Charles Sabine
Emmy-award winning TV journalist, Charles Sabine OBE, worked for the US network NBC news for 26 years.
That career took him to 35 wars and conflicts where he learnt first-hand the extraordinary limits of the human spirit.
In 2006, Sabine tested positive for the expanded Huntington's gene. Sabine has described why he then chose to switch battlefields to the one facing HD families. “The neurologist said: ‘there is nothing you can do about this disease, just live your life as well as you can’. Later, he realised that: “The neurologist was completely wrong. There is everything I can do about this disease. The problem, is finding the time to do it all.”
That role has led to Sabine speaking at prestigious venues across the world, among them, the European and British parliaments, the Royal Institution and the Vatican.
In 2022, Sabine was awarded an ’OBE’. The first time in history of such honours, that the words 'Huntington's disease' have been used in a citation.
Eric Ngalle Charles
Eric Ngalle Charles is a Cameroonian writer, poet, playwright, and human rights activist based in Wales. A PhD researcher at King’s College London, he was awarded a Creative Wales Award in 2017 for his work on migration, trauma, and memory. His autobiography, Eric Ngalle: One Man's Journey Crossing Continents from Africa to Europe (2019), recounts his journey to Europe, spending more than two years in Russia. He has edited several poetry anthologies, including Hiraeth Erzolirzoli: A Wales-Cameroon Anthology (2018). His poetry Collection Homelands Seren Books (2022) was published in April.
Erinch Sahan
Business & Enterprise Lead Doughnut Economics Action Lab (DEAL)
Erinch is the business and enterprise lead at Doughnut Economics Action Lab. His work focuses on transforming the deep design of businesses to enable pursuit of regenerative and distributive strategies. Working with over 300 businesses, he created the Doughnut Design for Business tool, which enables businesses to engage with Doughnut Economics.
Erinch has a background in leadership across business, NGOs and government. He served as the chief executive of the World Fair Trade Organization, and previously spent 7 years at Oxfam leading campaign and programme work, including the Behind the Brands scorecard. Erinch has worked at Procter & Gamble, the Australian government and established a furniture business.
He is a board member of the Social Enterprise World Forum, fellow at the Post Growth Institute and a senior associate at Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. He holds degrees in finance and law and an honorary doctorate from Oxford Brookes University.
Jenny Tough
Jenny Tough is an endurance athlete and adventurer best known for running and cycling in some of the world's most challenging events.
In 2021 she completed a global challenge to run, solo and unsupported, across a mountain range on every continent, including three world-first traverses. She was the two-time first woman in the Silk Road Mountain Race and the Atlas Mountain Race – two of the world’s toughest off-road bike races.
Her TEDx talk will inspire the audience to fill their lives with excitement and say yes to adventure - whatever that may mean to each individual.
Julia Samuel
Julia Samuel MBE is a leading UK psychotherapist who worked for decades in the NHS. She has held many roles in the charitable sector. She is Founder Patron of Child Bereavement UK an organisation she played a significant part for 25 years. She is a Vice President of BACP. Honorary Doctorate by Middlesex University.
Julia's three books, all Sunday Times bestsellers, Grief Works, This Too Shall Pass and she published Every Family Has a Story in 2022, the USA edition published November 2022. Her books have been published in 17 foreign territories.
She has written for all the national newspapers and broadcast on many TV and radio programmes. Her new podcast series Therapy Works was released in October and was immediately in the top 10 Apple charts, no 1 on mental health.
In 2021 Julia produced a 5* rated app for those who grieve, Grief Works – a 28 day course to support you in your grief which has been 5* rated, Apple featured it numerous times as a recommended and trending app.
Kudzai Matsvai
As an architectural activist with a specialism in equity, diversity, and inclusion, I believe that, in our current global climate, it is paramount for architects and educators to engage with diverse histories and communities in order to deliver design solutions that are truly inclusive, equitable, and accessible to all.
Beyond this, I believe that it is vital that we as designers of the built environment allow the knowledge and insights gained from working with different and diverse communities to reshape the way we think and work in order to drive change.
This cannot be achieved until the profession itself better represents the rich diversity of the world we live in, and so we must continue to fight to make architecture a more accessible and achievable career path for marginalised individuals.
Mhairi Aitken
Mhairi Aitken is an Ethics Fellow in the Public Policy Programme at The Alan Turing Institute (the UK’s national institute for AI and data science), a Visiting Senior Lecturer at the Digital Environment Research Institute, Queen Mary University of London and an Honorary Senior Fellow at Australian Centre for Health Engagement, Evidence and Values (ACHEEV) at the University of Wollongong, Australia. She is a Sociologist whose research examines social and ethical dimensions of digital innovation. Mhairi was included in the 2023 international list of “100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics”. She is passionate about finding creative ways of engaging members of the public in discussions around the roles of data and AI in society. She is a regular performer in the Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and has performed at the Edinburgh International Science Festival, Glasgow International Comedy Festival and in stand-up comedy clubs.
Rory Stewart
Rory Stewart was a member of the British Parliament for almost a decade. During that time he served as secretary of state for international development, prisons minister, minister for Africa, development minister for the Middle East and Asia, and minister for the environment. He founded and ran the Turquoise Mountain foundation in Afghanistan, was the director of the Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy and the Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. From 2000 to 2002 he travelled six thousand miles on foot across Asia, including Afghanistan. Stewart has written five books. He is a visiting Fellow at Yale’s Jackson school, hosts The Rest Is Politics podcast with Alastair Campbell and is a Senior Advisor for the non-profit GiveDirectly.
Sahra Kulmiya
Sahra is a Phd candidate at the University of Bristol obsessed with trapped atoms and all manner quantum. Her background stems from mathematics before she moving onto a fascinating doctoral training course applying her skills to the field of quantum technologies which is gaining a lot of traction and attention.