Robert A. Cooke is CEO and Director of Human Synergistics International and Associate Professor Emeritus of Management at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Cooke was previously an Associate Research Scientist at the University of Michigan’s Survey Research Center (Institute for Social Research) and a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, where he was a National Defense (Title IV) and Commonwealth Edison Fellow.
Dr. Cooke specializes in the development and validation of surveys used for individual, group, and organization development. His surveys include the Organizational Culture Inventory, Organizational Effectiveness Inventory, Leadership/Impact, and Group Styles Inventory. These instruments have been translated into numerous languages and used throughout the world by consultants and trainers for organizational development and research purposes. Cooke personally has used his materials with hundreds of organizations, including GE, Motorola, Ford Motor Company, the U.S. Department of Defense, and CINergy.
Cooke has served as Study Director on numerous research projects on management, organizational change, and human subject experimentation. His research has been supported by such agencies as the National Science Foundation, the National Center for Health Services Research, the National Institute of Education, and the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects. He has conducted applied survey research projects for various corporations and government agencies including Ford Marketing Institute, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Merck, the Federal Aviation Administration, Northwestern University’s Readership Institute, and the U.S. Government Accountability Organization.
The author of over 75 articles, chapters, and technical reports, Cooke’s research has appeared in such journals as Psychological Reports, Science, The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Journal of Applied Psychology, Educational and Psychological Measurement, and Group & Organization Management.
Cooke’s research has been selected for the William Davis Memorial Award for outstanding scholarly research and the Douglas McGregor Memorial Award for Excellence in the Applied Social Sciences. His teaching has been recognized with the MBA Professor of the Year Award and the Alumni Award for Outstanding Teaching at the University of Illinois at Chicago
Ken has been involved in learning and development for more than 20 years and is currently head of e-learning and online networking for the National School of Government. He has responsibility for development of all of the online learning material created by the School including leading on some of the most high profile and widely used government learning initiatives of the last few years.
Ken also works across the whole range of face to face programmes that the school provides for managers and development professionals. He has a particular interest in leadership theory, the study of adult learning and the evaluation of training from an organisational perspective.
Ken is heavily involved in consultancy and tailored training projects across the Civil Service and wider public sector. He has also worked on a number of international consultancy projects for officials in Russia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Romania, Italy, Kosovo, Hungary and the Czech Republic
Richard Wade manages a performance audit team specialising in Corporate Finance & Infrastructure at the National Audit Office. He has been the reference partner on NAO’s report on commercial skills for complex projects, and led the recently published report on the effects of the credit crisis on PFI infrastructure projects.
Richard joined the NAO as a Corporate Finance adviser after a merchant banking career with the Hill Samuel Group (1969 –1979), and Bankers Trust Company (1980 –1993), followed by six years as an independent corporate finance consultant. Richard has worked in financial markets in New York, London, Paris and Houston. He has an MA from Cambridge and an MBA from Cranfield.
Lizzi joined the CBI Public Services campaign in May this year to develop policy aimed at the transformation of public services, with a major focus on the role the workforce can play in reshaping services. She is also responsible for policy development related to education and children’s services – setting out the role the private sector can play in improving educational outcomes.
Lizzi previously worked in the education and skills group at the CBI supporting the work of the CBI Higher Education Task Force – working with business leaders to develop the relationship between business and universities. She was also the lead on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) skills policy, representing the employer view in key government and stakeholder forums.
Prior to joining the CBI in 2007, Lizzi worked for a private research consultancy in the north east of England, undertaking a range of social and economic research projects for clients including the learning and skills council, regional development agencies and sector skills councils. She took this role after completing her postgraduate work on social policy at the University of York. She remains involved with the university, having joined the University of York Court in 2010.
Hannah is a Senior Policy Adviser providing support and advice for Ministers on key aspects of workforce reform and supporting the Government’s engagement with public sector employers and Trade Unions through the Public Services Forum and the Public Services Employers Forum.
Hannah has been working in central Government Departments and public sector organisations since joining the Civil Service on their Faststream programme in 2003. Her early career was in the Department for Work and Pensions advising on benefit fraud strategy before working as a private secretary in the Secretary of State’s office.
In 2005 she took up the lead on policy development at the newly created Pension Protection Fund and moved from that role in 2007 to head up the PPF’s data delivery function.
In 2009 she took the plunge back into the very centre of Government where she is now enjoying this challenging and exciting role in the Domestic Policy Group, in Cabinet Office.
I have worked at local, regional and national tiers within DWP at various locations including the East Midlands, the South West and Sheffield. I have taken on the roles of the Director for Change & Organisational Development at the Legal Services Commission, the Strategic Director for Enforcement at the Border & Immigration Agency (now UKBA), and latterly Regional Director at Government Office for the East Midlands before returning to DWP in Nov 2009 as Integration Director of DWP Change Programme.
Zoe joined the Institute in December 2008 as the Director of Learning and Development. She was previously with HSBC where she was Global Head of Leadership & Learning for Global Finance. Prior to that, she was Head of Leadership Transformation Services and then Head of the Executive and Team Coaching Practice at Hay Group. She has extensive experience of working at senior levels across the public and private sectors including top team and leadership development and coaching CEOs, board members and government ministers.
She has been a visiting fellow at Cranfield University for ten years and a visiting lecturer at the University of Reading. She ran leadership workshops at the World Economic Forum and has a strong interest in providing fresh perspectives and approaches to developing leadership capability.
Zoe is currently working on the research and development of politicians for the Institute.
After becoming involved in SkillsfLife as a volunteer in 1988 which I continued until 1996 I began work in what was the Youth Service in 1991 again as a volunteer, I worked predominantly with young people who had learning difficulties/disabilities. We used sport, music and outdoor pursuits as catalysts to learning. In 1995 I started paid employment in Adult Services and helped re-settle individuals into the community when institutions closed down, key to the role was supporting people to gain independent living skills. We integrated people into the community through college attendance, supported employment and social activities
Paula is responsible for public sector workforce reform, advising Ministers and Government departments on national strategies, policy design and delivery that will build the workforce capacity to deliver better public services.
Paula has considerable senior experience of both central and local government, gained. Prior to joining the Cabinet Office in 2002 Paula was Assistant Director for Service Quality and Resources Management at the London Borough of Camden., with responsibilities spanning HR, IIP, service modernisation, business planning and strategic procurement. Her earlier career – in the private and third sector - included creating new social enterprises, developing and implementing employment promotion and economic regeneration plans, and projects to address social exclusion.
Within the Cabinet Office, Paula holds the Secretariat role for the Public Services Forum, established by the Prime Minister and chaired by a Cabinet Minister, that brings together national trades unions, government leaders and public service employers to improve dialogue and joint working on pay and workforce reform issues. Paula and her team work with these stakeholders to develop innovative policy delivery tools, including a practical web-based tool to analyse and improve staff engagment in service improvement and change; a skills action plan, workforce planning protocols, interventions to develop leadership capacity for more strategic ‘customer focus’; and a policy framework for introducing Total Rewards strategies to incentivise high performance and productivity.
Paula has led, for the National Shool of Government, the development of the newly launched corporate leadership Scheme, Leaders UnLtd, to improve talent management into, and increase the diversity of, the Senior Civil Service and has been the strategic advisor to the Sunningdale Institute at the National School – a unique resource of senior academics, experienced business and thought leaders appointed by the Cabinet Secretary to help Government improve its capability to deliver world class services. Paula is currently leading the Cabinet Office’s review of public service leadership development, working with the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit and HM Treasury.
Paula’s early public service career began in the third sector setting up community enterprises; she has worked as independent management consultant in the public, private and third sectors and is a Non-Executive Director for a London NHS Acute Trust. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities (Political Thought, Political Development) and a Masters Degree in Manpower Planning and Development.
Sir Robert Worcester is the Founder of MORI (Market & Opinion Research International), London. He is a Past President of the World Association for Public Opinion Research (WAPOR). In 2005 he was appointed by Her Majesty the Queen a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (KBE) in recognition of the “outstanding services rendered to political, social and economic research and for contribution to government policy and programmes”.
Sir Robert is Chancellor of the University of Kent and a Member of Council. He is Visiting Professor of Government and a Governor of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), Honorary Professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent and in the Department of Politics and International Studies at Warwick University. He has previously been a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Centre for Journalism at City University, London, and Visiting Professor in the Department of Marketing at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow.
For some ten years Sir Robert was a Member of the International Social Science Council/UNESCO, including four years as Senior Vice President.
He holds a number of honorary degrees and fellowships: Kings College, University of London, Honorary Fellow (2007); London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), Honorary Fellow (2006); University of Kansas, Distinguished Graduate (2006); Richmond, The American International University in London, Doctor of Laws (2009); University of Kent, Doctor of Civil Law (2006); University of Greenwich, Doctor of Law (2003); Middlesex University, Doctor of the University (2001); University of Bradford, Doctor of Letters (2001); University of Buckingham, Doctor of Science (1998).
He is Chairman of the Pilgrims Society, and the Magna Carta 2015 Committee, a Governor of the English-Speaking Union, and a Trustee of the Magna Carta Trust. He is a Freeman of the City of London, a Governor of the Ditchley Foundation, and was a Member of the Fulbright Commission. He is a Vice President of Royal Society for Nature Conservation/Wildlife Trusts, of the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT) (2009 - ), of the United Nations Association and of the European Atlantic Group. Sir Robert is a former Trustee of WWT (Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust) and WWF (UK). He is currently on Advisory Boards of the Institute of Business Ethics (IBE), Media Standards Trust (MST) and the Camelot Corporate Responsibility Advisory Board.
He is author/co-author, co‑editor or editor of more than a dozen books and hundreds of articles in newspapers, magazines and in peer-reviewed professional journals. His latest book, with Drs Roger Mortimore and Paul Baines, is ‘Explaining Labour’s Landslip’ (Politico’s, 2005).
John Hill graduated from Nottingham Trent University and trained as a production engineer before arriving at Pera in 1988 where he has worked his way up from a technologist role to Chief Executive. As well as running Pera, he now advises several national and European Governments on business support and innovation policy.
Recently he contributed to both Labour and Conservative party policy development relating to business support and innovation, as well as leading the development of a joint strategy for European RTOs to demonstrate their value to the EU economy.
John is a “high level expert” advisor to the European Commission on SMEs high growth companies and innovation. He is also a Board Member of EARTO (The European Association of Research & Technology Organisations) and TAFTIE (The Association for Technology Implementation in Europe) which is the forum for national technology and innovation agencies to meet to discuss European best practice.
Michael Davis is Director of Strategy and Performance at the UK Commission for Employment and Skills. The UK Commission is the lead advisor to UK governments for skills and jobs. Established in 2008, its remit is to advise UK governments on the policies and strategies needed to achieve the ambition of being amongst the top eight countries in the world for skills, jobs and productivity.
Before joining the UK Commission Michael was the Managing Director of CFE - an independent, not for profit, national specialist in public policy for skills, employment and economic development. Prior to that Michael worked for the former TEC National Council, Manchester Training and Enterprise Council, and in accounting and business consultancy.
Michael is Chairman of Lastolite Ltd, a world-leading manufacturer of backgrounds and lighting control systems for the photo, video and cinema industry. He is also Chairman of Leicester College, one of the largest further education colleges in the UK. The college has over 26,000 learners across three campuses and business premises, and over 200 outreach centres.
Michael holds a BA (Hons) in Economics from Lancaster University and is a fellow of the RSA.
Trevor joined LSDA, the Northern Ireland office of LSN in 2002, and is a member of the LSN Executive Team. He was instrumental in successfully establishing LSDA Northern Ireland and has overseen its steady growth since May 2003.
Prior to joining LSDA, Trevor was based at the Association of Northern Ireland Colleges (ANIC) for four years as Curriculum Development Officer. There he managed a range of curriculum development projects and other initiatives. Before joining ANIC, Trevor taught at the Boys Model School in Belfast and the Belfast Institute for 18 years. He also spent three and a half years as Development Officer at the Belfast Education and Library Board.
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