Mark Earls
Founder, HERD Consulting
Mark is one of marketing's leading authorities on consumer behaviour and behaviour change. His authored the popular Welcome to the Creative Age (Wiley 2003), HERD (Wiley 2007 & 2009) and I'll Have What She's Having (2011 MIT Press), has written for a wide range of publications including WIRED, Contagious, The Observer and Sun newspaper.
Stella Medlicott
Chief Marketing Officer, Red Bee Media
Stella is Chief Marketing Officer and a member of the Executive Leadership Team at Red Bee Media, one of the world's leading media management companies. Since joining the company in 2010, Stella has launched RedPlayer, the first media grade, next generation video platform and RedDiscover, a full featured content discovery solution built specifically for media, to wide industry acclaim.
Jonathan Salem Baskin
President, Baskin Associates
Jonathan has 28 years of experience working with some of the world's leading brands, including Apple, Blockbuster, and Limited Inc. He pens the award-winning marketing blog Dim Bulb; writes on leadership for Advertising Age, cutting-edge issues for Dagens Media, and brands and technology for InformationWeek.
Fabien Riggall
Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Future Cinema
One of The Guardianís Top 100 Influential People In Film, Fabien Riggall set up Future Shorts in 2003 to create a platform for innovative new filmmakers to preview their work. His passion and vision has driven the festival to become the biggest film network in the world; in less than ten years it has grown to an audience of over 25,000 and 2.5m watching via the online Future Shorts channel.
Jon Ingham
Human Resources and OD Consultant, Strategic Human Capital Management
Jon is an insight-based Human Resources and OD consultant specialising in developing strategic and innovative approaches to workforce planning; measurement and analytics; technology and HR capability development. He has been recognised as a top 100 global Human Resources influencer by HRExaminer and a top 25 HR most influential UK thinker by HR Magazine.
Doug Baillie
Chief Human Resources Officer, Unilever
Doug leads the Human Resources function in Unilever. He started his career with Unilever in 1978 in South Africa. Over his 33 year career with Unilever, Mr Baillie has taken on various senior business leadership appointments across the Developing and Emerging world, and more recently as President of Western Europe before being appointed as the Chief Human Resources Officer of Unilever in 2011. Mr Baillie is a member of the Unilever Leadership Executive.
Scott Moeller
Director, M&A Research Centre, Cass Business School
Scott Moeller is the director and founder of the M&A Research Centre at Cass Business School where he also a Professor in the Practice of Finance. Prior to teaching, Scott worked at Deutsche Bank in senior banking positions, at Booz Allen & Hamilton Management Consultants (now Booz & Co) and more recently as co-manager and then member of the board of Morgan Stanley Bank in Germany.
Richard Ashcroft
Group Finance Director, Harvey Nash
Richard has a twenty-year track record of senior financial positions in a number of UK public and private companies, mostly in the professional services sector. During his successful career Richard has held senior finance roles with Vinten Group PLC, Michael Page International PLC, Denplan Limited, Mast International Group PLC and High Performance Coaching Limited.
Jackie Hunt
Chief Financial Officer, Standard Life plc
Appointed Chief Financial Officer in May 2010. Jackie joined Standard Life in January 2009 from Norwich Union Insurance where she was Chief Finance Officer. She is a Non-Executive Director of National Express Group plc, and is a Member of the Board of the Association of British Insurers, where she also chairs the Prudential Financial and Taxation Committee. Jackie has extensive international experience in financial services and has held several senior financial management roles across the Aviva Group, including Group Finance Director of the Hibernian Group. Prior to this, she held a variety of senior finance roles with Royal & SunAlliance and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Aleks Krotoski
Academic and Journalist – Technology and Interactivity
Aleks is an academic and journalist specialising in technology and interactivity. Her new book, Untangling the Web, based on her Guardian and Observer column, was published in 2012. She writes for The Guardian and Observer newspapers, and hosts Tech Weekly, their technology podcast. In 2010 Aleks presented the Emmy and BAFTA winning BBC 2 series Virtual Revolution, about the social history of the world wide web.
Tom Standage
Digital Editor, The Economist
Tom Standage is the Digital Editor at The Economist, overseeing the publication's website, Economist.com, and its mobile-phone, tablet and e-reader editions. He writes the video game column for Intelligent Life, The Economist's lifestyle magazine, is a regular commentator on BBC radio, and has written for other publications including the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, the New York Times and Wired.
Nicolas Brusson
Co-founder, Blablacar.com
Nicolas is co-founder of Blablacar.com the three million-strong European car sharing community that connects drivers with empty seats and people travelling the same way. Nicolas started his career in Silicon Valley during the 2000 boom, moved on to executive and investor roles, and finally worked as a VC in London. He holds an MBA from INSEAD, an MSc in Optics and an MSc in Applied Physics. A regular speaker on the theme of scaling innovative businesses and transport industry disruption, he tweets @nbrusson.
Anne Lise Kjaer
Global Futurist
Anne Lise is a global futurist, visionary thinker and trends specialist. A figurehead in the global forecasting community, she extracts clarity from complexity and has an impressive track record of helping blue-chip corporations and organisations successfully navigate the future.
Carlo Ratti
Associate Professor and Director, Senseable City Lab, MIT
Carlo is an architect and engineer by training. In 2010 Blueprint Magazine selected him as one of the ‘25 People Who Will Change the World of Design’ and Forbes listed him as one of the ‘Names You Need To Know’ in 2011. Carlo was recently a presenter at TED 2011 and is serving as a member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council for Urban Management.
Umair Haque
Director, Havas Media Labs
Ranked one of the world's most influential management thinkers by Thinkers50, Umair Haque is the director of Havas Media Labs and author of the books Betterness: Economics for Humans and The New Capitalist Manifesto: Building a Disruptively Better Business. Prior to Havas, Haque founded Bubblegeneration where his work was recognized by publications like Wired, BusinessWeek, Business 2.0, and The Red Herring, and in Chris Anderson's Long Tail, to which Haque was a contributor.
The judges are looking for assessable examples of these skills and personal qualities, so be sure to read through the below before making your entry:
The competition will measure effectiveness through a combination of quantitative and qualitative information, including ROI and productivity, sponsor's and peers' feedback.
There are two stages to the judging process. First an independent Economist Intelligence Unit committee will evaluate all the entries and select a shortlist. These will then be passed to the category judges, made up of qualified experts from leading British businesses, academia, and other influential thinkers. These judges will decide the final five winners, one from each category.
Melissa Carson
Chief Operating Officer, Executive Education, London Business School
Melissa is a strategist and change expert, having spent over 20 years building and launching new organisations and major global initiatives as well as designing and leading transformation for a wide range of private and non-profit sector organisations including London Business School, McKinsey & Company, and United Nations Agencies. She is passionate about excellence, purpose and impact.