Inspirators and Expert Contributors

Dr. Mona Betour El Zoghbi 

Dr. Mona Betour El Zoghbi is a consultant working with the Education Programme at UNESCO. She has been the national coordinator of youth projects at the UNESCO Beirut Office, supporting participatory engagement in sustainability matters. Her expertise is in public health, youth engagement, disability rights, inclusive policies on women, and climate change, having completed a PhD in this area in 2014. She is based in Lebanon and has worked with UNICEF and UNDP as well as other organizations across the Mediterranean region.

Jane Davidson

Jane Davidson is the author of #futuregen: Lessons from a Small Country and Chair of the Wales Inquiry of the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission. She is Pro Vice-Chancellor Emeritus at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. From 2007- 2011, she was Minister for Environment and Sustainability in Wales where she proposed a law to make protecting future generations the central organising principle of government; the Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act came into law in 2015. She is a RSA Fellow and since 2017 has been guest faculty on the Executive Education for Sustainability Leadership programme at Harvard University's T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Roman Krznaric

Roman Krznaric is a public philosopher who writes about the power of ideas to change society. His latest book is The Good Ancestor: How to Think Long Term in a Short Term World. His previous international bestselling books, including Empathy, The Wonderbox and Carpe Diem Regained, have been published in more than 20 languages.

After growing up in Sydney and Hong Kong, Roman studied at the universities of Oxford, London and Essex, where he gained his PhD in political sociology. He later taught sociology and politics at Cambridge University and City University, London. He is founder of the world’s first Empathy Museum and is currently a Research Fellow of the Long Now Foundation.

Roman has been named by The Observer as one of Britain’s leading popular philosophers. His writings have been widely influential amongst political and ecological campaigners, education reformers, social entrepreneurs and designers. An acclaimed public speaker, his talks and workshops have taken him from a London prison to the TED global stage.

Juan Verde

Juan Verde is an internationally renowned strategist for both the private and public sectors, specializing in sustainable development. 

Within the political arena, Mr. Verde has worked with some of today’s most relevant political figures such as former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Vice President Al Gore, the late Senator Ted Kennedy, and former Secretary of State John Kerry. In the public sector, he has worked with the governments of Lithuania, Gibraltar, and the United States, as well as numerous governors and mayors in Latin America.

Mr. Verde was appointed by President Barack Obama as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Europe and Eurasia at the US Department of Commerce where he led the department’s efforts to solve trade policy and market access issues faced by US firms, seeking to grow their business operations in Europe and Eurasia.

A longtime advocate for environmental causes, sustainability, and the fight against climate change, Mr. Verde partnered with former Vice President Al Gore to establish and lead “The Climate Project Spain.”

Mr. Verde is currently the President of the Advanced Leadership Foundation, an American 501c3 non-profit organization, whose mission is to train the next generation of future leaders by developing their respective professional expertise while taking into consideration today’s transformative and challenging workforce.

Dominic Stucker

Dominic is an action-oriented collaborator who convenes diverse teams to collectively lead sustainability transformations. With over 20 years of experience as a dialogic facilitator and process steward, he is specialised in consensus building, visioning, process architecture design, and governance structures for delivering on the Sustainable Development Goals. As Managing Partner with the Collective Leadership Institute, Dominic has helped enliven numerous collaboration ecosystems, e.g. for social cohesion in Sri Lanka; technical education in Egypt; and water security in Zambia. Partners have included the ADB, EU, GIZ, IUCN, IWMI, Oxfam, UNDP, UNICEF, UNODC, USAID, and WWF.

Dominic is a Donella Meadows Leadership Fellow and holds advanced degrees in Environmental Security from the UN-mandated University for Peace, in Education from Brown University, and in Comparative Literature from Stanford University. He has published with Routledge, MIT Press, and academic journals, including his recently co-authored book Leading Transformative Change Collectively: A Practitioner Guide to Realizing the SDGs.

Dominic is originally from Germany and currently lives in Massachusetts, USA with his wife and teenage twin sons, with whom he enjoys building Legos, biking, and rock climbing.

Harry Bowles

Harry graduated from the University of Aberdeen with a first-class honours degree in Politics and International Relations. Upon graduation, he completed an internship with the UK Civil Service before joining the Cabinet Office, Youth Engagement team working on COP26. In this role, he is responsible for meeting with individuals and organisations to better understand youth perspectives on climate change. He frequently write briefings for ministers and senior officials and attends webinars and virtual events as part of the wider Partnerships and Engagement directorate.  

He has represented the COP26 Unit at events, including speaking at the SDG7 energy roundtables and organising and chairing explainer sessions for youth delegates at the Mock COP on behalf of the UK Government. He is currently enrolled at the United Nations Institute of Training and Research (UNITAR) in Integrated Planning for Climate Change and Biodiversity.

Meg Baker

Meg is the Director of Education at Students Organising for Sustainability-UK. SOS-UK is an educational charity created by students and staff at NUS in response to the climate emergency and ecological crisis. We support students to learn, act and lead for sustainability.

As Director of Education Meg oversees SOS-UKs education work, programmes and campaigns. This involves working across the student movement and with partner organisations to reform the education sector by enhancing the embedding of learning for sustainability for all students, at all levels of study, in the UK and internationally. Meg is also currently seconded to University and College Union (UCU) for 1 day/week to progress UCUs work supporting members on the Green New Deal for Universities and Colleges. 

Previously, Meg worked at the University of Gloucestershire and their students' union leading on student, staff and community engagement for sustainability, this also involved the coordination of a Regional Centre of Expertise for Sustainability Education. She found her passion for education transformation through her background in outdoor education and learning outside the classroom, working with young people out of mainstream education.

Sophie Howe

Described by The Guardian as the “World’s first minister of the Unborn”, her role is to provide advice to the Government and other public bodies in Wales on delivering social, economic, environmental and cultural well-being for current and future generations and assessing and reporting on how they are delivering.

Sophie took up post in 2016 and has led high profile interventions around transport planning, education reform and climate change challenging the Government and others to demonstrate how they are taking account of future generations. Described by the Big Issue Magazine as one of the UK’s leading Changemakers, her interventions have secured fundamental changes to land use planning policy, major transport schemes and Government policy on housing – ensuring that decisions taken today are fit for the future. She has represented Wales at the UN the OECD and on a number of International Forums including Chairing the Network of Institutions for Future Generations.

Prior to this role Sophie was the first Deputy Police and Crime Commissioner for South Wales where she led programmes to tackle violent crime and violence against women and girls, focusing on early intervention and partnership working. She reformed programmes on substance misuse and offender management and led the first police programme designed to address childhood adversities.

Sophie has served as an Adviser to two Welsh First Ministers providing policy and political advice on communities, local government, equality and community safety where she led to development of Wales’ first legislation to tackle violence against women and girls.

She was an elected Councillor for 9 years from the age of 21 and she wrote the 2009 report of the Councillors Commission which led to legislative reforms on increasing diversity amongst elected members. She has a background in equality and diversity having managed the Legal Department of the Equal Opportunities Commission.

She is named in the top 100 Business Women in Wales, is a fellow at Cardiff University Business School and Swansea University, holds an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Wales Trinity Saint David and a degree in law and politics. She lives in Cardiff with her husband and their five children.

Paul Patron

Paul is currently Policy and Communications Officer at HM Government of Gibraltar's Representation to the European Union. His work at Gibraltar House in Brussels includes monitoring and engagement on priorities of the Gibraltar government and following EU policy in sustainability forms an important part of his brief.

He is a graduate in Law from the University of Kent and was called to the Bar after following the BPTC at the University of the West of England. In 2016 he graduated with an MA from the College of Europe in European Political and Administrative Studies. Committed to public affairs and an enthusiast for digital and sustainability policy, Paul has previous experience in the EU institutions in Brussels, where he completed a traineeship at the European Committee of the Regions, and the United States Congress in Washington DC, where he formed part of the first cohort of the Gibraltar government's Washington programme.

As a Gibraltarian abroad, Paul has sought to use his advocacy skills and interest in international relations to communicate a positive vision of the future highlighting Gibraltar's unique value proposition as an integral part of that narrative. 

Cat Tully

Cat Tully is the founder of SOIF, the School of International Futures. Prior to setting up SOIF, Cat was Strategy Project Director at the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and Senior Policy Adviser in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Before working in government, she worked in strategy and international relations across the not-for-profit and business sectors, including Christian Aid, Technoserve and Procter and Gamble. Cat has also worked for the UN, the EU Commission and the World Bank. Cat has degrees from Cambridge and Princeton Universities. She is a trustee of the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development, a member of the UN Learning Advisory Council for the 2030 Agenda, a Global board member of Academics Stand Against Poverty and a member of the Advisory Group of the British Foreign Policy Group.

Erik Marquardt

Erik works as an MEP in Brussels and Strasbourg. Before having this role, he worked as a photographer reporting on escape routes to Europe, the War in Afghanistan, and the lives of Afghan refugees. He was part of the Sea Rescue Missions in the Mediterranean, where he helped to save people from drowning. This year he spent several weeks on Lesbos, where he worked to improve the situations for refugees in the Greek camps, of which most inhabitants are children and young people. Besides his political activities, he is one the initiators of the pan-European campaign “Leave No One Behind.

Erik communicates his political approach very strongly through social media using his photography skills. Through this, he is able to reach younger audiences. As a member and former Spokesperson of the “Grüne Jugend”, the organisation of the Green Party in Germany, Erik has always worked to inspire young people to get active and engage themselves in working for a better and more sustainable tomorrow.

Nicklas Larsen

Nicklas is a Senior Advisor, Writer, and Head of Initiatives at the 50-year-old think tank Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies, he is a SteerCo member of the Futures Oriented Museum Synergies network and was appointed as Senior Curator for the recent UNESCO Futures Literacy Summit. Nicklas aspires to democratize and decolonize futures thinking by fostering futures literacy and through increased participation in futures work, and through his section in the award-winning SCENARIO Magazine: "Applied Futurism", he explores the future as a source for hope, social innovation, and sustainable development together with pioneers in the field. Departing from these experiences, Nicklas will facilitate an interactive FFA session looking into the pull from the future, push from the present, and weight from the past, to enable tomorrow’s leaders of Gibraltar form their own lens of their future.

Dominique Searle

Dominique Searle graduated from the University of Essex in 1983 with an MA in Sociology of Literature. He joined the Gibraltar Chronicle (Est. 1801) July 1984 as a staff reporter, just months before the historic opening of the border with Spain. From February 1985 he was retained for over two decades as The Times (of London)  and Reuters stringer for Gibraltar. 

A regular contributor to international media Dominique held the post of Gibraltar Chronicle Editor and managing director from September 1996 to April 2015. He was appointed M.B.E. in 2004 for services to journalism. He was advisor to the Kusuma Trust Gibraltar 2010 – 2017.

Since 2015 he has been Chief Minister’s Special Representative and then HM Government of Gibraltar representative to the UK since May 2015 which involves lobbying parliament, representing Gibraltar at formal and diplomatic events and following and influencing political affairs which affect Gibraltar interests.