Be Bold! The Lecture Series for brave thinking

Wednesday 26 February

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Chloe is a bestselling author, global speaker, futurist, researcher, and consultant. her primary area of expertise is young people – Generation Z and Generation Alpha. She has interviewed over 20,000 young people globally and utilises that expertise into helping schools, brands, companies, governments, and institutions understand and prepare for the present and future. All Chloe's work is underwritten by serious quantitative and qualitative research and data and unparalleled knowledge, using a coveted and highly successful approach and methodology – one that has won her rave reviews.

To find out more about Chloe’s work, click HERE. 

Matthew Syed is an author and highly acclaimed speaker in the field of high performance. He has written seven best-selling books on the subject of mindset and high performance – Bounce, Black Box Thinking, Rebel Ideas, The Greatest, and his celebrated children’s books, What Do You Think?, You Are Awesome and Dare To Be You – and has worked with many leading organisations to build a mindset of continuous improvement. He is also a multi-award-winning journalist for The Times and The Sunday Times and presenter of the popular BBC Radio 4 programme, Sideways, currently in its sixth series. Matthew is a regular contributor to television and radio and, in his previous career, was the England table tennis number one for almost a decade.  

To find out more about Matthew’s work, visit: www.matthewsyed.co.uk  

Tomiwa Owolade is a journalist and author. He has written about identity, religion, culture and current affairs for a wide variety of publications, including the Times, the New Statesman and the Observer. His first book This is Not America was published in June 2023. He has also featured on BBC Radio 4 and Times Radio.

The title of Tomiwa's talk was This is Not America: the case for looking at race in the UK through a British perspective.

Hannah Barnes is an award-winning journalist and author of Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock's Gender Service for Children. Hannah is Associate Editor at the New Statesman and was previously Senior Journalist and Investigations Producer at the BBC's flagship current affairs programme Newsnight.

Hannah's talk explored the intricacies of gender identity - one of the most diversive issues in politics today.

Tim is an international prize winning economist. He has taught at various UK universities for more than 30 years, and is currently Visiting Professor in Practice at the LSE School of Public Policy and an Associate Member of Nuffield College Oxford. He has also held visiting positions in the US and Europe. 

Tim was also a senior civil servant for just over a decade, working in five departments. He served as Education Adviser to the Prime Minister, Economic Adviser to two Chancellors, Senior Policy Adviser to six other Cabinet Ministers, as well being Chief Analyst and Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department for Education. 

In his time in government he was instrumental in devising the National Funding Formula for schools, the furlough scheme, and the creation of the Longitudinal Education Outcomes dataset, matching education qualifications with earnings. 

Tim is currently Director of Economics at Public First Consulting, and Chief Analyst at Onward thinktank.

Tim gave an enlightened and ultimately hopeful talk on The Economic Challenges Facing Tomorrow's Graduates. 

Jonathan gave an inspiring talk with a misery warning, but ended, as promised, with an uplifting note of optimism. 

“This is not going to be a cheerful talk,” cautioned Jonathan, who is one of the UK’s leading political commentators and works as a partner and Director of Education at Public First, which helps organisations navigate and understand government policy. 

Addressing the question: Is democracy dead in the UK (and the US) and does anyone care?, he explained how the turnout at general elections has declined in the UK since 1997, to an almost record low in 2004. 

But he ended on a positive and optimistic note by saying: “Ultimately, I remain optimistic about the future of democracy, because I spend an awful lot of my time talking to young people in independent and state schools up and down the country, and I am overwhelmed and blown away by their knowledge and passion. I am bowled over by their positivity, moral purpose and determination to make things better in the world, and we’re going to need all of that in spades. So yes, I’m optimistic.”