin and Harpenden
Nicky was elected to the National Federation of Women’s Institutes (NFWI) Board in 2019 and as Chair of the Public Affairs Committee in June 2021.
The NFWI is the UK’s largest voluntary organisation for women with some 190,000 members in 5,500 WIs across England and Wales. The WI offers members the opportunity to make new friends, learn new skills and campaign on a range of issues.
Since it was founded in 1915, the WI has campaigned on a wide range of issues that matter to women and their communities. The WI’s environmental work dates back to 1927 when members began lobbying decision-makers about pollution in the seas. More recent environment campaigns have ranged from microplastic pollution to tackling food waste. The WI’s network of 400 WI member Climate Ambassadors take action to raise awareness of the need for action on climate change in their communities across England, Wales and the Islands.
After university, Nicky trained as a banker in the City of London and spent 14 years in the Far East working in corporate lending for a large German bank.
Nicky was born and raised in Somerset and upon her return from Asia, moved back to the county with her family and in 1996 joined Westbury-sub-Mendip WI. Her interest in environmental matters involved her in a federation recycling project, which led to her election to the Somerset WI federation Public Affairs, Science and International committee.
Nicky has been closely involved with WI Public Affairs since 2006 and masterminded several initiatives with Somerset Wildlife Trust, including ‘Tea in the Sea’, an initiative which saw WI members holding an afternoon tea in the sea in order to raise awareness of the effects of rising sea levels on communities living in the low-lying areas of the county.
Nicky is a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society and is involved with an archaeology research project studying pottery production in Anglo-Saxon Somerset.
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Nicky Amos
National Chair, Public Affairs at The WI (National Federation of Women's Institutes)
Tom farms in partnership with his wife, Emily, and his parents in North Essex. Alongside a small owned farm they run a larger contract farming business growing a range of combinable crops across 950 hectares in North East Essex. The home farm is based around arable production but has also diversified into equestrian and renewables.
Tom has represented the NFU from Local Branch Chairman through to Chair of the National Combinable Crops Board. Tom also served as Vice President from February 2020 to February 2022.
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Tom Bradshaw
National Farmers' Union Deputy President
Michael Grubb is Professor of International Energy and Climate Change Policy at University College London (Institute of Sustainable Resources), editor-in-chief of the journal Climate Policy, and Senior Advisor on Sustainable Energy Policy to the UK Energy Regulator Ofgem. His former positions include Senior Research Associate at Cambridge University (Departments of Economics and Land Economy); Chair of the international research organisation Climate Strategies; Chief Economist at the Carbon Trust; Professor of Climate Change and Energy Policy at Imperial College London; and head of Energy and Environment at Chatham House. He continues to be associated with these institutions.
Professor Grubb has also served on the Committee on Climate Change, established under the UK's Climate Change Act to advise the government on future carbon budgets and to report to Parliament on their implementation. In 2013 he was the Specialist Advisor to a House of Lords European Committee enquiry, ‘No Country is an Energy Island: securing investment for the EU's Future'.
Michael Grubb is author of eight books, 50 journal research articles and numerous other publications. He has held many advisory positions with governments, companies and international studies on climate change and energy policy, and has been a Lead Author for several reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on mitigation, including the Fourth Assessment Report. His book Planetary Economics, which brings together the lessons from 25 years of research and implementation of energy and climate policies, was published in March 2014: it has received widespread accolades as a ‘seminal’ contribution, ‘comprehensive and profoundly important’ for its presentation of a new approach to both the theoretical underpinnings and the practical policies for tackling energy and climate change challenges.
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Professor Michael Grubb
Professor of International Energy and Climate Change Policy, UCL
Mrs Leadsom has been the Member of Parliament for South Northamptonshire since 2010 and held a number of senior positions in Government, including Economic Secretary to the Treasury, Minister of State for Energy, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Leader of the House of Commons and Lord President and Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
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Dame Andrea Leadsom
MP for South Northamptonshire
Michael Howard was the Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition from November 2003 to December 2005. He previously held Cabinet positions in the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, including Secretary of State for Employment (1990-92), Secretary of State for the Environment (1992-93) and Home Secretary (1993-97).
He was the Member of Parliament for Folkestone & Hythe from 1983-2010 when he retired from the House of Commons and was appointed a Life Peer. He was appointed to the Order of Companion of Honour in 2011.
He now divides his time between charity work (he is, inter alia, Chairman of Help the Hospices) and business, serving as non-executive Director on several Boards.
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Lord Howard of Lympne
Lord John Krebs is Emeritus Professor of Zoology in the University of Oxford. He chaired the Adaptation Sub-committee of the Committee on Climate Change, the government’s statutory advisor, from 2009 to 2017.
John Krebs studied at Oxford, and worked in the University as a lecturer in Zoology and subsequently Royal Society Research Professor. He served as Chief Executive of the Natural Environment Research Council from 1994 to 1999, and as Chair of the Food Standards Agency from 2000 to 2005. In 2005 he gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, and the same year began a 10-year term as Principal of Jesus College, Oxford.
Lord Krebs entered the House of Lords as a crossbench Peer in 2007. He chaired the Lords Science and Technology Select Committee from 2010 to 2014, and currently sits on the Energy and Environment Select Committee.
As a scientist, John Krebs has published more than 300 research papers. He holds 17 honorary degrees, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society, the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the US Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the German National Academy of Sciences.
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Lord Krebs
Emeritus Professor of Zoology, University of Oxford
Robin Lustig is a journalist and broadcaster. From 1989 to 2012 he presented The World Tonight on BBC Radio 4 and Newshour on BBC World Service. He has travelled widely and has presented live news programmes from every continent except Antarctica. In 2009, he reported from the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen (and remains deeply scarred by the experience).
Before joining the BBC, he worked for Reuters as a correspondent in Spain, France and Italy, and for The Observer, where he was news editor, Middle East correspondent and assistant editor.
He now makes documentaries for the BBC and writes for the Financial Times magazine, The Observer, and The Guardian. He also sat on the editorial board of the British Journalism Review, which he chaired from 1992 until 2002.
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Robin Lustig
Journalist and Broadcaster
Catherine Mitchell is Professor of Energy Policy at the University of Exeter. Previously she worked at the Universities of Warwick, Sussex and California, Berkeley. She holds a PhD from Sussex University in Technology and Innovation Policy.
Catherine was a Lead Author in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, a Co-ordinating Lead Author of the IPCC’s Special Report on Renewable Energy and Climate Change Mitigation (published in 2011); and a Lead Analyst on the Global Energy Assessment undertaken through the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) published in 2012. She holds an Established Career Fellowship with the EPSRC, and led an ESRC/EPSRC interdisciplinary research cluster into Energy Security in a Multi-Polar World (2008-2013). She Chair of the Regulatory Assistance Project, a trustee of the Centre for Sustainable Energy, and is a Member of IPPR's Policy Advisory Council.
She has served on several panels advising the government, including the Energy Advisory Panel (1998-2003), the Balancing and Settlement Code Panel (2008-2010), the Academic Advisory Panel to DECC for Electricity Market Reform (2010), and DECC’s Distributed Generation Advisory Panel (2012). She chaired the British Institute of Energy Economics in 2009-10, and has advised numerous national and international companies, NGOs and institutions on various aspects of the transition to a sustainable energy system.
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Professor Catherine Mitchell
Professor of Energy Policy, University of Exeter
Hugh Montgomery is Professor of Intensive Care Medicine and Director of the Institute for Human Health and Performance at University College London.
As a medical researcher, he led the team that in 1998 announced the first discovery of a gene known to directly influence human physical fitness. He co-edits the academic journal Extreme Physiology and Medicine.
Professor Montgomery was a founding member of the UK Climate and Health Council. He was a co-author on the 2009 UCL-Lancet Commission on climate change and health, and is a co-chair of the 2015 Commission. He has written several books for children, and in 2008 set up Project Genie to engage schoolchildren in climate change and related issues, for which the London Sustainable Development Commission awarded him the title of London Leader.
He has completed several 100km ultra-marathons, holds the world record for underwater piano playing (110 hours to raise funds for a hospital ventilator), and has climbed the Himalayan peak of Cho Oyu, the world’s sixth highest mountain, to research the effect of extreme altitude on human physiology.
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Professor Hugh Montgomery
Director, Institute for Human Health and Performance, UCL
Neil Morisetti is Vice Dean (Public Policy) at the Faculty of Engineering Sciences at University College London and is Honorary Professor and Strategy Adviser at UCL Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy Department.
Prior to that he worked for the UK government, both as an officer in the Royal Navy, where appointments included Commander UK Maritime Forces and Commandant of the Joint Services Command and Staff College (Head of armed forces post graduate command and staff education), and latterly in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Recently he has acted as the UK Government Climate and Energy Security Envoy, and then the Foreign Secretary’s Special Representative for Climate Change.
A graduate of the University of East Anglia, he has a BSc (Hons) in Environmental Sciences and is an Honorary Professor at UCL.
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Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti
Former Commander, UK Maritime Forces
David Puttnam is the chair of Atticus Education, an online education company based in Ireland. Atticus, through a unique arrangement with BT Ireland, delivers interactive seminars on film and a variety of other subjects to educational institutions around the world.
David spent 30 years as an independent producer of award-winning films including The Mission, The Killing Fields, Local Hero, Chariots of Fire, Midnight Express, Bugsy Malone and Memphis Belle. His films have won ten Oscars, 25 Baftas and the Palme D'Or at Cannes. From 1994 to 2004 he was Vice President and Chair of Trustees at the British Academy of Film & Television Arts (BAFTA) and was awarded a BAFTA Fellowship in 2006.
He retired from film production in 1998 to focus on his work in public policy as it relates to education, the environment, and the creative and communications industries. In 1998 he founded the National Teaching Awards, which he chaired until 2008, also serving as the first Chair of the General Teaching Council from 2000 to 2002. From July 2002 to July 2009 he was president of UNICEF UK, playing a key role in promoting UNICEF’s advocacy and awareness objectives.
In October 2013 David stepped down as Chancellor of the Open University - a post he was appointed to in 2006, following ten years as Chancellor of The University of Sunderland.
He is Digital Champion for Ireland, President of the Film Distributors’ Association, Deputy Chairman of Profero, Chairman of the TSL Advisory Board and Adjunct Professor of Film Studies and Digital Humanities at University College Cork.
David Puttnam was Deputy Chairman of Channel 4 Television from 2006 until January 2012, and Chairman of North Music Trust (The Sage Gateshead) from 2007 until November 2012. He was founding Chair of the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) and chaired both the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television and the National Film and Television School for ten years. He has also served as a trustee of the Tate Gallery, the Science Museum and many other organisations.
In 2007 he was appointed Chairman of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Draft Climate Change Bill, having performed the same role on the 2002 Communications Bill. He has been Chairman of two Hansard Society Commission Reports on the relationship between Parliament and the Public and has served as a non-executive director on a number of public companies.
David was awarded a CBE in 1982, a knighthood in 1995 and was appointed to the House of Lords in 1997. In France he was made a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in 1985, becoming an Officer in 1992, and a Commander in 2006. He has been the recipient of more than 40 honorary degrees from Universities in the UK and overseas. He was recently the UK Prime Minister’s Trade Envoy to Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Burma.
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Lord Puttnam of Queensgate
Dr Emily Shuckburgh is the first Director of the Cambridge Carbon Neutral Futures Initiative, a new research centre established to catalyse holistic, collaborative progress towards a sustainable future. She co-led the Polar Oceans Team at the British Antarctic Survey, which is focused on understanding the role of the polar oceans in the global climate system.
She is also a fellow of Darwin College, a member of the Faculty of Mathematics, an associate of the Cambridge Centre for Climate Change Mitigation Research, an associate fellow of the Centre for Science and Policy, a member of the Cambridge Forum for Sustainability and the Environment and a fellow of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, all at the University of Cambridge. In the past she has worked at École Normale Supérieure in Paris and at MIT.
Dr Shuckburgh is a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society and Chair of their Climate Science Communications Group, a trustee of the Campaign for Science and Engineering and a member of the Scientific Steering Committee of the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences. She is a member of the Natural Environment Research Council's Strategic Programme Advisory Group and has acted as a scientific advisor to the UK Government. In 2016 she was awarded an OBE for services to science and the public communication of science.
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Dr Emily Shuckburgh
Director, Cambridge Carbon Neutral Futures Initiative
Robin Teverson is chairman of the EU Energy and Environment Sub-Committee in the House of Lords. He was Member of the European Parliament for Cornwall and West Plymouth between 1994 and 1999, becoming one of the first two Liberal Democrats to be elected to the European Parliament.
Robin was appointed Chief Whip of the European Liberal Democrat Group in the European Parliament from 1997 to 1999. In Europe he spoke on marine, transport and regional policy issues.
On 1 June 2006, he was created a life peer as Baron Teverson, of Tregony in the County of Cornwall. He joined the Liberal Democrat group in the House of Lords, and his main focus in the Chamber is climate change and energy issues. As part of this work he has chaired both the House of Lords EU select sub-committee on External Affairs, and its ad-hoc select committee on the Arctic. He oversaw the committee's report 'responding to a changing Arctic' which explored recent and expected changes in the Arctic and their implications for the UK and its international relations.
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Lord Teverson
Dr Camilla Toulmin is a Senior Fellow at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), based in London. An economist by training, she has worked mainly in Africa on agriculture, land, climate and livelihoods. This has combined field research, policy analysis and advocacy. Her work has aimed at understanding how environmental, economic and political change affect people’s lives, and how policy reform can bring real change on the ground.
Camilla stepped down as IIED Director in June 2015 after 12 years at the helm in order to spend more time back working with societies in African drylands, particularly Mali. During her time as Director, she focused on developing the institute’s strategy and communications, building on strengths in adaptation to climate change, cities that work for poor people, addressing the natural resource squeeze, and designing sustainable market mechanisms. Priority issues for IIED were and are food security, green and inclusive economies, rights plus action, and getting Least Developed Countries voices into global processes around climate and the post-2015 agenda.
Camilla studied Economics at Cambridge and London before gaining her doctorate in Economics at Oxford. She is Chair of ICARDA’s Board, and a trustee of the Franco-British Council and a number of other boards.
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Dr Camilla Toulmin
Senior Fellow, IIED
Adair Turner has combined careers in business, public policy and academia. He became Chairman of the UK Financial Services Authority as the financial crisis broke in September 2008, and played a leading role in the redesign of the global banking and shadow banking regulation as Chairman of the international Financial Stability Board’s major policy committee. He is now Chairman of the Governing Board of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), and at the Centre for Financial Studies in Frankfurt. INET is a global economic research foundation committed to the development of real world solutions to the economic and social challenges of the 21st Century.
Prior to 2008 Lord Turner was a non-executive Director at Standard Chartered Bank (2006-2008); Vice-Chairman of Merrill Lynch Europe (2000-2006); and from 1995-1999, Director General of the Confederation of British Industry. He was with McKinsey & Co from 1982 to 1995.
Adair became a cross-bench member of the House of Lords in 2005 and was Chairman of the Committee on Climate Change from 2008 to 2012; he also chaired the Pensions Commission from 2003 to 2006, and the Low Pay Commission from 2002 to 2006.
He is the author of 'Just Capital – The Liberal Economy' (Macmillan, 2001), and ‘Economics after the Crisis, (MIT Press, 2012), and holds Visiting Professorships at the London School of Economics and at Cass Business School, City University. He is a Trustee and Chair of the Audit Committee at the British Museum.
Lord Turner studied History and Economics at Caius College, Cambridge.
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