Will Hutton (Chair)

Will Hutton is a political economist, author and newspaper columnist. He is an Associate of the Centre for Economic Performance at the LSE, a non-executive director of the Satellite Applications Catapult, an associate of the Oxford University Martin School and writes a fortnightly column for the Observer.

As a leading economics commentator, Will is regularly called on to advise senior political and business figures and comment in the national and international media. He began his career in the City before moving to the BBC where he became Economics Editor of Newsnight, then went on to be Economics Editor of the Guardian. He spent four years as Editor-in-Chief of The Observer and was Chief Executive of The Work Foundation from 2000 to 2008. He stepped down from the Principalship of Hertford College, Oxford in September 2020.

Will has chaired two government Commissions – one on Public Sector Pay for the Coalition government in 2011 and one on the Creative Industries for the Labour government in 2007. He was rapporteur for the EU’s Kok Commission in 2004, and was one of “ twelve wise men and women” to reflect on the future of Europe at the request of President Prodi in 2002. He has chaired/directed and/or founded four think tanks – the Employment Policy Institute, the Work Foundation, the Big Innovation Centre and the Purposeful Company. He was a trustee of the Scott Trust, owner of the Guardian and Observer, from 2006 to 2016. His many books include the Revolution That Never Was ( 1986), ‘The State We’re In’ (1996), with Tony Giddens “ On the Edge” ( 1999), The World We’re In ( 2001), The Writing on the Wall ( 2006), ‘Them and Us” (2011), ‘How Good We Can Be’ (2015) and most recently with Andrew Adonis ‘Saving Britain’(2018)

Rushanara Ali MP

Rushanara Ali has been the Labour Member of Parliament for Bethnal Green and Bow since May 2010. Rushanara has served on the Labour front bench as both Shadow Minister for International Development and Shadow Minister for Education. She has been a member of the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee, the Communities and Local Government Select Committee, and currently serves on the Treasury Select Committee. Rushanara has been the UK Trade Envoy for Bangladesh since she was appointed by Prime Minister David Cameron in April 2016.

Before entering politics, Rushanara was Associate Director of the Young Foundation, where she co-founded UpRising, Maslaha, and the Social Innovation Exchange. Rushanara has previously worked at the Home Office, at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, as a Research Fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research and as Parliamentary Assistant for Oona King, former MP for Bethnal Green & Bow. Rushanara also worked as Research Assistant to Lord Young of Dartington helping him to set up the charity, Futureversity (formerly known as Tower Hamlets Summer University) and Language Line, a national telephone interpreting company.

Martin Bright

Martin Bright is the award-winning former Home Affairs editor of the Observer and former Political Editor of the New Statesman. In 2009, he founded the youth employment Creative Society as a response to the Great Recession. The organisation helps young people from all backgrounds break into the creative industries - a traditionally exclusive sector. Over the past decade, Creative Society has found work for hundreds of young people and helped many more through its mentoring and network programmes.

Kirsty McHugh

Kirsty is Chief Executive of the Mayor’s Fund for London, the independent social mobility charity supporting young Londoner from low-income backgrounds.  The Mayor’s Fund’s campaigning and programme activities span the fields of wellbeing, skills and employability, with the charity supporting around 40,000 children and young people every year. 

Previously, Kirsty spent eight years as CEO of the Employment Related Services Association (ERSA), the membership body for providers of employability services, where she oversaw a five-fold increase in membership and a major expansion of spheres of influence to cover disability and health issues, youth unemployment, housing and homelessness and services to (ex) offenders, alongside detailed work with the UK and Scottish Governments and combined authorities on the design and live running of employment support programmes. 

Kirsty also served as Director of Partnerships and Director of Regeneration at Business in the Community, where she ran work on employment, enterprise and health inequalities, plus led BITC’s national delivery programmes, including a network of 100 local groups delivering regeneration, employee volunteering and pro-bono schemes.  Kirsty is a member of Impetus’s Investment Committee, sat on the National Lottery Fund panel for the Building Better Opportunities Fund and is a non executive director of an East London housing association.

Susan Singer

A former American national who has lived In Britain for 40 years, Susan is an independent and strong supporter of the National Youth Corps. Her background and lifelong interests have been in developing young people, health and public health systems, the creative arts and social justice. She and her partner work with and sponsor youth in the Arts and Sport - the National Youth Orchestra and British Dressage. She has a B.A. Sociology and a MSc. Medical Sociology.  

Alveena Malik

Alveena Malik has over 20 years’ experience of working nationally on equalities and cohesion issues as well as delivering social innovation projects. For the past 4 years Alveena has been Chief Executive and Co-Founder of One Million Mentors, a unique community-based mentoring programme, quickly growing roots around the UK. The aim is to transform young lives by connecting one million young people with one million mentors.   

Previously she was Head of UpRising, a national youth leadership charity. Prior to this, Alveena was Principal Associate at the Institute for Community Cohesion (iCoCo) with lead responsibility on Education and Cohesion Policy and Intercultural Dialogue. She began her career at the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) where she became Head of Communities and Integration Policy, leading the development of policies tackling issues such as segregation and extremism. 

In 2010 Alveena was appointed as Faith Panel Advisor to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (CLG). She was also appointed as Special Advisor to the CLG Committee Inquiry into Migration and PREVENT. As well as this she was advisor to the Law Society’s Equality and Diversity Committee. Currently Alveena is a Trustee of the People's History Museum and a mentor to a number of local young people in Manchester.

David Riemer

David Riemer has worked with Democrats and Republicans to create path-breaking public policy at the state level and influence national policy. After graduating from Milwaukee’s Riverside High School, he attended Harvard College (AB, History and Literature, 1970) and Harvard Law School (JD, 1975). Riemer returned to Wisconsin in 1975 to serve as legal advisor to Governor Patrick Lucey. He later held legal, budget, and policymaking positions with U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy (1978-1981), Mayor John Norquist (1988-2001), and Governor Jim Doyle (2003).

Riemer has been active in politics as both candidate and advisor. In 2004, he ran against Scott Walker for Milwaukee County Executive. Riemer went on to direct the Wisconsin Health Project (2004-2008) and served as Founding Director and Senior Fellow for the Community Advocates Public Policy Institute (2008-Present).

Over the course of his career, Riemer played a lead role in drafting and gaining passage of over a dozen City of Milwaukee budgets and ordinances. He helped to design and secure enactment of Wisconsin laws that created the State Public Defender program, Transitional Jobs, the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit, and the BadgerCare health insurance program. He has also assisted in crafting two bills in the U.S. Senate to create a federal Transitional Jobs program.

Riemer is the author of The Prisoners of Welfare: Liberating America’s Poor from Unemployment and Low Wages (Praeger, 1988). His book—Putting Government In Its Place: The Case for a New Deal 3.0—appeared in the fall of 2019 (HenschelHAUS).

Riemer’s website, Putting Government In Its Place, is www.govinplace.org