Ruth Lister CBE - Honorary President

Ruth Lister CBE is Emeritus Professor of Social Policy at Loughborough University and a Labour peer. She is a former Director of the Child Poverty Action Group and is now its Honorary President. She served on the Commission on Social Justice, the Opsahl Commission into the Future of Northern Ireland, the Commission on Poverty, Participation and Power, the Fabian Commission on Life Chances and Child Poverty and the National Equality Panel. She is a founding Academician of the Academy for Learned Societies for the Social Sciences and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2009. She received a lifetime achievement award from the Social Policy Association in 2010.

Ruth is a member of the (parliamentary) Joint Committee for Human Rights and is the chair of the Management Committee of Compass.

She has published widely around poverty and social exclusion, welfare state reform, gender and citizenship. Her books include Citizenship: Feminist Perspectives (2nd ed. Palgrave, 2003); Poverty (Polity Press, 2004); Gendering Citizenship in Western Europe (with F. Williams and others, The Policy Press, 2007) and Understanding Theories and Concepts in Social Policy (The Policy Press, 2010).

Jane Millar - Chair

Jane Millar, OBE, FBA, FAcSS is Professor of Social Policy in the Institute for Policy Research at the University of Bath. Her research interests include the design, implementation and impact of social policy and comparative research on family policy, social security and employment policy, with particular reference to gender and changing family patterns. Her current research examines the impact of Universal Credit on couples, focusing on labour market decisions and family budgeting.

Find out more about Jane and her work

Mark Cooke - Vice Chair and Treasurer

Mark Cooke is a Chartered Accountant with extensive experience across the private, public and third sectors. He was most recently Chief Operating Officer of the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association, and before then spent ten years as Director of Finance and Corporate Services at the Big Lottery Fund (now the National Lottery Community Fund). He is Treasurer of the cross-party organisation Compass, and has previously served as a London borough councillor.

Anne-Marie Canning

Anne-Marie Canning MBE is from Doncaster, was the first in her family to go to university and has dedicated her career to opening up educational opportunity to the next generation. 

Anne-Marie is the Chief Executive Officer of The Brilliant Club, a UK-wide university access charity focused on increasing the number of less advantaged students accessing the most competitive universities and supporting them to succeed when they get there.  In 2018 she was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to higher education.

In recent years Anne-Marie was the independent chair of the Department for Education’s Bradford Opportunity Area. Opportunity Areas supported social mobility in the 12 areas of the country where it is most challenged. She now leads a broad-based coalition of organisations in Bradford who are working together to improve opportunities for young people in the city – the Education Alliance for Life Chances.

Between 2012 and 2019 Anne-Marie was the Director of Social Mobility and Student Success at King’s College London. In this role she founded an award-winning parental engagement endeavor called Parent Power. Anne-Marie has previously worked at University College Oxford and holds a University of Oxford Teaching Award. She studied at the University of York and served a sabbatical term as the president of the students’ union.  

Anne-Marie is also a trustee of the Education Policy Institute.

Clarissa Corbisiero

Clarissa is Director of Policy and External Affairs and Deputy Chief Executive of Community Housing Cymru, the representative body for housing associations in Wales. Clarissa has a background in housing and local government, having worked for the National Housing Federation, the Local Government Association and for a number of local authorities. Clarissa is also a mentor for Leaders Plus, a social enterprise that supports parents in the workplace.

Esther Kuku

Esther Kuku is a senior communications and engagement professional, with extensive NHS and charity sector experience. Her career has taken her all over the world covering global climate change summits, and international development projects with major news outlets. Esther currently works for one of the largest NHS acute trusts in the country, and has spent time working for NHS England and Improvement in their regional East of England communications team.

Ann McVie

Ann started her civil service career as a Supplementary Benefits Supervisor in the Department for Health and Social Security in April 1987, before transferring to the Scottish Office in 1996. She retired from the Scottish Government in March 2021, having led the Social Security Policy Division through the devolution of specified social security powers from the Department for Work and Pensions. This included taking the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018 through the Scottish Parliament and setting up the Scottish Welfare Fund in 2012.   

Ann received an OBE for public service in January 2021.  

Satwat Rehman

Satwat Rehman is the Director of One Parent Families Scotland (OPFS), an organisation that works to support single parents and their families through the delivery of services, advice and information, influencing and policy work.

Satwat has more than 25 years’ experience in the voluntary and public sector in Scotland and England, working in the fields of equalities, education, employability, economic development/regeneration and early years and childcare.

She has been a member of a number of commissions and advisory groups such as the Commission for Childcare Reform, Fairer Fife Commission, Dundee Fairness Commission, the Scottish Government’s Ministerial Advisory Group on Child Poverty, and is currently a member of the Scottish Government’s Early Learning and Childcare Strategic Forum and the First Minister’s National Advisory Council for Women and Girls.

Kitty Stewart

Kitty Stewart is Professor of Social Policy at the London School of Economics (LSE) and Associate Director of the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE). She has a PhD in Economics from the European University Institute in Florence and worked at the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre in Florence before joining LSE in 2001. Her research focuses on children, disadvantage and inequality, with particular interests in early childhood, maternal employment trajectories, and the social security system.

Alicia Tew

Alicia Tew is a barrister practising in civil and commercial law at Hailsham Chambers. Alicia represents clients pro bono via Advocate and the Centre for Women’s Justice, speaks at outreach events with the Chancery Bar Association and Inner Temple, supervises trainee (pupil) barristers, and mentors barristers and aspiring barristers from under-recognised groups in partnership with Bridging the Bar and the Social Mobility Foundation. She is also an active member of a local charity, Westminster House Youth Club. Previously, she worked for the Law Commission, UK Trade & Investment and the Nursing & Midwifery Council.  Alicia holds a BA in Jurisprudence from Oxford University. She has a young child and enjoys playing the piano and creative writing. 

Simon Thompson

Simon Thompson is Chief Executive of the Geological Society and formerly CEO of a medical charity. Prior to that he held senior roles in publishing and digital information in the private sector before working in non-profit organisations from 2014. He has professional experience in marketing, online development, publishing and general management and as a trustee.

Steve Watmough

Steve is CEO of Mason Advisory, a specialist IT advisory firm providing strategic, technical and commercial advice to organisations across the private and public sector. The business was co-founded in 2014 with Datatec PLC who have taken a private equity style investment role.

Prior to Mason Advisory Steve co-founded Xantus, an industry-leading and respected IT consulting firm, which was sold to KPMG in 2011. Following the deal Steve became a Partner at KPMG and Head of CIO Advisory for the UK firm. During this time, Steve was a board member of the Management Consultancy Association (MCA) and latterly held the position of Vice President.

Steve maintains trusted relationships across the CIO community and across the IT industry. He has spent more than 35 years involved in Digital Transformation having spent the first ten years of his career at The Boots Company in a variety of IT Management roles.

Steve holds a BSc (Hons) and Meng from Brunel University (Special Engineering Programme) and an MBA from Loughborough University.

Steve has a young family and is a runner (5K to marathon), competing for Warrington AC, England and GB Masters.