In conversation with Sir Michael Barber: What does it take to deliver in government

Speakers

• Sir Michael Barber

  Founder and Chairman of Delivery Associates

  United Kingdom

• Sir Adam Thomson

  Director of the European Leadership Network

  United Kingdom

• Susan Acland-Hood

  Permanent Secretary to Department for Education, formerly Chief Executive at HM Courts and Tribunals Service

  United Kingdom

• Sir Michael Barber, Sir Michael Barber is a world leading expert on government delivery, education systems, systemic innovation and education reform. Sir Michael led the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit for the Blair administration in the UK from 2001-2005. Since then, he has worked on delivery and system-wide reforms in more than 50 countries. He personally leads high-stakes engagements with political leaders, such as quarterly cabinet retreats in Canada with PM Justin Trudeau, to help them adopt the delivery approach. As Chief Education Advisor at Pearson, Michael led a worldwide programme of efficacy and research, playing a particular role in Pearson’s strategy for education in the poorest sectors of the world, especially in fast-growing developing economies. Prior to working at Pearson, he was a partner at McKinsey & Company and head of McKinsey’s global education practice. He is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Exeter. Before joining government, he was a professor at the Institute of Education at the University of London.

• Sir Adam Thomson, For the past five years Sir Adam has been the Director of the European Leadership Network (ELN), a network of experienced and emerging leaders from London to Vladivostok all committed to preventing existential conflict in Europe and beyond. Up to 2016, Adam had a 38 year diplomatic career in the British Diplomatic Service, preceded by short spells at the World Bank and at Harvard. His final diplomatic posting was as the UK Permanent Representative to NATO between 2014 and 2016. Prior to that, from 2010 Sir Adam served as British High Commissioner to Pakistan and between 2002 and 2006 he was British Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York. Earlier postings included Moscow, NATO, Washington DC and New Delhi. Adam has also worked in London on Israel/Lebanon, in the Cabinet Office as the Soviet analyst for the UK’s Joint Intelligence Committee, as the Head of the FCO’s Security Policy Department and as FCO Director for South Asia and Afghanistan.