By 2030, there will be over 20 million older people in the UK

Sofiat Akinola is currently a Director of Health Policy and External Affairs at Roche Diagnostics. In this capacity, she works with decision-makers to advocate, influence, and shape policy for access to timely screening and diagnostic tools to improve patient outcomes. Her portfolio includes cervical cancer, women’s health, pandemic preparedness, and universal health coverage.

Before joining Roche Diagnostics, Sofiat was a Global Health Lead at the World Economic Forum. Her portfolio focused on keeping populations healthy and health systems transformation – Value-Based Healthcare, Universal Health Coverage, and Healthy Ageing and Longevity.

Sofiat worked in the NGO and Government sectors. She built monitoring and evaluation skills to support strategies ranging from Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder Initiative to Ending Homeless in Alberta, Canada. Sofiat has two Masters, one from the University of Oxford on Evidence-Based Social Intervention and Policy Evaluation with a focus on Impact Evaluation, and from Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, where she received a MSc. and MPH. Sofiat received her Bachelor’s degree from McGill University in Sociology, focusing on Gender, Health, and International Development.

She led the Global Future Council on Healthy Ageing and Longevity at the World Economic Forum, a dynamic platform for leading businesses, governments, civil society organizations, and world-class experts to shape the global healthy ageing and longevity agenda. In this capacity, she worked with the community to generate and disseminate new content and insights and engaged with multiple actors to co-create solutions to boost the impact of healthy life expectancy.

John Beard, MBBS PhD, works globally with academia, policy makers and the private sector to reimagine the second half of life. He is a Professor with the University of New South Wales, Chief Advisor for the European Institute of Innovation and Technology Health consortium (EIT Health), a commissioner with the US National Academy of Medicine Commission on Healthy Longevity, visiting professor at Toulouse and Peking Universities and has a number of private sector appointments.

For 10 years until 2019, he was Director of Ageing and Life Course with the World Health Organization in Geneva where he led major global initiatives including the World report on ageing and health and the Global Network of Age-friendly Cities and Communities. Dr Beard has worked extensively with the World Economic Forum, including as chair of their Global Agenda Council on Population Ageing and as facilitator for several events at their annual meeting in Davos.

Professor Julie Byles BMed PhD FAAHMS, is Global Innovations Chair in Responsive Transitions in Health and Ageing at the University of Newcastle, co-Director of the Centre for Women’s Health Research, and co-lead of the Public Health program of the Hunter Medical Research Institute. She is also a founding investigator and Director of the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health. Professor Byles’ research interests focus on the role of health services, preventive activities and treatments, and aged care services in maintaining quality of life for older people. Professor Byles is also Deputy Chair of the Hunter Ageing Alliance, a Fellow and Life Member of the Australian Association of Gerontology, and chair of their grants committee, Head of the International Longevity Centre – Australia, and Chair of the International Association of Gerontology (Asia Oceania) Social Research and Planning sub-committee.

Professor Byles full profile: https://www.newcastle.edu.au/profile/julie-byles

Catherine Foot is Director of Phoenix Insights, a new think tank set up to transform the way society responds to the possibilities of longer lives. Phoenix Insights is part of The Phoenix Group, the UK’s largest long-term savings and retirement business.

Catherine is a research and policy specialist in ageing and longevity, and from 2015 to 2021 was Director of Evidence at the Centre for Ageing Better, a charitable foundation funded by The National Lottery Community Fund, and part of the government’s What Works Network. Catherine has also held senior roles at the health and social care think tank The King’s Fund, and the medical research charity Cancer Research UK.

Avnish Goyal CBE is the Chair of industry-leading care provider, Hallmark Care Homes which he founded in 1997.

He founded the Hallmark Foundation in 2020 to help support a nation that can age well every step of the way. He also helped set up and is the Chair of Championing Social Care, an initiative to shine a light on the value of social care. This has included raising around £1.2m for great causes through the Care Sector Fundraising Ball along with his wife, Anita Goyal MBE, who also pioneered the first ever Care Careers Conference for students in 2023.

They are both also Ambassadors for the Alzheimer’s Society and together they run The Goyal Foundation.
Avnish was the Chair of Care England for 9 years and the founding Trustee, now Patron of The Care Workers’ Charity.
In 2022, Avnish was awarded a CBE in her late Majesty the Queen’s Birthday Honours List, for his services to social care and philanthropy.

Professor Sir Michael Marmot is Professor of Epidemiology at University College London, Director of the UCL Institute of Health Equity, and Past President of the World Medical Association.

He is the author of The Health Gap: the challenge of an unequal world (Bloomsbury: 2015) and Status Syndrome: how your place on the social gradient directly affects your health (Bloomsbury: 2004). Professor Marmot holds the Harvard Lown Professorship for 2014-2017 and is the recipient of the Prince Mahidol Award for Public Health 2015. He has been awarded honorary doctorates from 18 universities.

Professor Marmot has led research groups on health inequalities for over 40 years. He chairs the Commission on Equity and Health Inequalities in the Americas, set up in 2015 by the World Health Organizations’ Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO/ WHO). He was Chair of the Commission on Social Determinants of Health (CSDH), which was set up by the World Health Organization in 2005, and produced the report entitled: ‘Closing the Gap in a Generation’ in August 2008.

At the request of the British Government, he conducted the Strategic Review of Health Inequalities in England, which published its report ‘Fair Society, Healthy Lives’ in February 2010. This was followed by the European Review of Social Determinants of Health and the Health Divide, for WHO Euro in 2014. In February 2020, he launched the ‘Marmot Review 10 Years On’ report on the health inequalities across England, which served as an update to the ‘Fair Society, Healthy Lives’ review. He chaired the Breast Screening Review for the NHS National Cancer Action Team and was a member of The Lancet-University of Oslo Commission on Global Governance for Health. He set up and led a number of longitudinal cohort studies on the social gradient in health in the UCL Department of Epidemiology & Public Health (where he was head of department for 25 years): the Whitehall II Studies of British Civil Servants, investigating explanations for the striking inverse social gradient in morbidity and mortality; the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), and several international research efforts on the social determinants of health.

Professor Marmot served as President of the British Medical Association (BMA) in 2010-2011, and is President of the British Lung Foundation. He is an Honorary Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology; a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences; an Honorary Fellow of the British Academy, and an Honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health of the Royal College of Physicians. He is also a trustee of the Food Foundation, was a member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution for six years, and in 2000 was knighted by Her Majesty The Queen, for services to epidemiology and the understanding of health inequalities. Professor Marmot is a Member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Alistair McQueen is head of savings and retirement at Aviva – the UK’s largest and the world’s oldest insurer, found in 1696. Alistair leads Aviva’s pensions business, helping six million people save for and live in retirement. As an employer of 15,000 people in the UK, from 18 to 78, Aviva has been recognised for its age friendly policies designed to ensure that age represents no barrier to opportunity. Alistair represents Aviva in the media and with government. He is also a member of the Association of British Insurers’ retirement working group; the Money and Pensions Service long-term savings challenge group; the Department for Work & Pensions Mid-life-MOT board; the Business in the Community Age Leadership Team; and sits on the advisory board of Bravestarts – a social enterprise with the goal of supporting a fuller working life.

Judith Phillips is Deputy Principal (Research), and Professor of Gerontology at the University of Stirling, and is the UKRI Research Director for the Healthy Ageing Challenge. Her research interests are in the social, behavioural and environmental aspects of ageing and she has published and researched widely on environmental aspects of ageing, social care and caregiving.

Before joining the University, Judith was Director of the Research Institute for Applied Social Sciences at Swansea University which sought to strengthen social sciences across the University and embed a social science perspective in Engineering and Medicine. She was also Director of the Centre for Ageing and Dementia Research for Wales and the School for Social Care Research in Wales.

She holds numerous Fellowships: the Gerontological Society of America; the British Society of Gerontology; the London School of Economics, New College, Oxford and the Swedish Universities of Umeå and Lund. Professor Phillips has been highly active in shaping the UK’s gerontological research landscape and her applied research has impacted on government policy. Between 2008 and 2010 Professor Phillips was President of the British Society of Gerontology. In 2013 she was awarded an OBE for Services to Older People.

Dr Chris Phillipson is Professor of Sociology and Social Gerontology in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Manchester. He has led a number of research programmes concerned with family and community life in old age, problems of poverty and social exclusion, social theory and ageing, and issues relating to urbanisation and migration.

His theoretical work has focused on developing a critical gerontology which explores and challenges some of the dominant social and cultural assumptions made about ageing and ageing societies. He has a particular interest in questions relating to the relationship between urban development and population ageing. He has published numerous books and research papers on various topics relating to the development of ageing populations.

Chris is the co-director of the Manchester Institute for Collaborative Research on Ageing (MICRA) and has served as member of the Advisory Committee of the New Dynamics of Ageing Programme and was a member of the Advisory Board of the Norwegian Lifecourse, Ageing and Generations Panel Study. He is a Fellow of the British Gerontological Society and the Gerontological Society of America. In 2011, Dr Phillipson received an Outstanding Achievement Award from the British Society of Gerontology to acknowledge his contributions to the study of ageing.

Andrew J Scott is Professor of Economics at London Business School, a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research and a co-founder of The Longevity Forum. He holds a PhD from Oxford University and previously held positions at Oxford University, Harvard University, and the London School of Economics.

His research focuses on the economics of longevity and ageing and is published in a wide range of leading academic journals. He has advised through a variety of roles a range of governments, institutions and companies. His award-winning book, The Hundred Year Life is a global bestseller having sold 1 million copies and his new book, The Longevity Imperative, was published March 2024.

Yvonne Sonsino is Partner and Global Co-leader on “Next Stage” at Mercer. Her current focus is on the organisational implications of macro trends such as increasing longevity, 4IR future of work scenarios and sustaining a truly inclusive workforce. Mercer’s Next Stage platform examines the coalescence of living and working longer, and how organisations can harness the longevity dividend as we move into an increasingly digital age. Multigenerational fairness plays a big part here.

She co-chaired the UK Govt. Department for Work and Pensions Fuller Working Lives Business Strategy Group, working with employers to recruit, retain and retrain older workers, which published its policy document in 2017. Her first book, The New Rules of Living Longer, was published in November 2015, with a foreword from the UK Pensions Minister. She is an advisor to the Healthy Ageing challenge fund and currently working on a global dialogue series called “Redesigning Retirement for the 100 year life” with the World Economic Forum.

She has worked in senior HR and HR Consulting roles for 30 years, living in the Middle East and Europe and working with global organisations on strategic HR and people programme design. She holds Masters Degrees in Psychology and Business Research and is a Fellow of The Pensions Management Institute, previously an author of their International Diploma syllabus. She is a Director in the creative arts education sector and is trained in advanced design thinking methodology.

With a distinguished record on equality, inclusion, and human resources, Caroline is Deputy Chair of the EHRC, Vice President of Carers UK, Trustee of the RSPCA and Founder of CW Consulting Box. As Director of People & Policy at BT, she routinely set the agenda; demonstrating real thought leadership.

An influential leader and practitioner in the original movement to create new ways of working and a leader of the nascent flexible working agenda, Caroline continues to build more inclusive approaches to work. She is a Director of Wilson James and a member of the Leaders as Change Agents Board. Caroline was listed in the Top 100 Disability Power List 2019, awarded HR Director of the Year 2009, as well as one of the most influential HR practitioners of the last decade by HR Magazine Excellence Awards 2015 and an HR Mover and Shaper in 2019.

Caroline routinely works with and advises policy makers. She contributed to the Department of Work and Pensions publication ‘Disability and Health Employment Strategy: the Discussion so Far’ chairing the Task and Finish Group on Young Disabled People and Employment. She Co-Chaired the Department of Health, Task and Finish Group which launched ‘Supporting Working Carers: The Benefits to Families, Business and the Economy’ in autumn 2013. She also chaired Employers for Carers, Employers’ Forum on Belief, Employers for Fathers and Lone Parents working group.

She was awarded the OBE for services to progressive HR practice, diversity, and equal opportunities in the New Year’s list in 2010. Caroline’s was recognized by Race for Opportunity’s Best Ethnic Minority Recruitment Programme. BT is the only company to top seven leading diversity benchmarks at the same time, during three consecutive years.

As Founder of CW Consulting Box Ltd. Caroline provides high-level support and guidance across the private, public and charitable sector, including Board Effectiveness reviews, Board coaching, Business and strategic HR guidance, OD design, flexible working strategies, behavioural action planning, capacity building and strategic communications.

Steve Webb was Minister of State for Pensions between 2010 and 2015, the longest-serving holder of the post. During that time he implemented major reforms to the state pension system, oversaw the successful introduction of automatic enrolment and played a key role in the new pension freedoms implemented in April 2015.

Steve was a Liberal Democrat MP from 1997 to 2015. Before this he was professor of social policy at Bath University for two years, having previously worked for nine years as an economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Steve graduated with a first class honours degree in PPE from Oxford University in 1986. He was awarded a knighthood in the New Year’s honours in 2017.

Following his time in Parliament he worked for Royal London for four years before joining LCP as a partner in 2020.