Speakers

Sumit Paul-Choudhury is a writer and thinker focused on science, technology, and the future. At Alternity, his creative studio, he explores alternative histories, social experiments, and applied speculations. He is working on his first book, “The Bright Side”, an investigation of the philosophy and practice of optimism, set to be published in January 2025.

As a journalist, Sumit spent 15 years covering business and technology in London and New York. In 2008, he joined New Scientist, where he served as editor-in-chief until 2017. He was also editor-in-chief of Arc, a digital publication about the future and was the founding creative director of New Scientist Live in 2016.

After leaving New Scientist, Sumit completed the Sloan Fellowship at London Business School. He is a Visiting Research Fellow in the Computing department at Goldsmiths and a Fellow of the RSA, where he is on the Editorial Board. He chairs the Public Engagement Committee of the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust and serves as a trustee for Cove Park and arebyte gallery.

Rachel Coldicutt is a researcher and strategist specialising in the social impact of new and emerging technologies She is founder and executive director of research consultancy Careful Industries and its sister social enterprise Promising Trouble.

She was previously founding CEO of responsible technology think tank Doteveryone where she led influential and ground-breaking research into how technology is changing society and developed practical tools for responsible innovation. Prior to that, she spent almost 20 years working at the cutting edge of new technology for companies including the BBC, Microsoft, BT, and Channel 4, and was a pioneer in the digital art world. Rachel is an advisor, board member and trustee for a number of companies and charities and, from 2020-2023, served as a non-executive director at Ofcom. In 2019, Rachel was awarded an OBE in the New Year’s Honours for services for the digital society.

Carlie is a Senior Policy Advisor at Impetus, identifying and seizing opportunities for influencing public policy to improve the outcomes of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

She is also co-founder and spokesperson for Class Divide, a campaign based in Brighton and Hove dedicated to making the systemic changes needed to reduce education inequalities between children from low-income and working-class backgrounds and their more affluent counterparts.

She is a contributor to the multi-award nominated podcast, Class Divide, and delivers awareness-raising sessions for schools and colleges on the experience of low-income and working-class children in education and beyond.

Carlie holds a Ph.D. in Applied Social Science working as a mixed-methods social researcher and evaluator with twenty years experience of delivering high-quality projects in the fields of crime and criminal justice, health inequalities, suicide prevention, and trauma-informed practice in the private, not-for-profit, and higher education sectors.

She has presented research and evaluation findings at national and international conferences, has authored and co-authored a range of publications, and other forms of research dissemination.

Curtis is a dedicated researcher and storyteller with a knack for uncovering the narratives of people, communities, places, and work. His mission is to inspire change, amplify positive efforts, and enable amazing outcomes by helping people notice the details that often go overlooked.

He carefully crafts outputs tailored to the specific needs of each project, which can take the form of photographs, books, films, exhibitions, events, and multi award nominated podcast series.

Curtis co-founded and volunteers for Class Divide, a grassroots campaign that successfully changed education policy in Brighton & Hove. This pioneering policy, a first in England and Wales, gives children on Free School Meals priority in school admissions, reducing socio-economic segregation in the city's state schools. Curtis and Carlie are optimistically trying to turn Brighton and Hove into the best place to go to school if you are from a disadvantaged background.

Anjali Ramachandran is a Director at Storythings, an audience research and content production company that works with clients like ADP, Global Payroll Association, Pearson, Tate, Francis Crick Institute, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and Shakespeare Folger Library. Storythings produces 3 popular newsletters: one with creative inspiration (Storythings Newsletter), one about the magic of formats (Formats Unpacked), and one about audience attention in the modern age (Attention Matters).

Anjali was a co-founder of Ada’s List, a global network for women in STEM with over 10,000 members, now part of the US-based Tech Ladies community. Previously, she was Head of Innovation at PHD Media (part of Omnicom Media Group), a trustee of visual arts charity Photoworks and on the Advisory Board of Angel Academe, a group of angel investors who fund female entrepreneurs. She was one of BBC’s 100 Women in 2014 and the Financial Times/Inclusive Boards Top 100 BAME Tech Leaders in the UK 2018.

Emily Macaulay is the founder of Stanley James Press, a small design company specialising in the design and production of printed goods. The majority of her work involves helping artists, photographers and organisations design printed materials, bespoke books and exhibition spaces. She is passionate about the more unusual and complicated forms of print, creating work that engages audiences and experiments with different ways to produce things. She is also trying to find ways to be more sustainable and is constantly trying to understand the processes involved in the outcomes she produces in order to advise her clients of ways to produce more environmentally considered products.

When she is not designing books or exhibition spaces, she can be found exploring the UK countryside on foot, turning what she finds into hiking maps and guides as one half of the map-making company This Way.

Anil Seth is a neuroscientist, author, and public speaker who has pioneered research into the brain basis of consciousness for more than twenty years.

He is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience and Director of the Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex. He is also Co-Director of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Program on Brain, Mind and Consciousness, a European Research Council Advanced Investigator, and former Editor-in-Chief of the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness. He has published more than 200 research papers, is a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher (2019-2023), and in 2023 he received the Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize.

His 2017 TED talk has been viewed more than fourteen million times, and his 2021 book Being You: A New Science of Consciousness was an instant Sunday Times Bestseller and a Book of the Year for The Economist, The New Statesman, Bloomberg Business, The Guardian, The Financial Times and elsewhere.

'Reluctant Futurist’ Mark Stevenson is a strategic advisor to governments, investors, NGOs and corporates and co-founder of Carbon Removals company CUR8.

Though branded a ‘futurist’ by others Mark is more, as one client puts it, ‘Chief Annoying Question Asker’. He helps organisations change the way they feel, think, invest and operate in order to answer the intertwined questions the future is asking us - on climate change, inequality, the retreat of democracy and the failures of the markets to price risk properly (to name just four).

His two bestselling books, An Optimist’s Tour of the Future and the award-winning We Do Things Differently map out some existing and proven solutions to our current dilemmas.

He is Global Ambassador for both environmental law firm Client Earth and soil health pioneers Oath, as well as and former strategic advisor on peace, national security and climate change to the UK Ministry of Defence.

He also enjoys a successful side career as a comedy writer and songwriter, which he regards as essential for maintaining key skills needed in his strategy work. “The brain does the PR for what the heart has already decided, if you can’t speak to the heart any systems change is dead in the water.”

His hit podcast with comedian Jon Richardson and fellow systems change advocate Ed Gillespie is available on all major platforms.

James is an author and design industry OAP. He co-founded Berst in 2019 with James Bates, his long-term collaborator. Together, they continue to pursue their belief that invention is a largely untapped source of rapid progress.

Prior to Berst, he was Design Director at pioneering studio Clearleft, where he built one of the country’s leading design teams and helped curate some of Europe’s most successful design events. He also co-authored the best-selling book Undercover UX Design and has spoken at design events all over the world.

Alongside his friend and colleague Alis Cox, he's curated This is Optimism and, unfortunately for you, will be your host for the day.