Judges

Kathryn Corrick

Kathryn Corrick is Online Manager at the New Statesman. Kathryn has overseen the Upstarts Awards since 2004 but has been involved with the scheme since the awards began.

Prior to joining the New Statesman in 2001 Kathryn worked as a freelance web producer and press officer in the voluntary and education sector. At the New Statesman she is responsible for all digital publications and operations.

Kathryn was an associate editor for ak13.com focusing on religious affairs and arts until July 2005. She is also a trustee of the International Youth Trust, a small student exchange programme, and until recently was on the management committee for the Winant Clayton Volunteers Association.

Garry Hawkes

Garry is the former chairman and chief executive of Gardner Merchant and director general of Sodexho Group.

He has chaired the Business Services Association, National Training Organisation's National Council and British Training International. Garry is currently chairman of Basic Skills Agency, chairman of Edge Foundation and vice-chairman of Edexcel and is on the board of Investors in People.

John Kampfner

John Kampfner is Editor of the New Statesman. He is also a regular pundit on politics and foreign affairs, and author of the critically acclaimed 'Blair's Wars'.

John has presented several documentaries for BBC television and radio. In 2002 he won the Foreign Press Association award for Film of the Year and Journalist of the Year for his account of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 'The Ugly War'.

He began his career as a foreign correspondent with the Daily Telegraph, first in East Berlin where he reported on the fall of the Wall, and then in Moscow during the collapse of Soviet Communism. On returning to the UK, he became Chief Political Correspondent at the FT and political commentator for the BBC's Today programme.

Nigel Kershaw

Nigel Kershaw is a leading social entrepreneur and advocate of social enterprises that offer business solutions to social problems.

As the executive chairman of The Big Issue he has been responsible for its publishing operations, as well as developing its new social businesses both in the UK and in the USA. He is also chief executive of The Big Issue Foundation. He is at the centre of The Big Issue’s pioneering financial inclusion models. In 2005, The Big Issue’s UK editions generated £12m in cover sales with around £7m going directly to homeless and vulnerably housed vendors.

Nigel joined The Big Issue in 1995 and went on to become managing director. Previous to that, he worked as a consultant and project manager in the publishing and printing sector, taking major capital projects from conception to production.

Nigel has been on the board of the Social Enterprise Coalition since 2002 and is a consultant and advisor to a number of social businesses. He has also been a non-executive director of London Borough’s regeneration company, a trade union official and Chair of the Board of the London College of Communications (now London University of the Arts).

Charles Leadbeater

Charles Leadbeater is one of the world’s leading authorities on innovation and creativity in organisations. He has advised companies, cities and governments around the world on innovation strategy and is reportedly Tony Blair's favourite corporate thinker.

Charles has worked extensively with the UK government over the past decade, advising both the 10 Downing St policy unit and the Department for Trade and Industry on the rise of the knowledge driven economy and the Internet. He also acts as an advisor to the Department for Education’s Innovation Unit on future strategies for learning and education, as well as working on strategies for modernising libraries and arts organisations.

Other organisations that Charles has worked with as an innovation strategist include the BBC, Vodafone, Microsoft, BP, Accenture, Channel Four Television and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Penny Newman

Penny is CEO of Cafédirect, the UK’s leading Fairtrade hot drinks company which has blazed the trail for Fairtrade, taking it from a niche market and placing it into the mainstream.

Today a quarter of a million coffee, tea and cocoa producers benefit from Cafédirect’s trading model, with many consumers enjoying their Fairtrade products. This has resulted in Cafédirect being the leading Fairtrade hot drinks brand in both retail and out of home, and one of the fastest growing tea brands in the UK. Penny is also a member of the Women’s Enterprise Panel, which was formed by the Chancellor and Secretary of State for Trade and Industry in late 2004 to examine options for the establishment of a national Women’s Business Commission and to champion the acceleration of the development of women’s enterprise in the UK.

Hilary Norman

Hilary Norman is Director of the Social Enterprise Unit. Hilary joined the DTI’s Small Business Service in September 2004 where she leads the implementation of the Government’s strategy for social enterprise.

Hilary’s background is in SME policy, gained at the Bank of England and HM Treasury. Most recently, Hilary worked at HM Treasury on the Graham Review of the Small Firms Loan Guarantee. Prior to this, at the Bank of England, she specialised in issues relating to small firms’ finance, in particular those affecting disadvantaged communities. In 2003 she led the Bank of England's review of finance for social enterprise, culminating in an independent report to the Department of Trade and Industry. Previous posts held by Hilary at the Bank of England include a period in private office and as UK representative to a European Central Bank committee prior to the introduction of the euro.

Allison Ogden-Newton

Allison Ogden-Newton is the Chief Executive of Social Enterprise London, which supports and promotes social enterprise throughout the Capital.

Prior to working for SEL, Allison was the CEO at Women’s Education in Building (WEB), which was a voluntary organisation set up to support women by providing education and training in the construction trades. It was while at WEB that Allison became interested in social enterprise and set up, building etc a project that offered struggling entrepreneurs incubator office space, access to start-up finance and business mentoring.

Allison is passionate about achieving a level playing field. She speaks plainly about the problems so many people face and the desperate need for intelligent and targeted decision making from those with the responsibility to achieve a more equal society.

M T Rainey

After a successful international career as a Strategic Planner in advertising, latterly as CEO of the pioneering Chiat/Day agency in London, MT (Mary Teresa) founded her own company, Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe, in 1993. This innovative agency quickly grew to become a top twenty player and was acquired by WPP just six years later in 1999. The acquisition was in effect a reverse management takeover of the larger Young and Rubicam offices which MT ran as Joint CEO for four years and grew to be a top five UK agency. She recently retired as Chair from the company that still bears her name.

MT is a regular speaker and publisher on communications and media industry issues in the UK and all over the world. At Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe she famously championed the move away from commission income to agencies charging for ideas and intellectual property, which helped create considerable debate and material change in the industry.

MT is a Non Executive Director of Scottish Media Group plc and WH Smith plc. She was also a Founding Trustee of Pilotlight and is a Founding Trustee of the volunteering charity Timebank. She is also on the Board of the ThinkTank Demos; a Visiting Professor at the University of Glasgow Business School and a member of the Advisory Board of The University of The Arts under Lord Stevenson.

She is the recent past Chair of the Marketing Group of Great Britain ( MGGB) and is a member of the 30 Club.

MT is currently taking a year out to start a new social enterprise called Horse’s Mouth which is a broad reach on-line mentoring venture benefitting young people.

Ruth Silver

Ruth Silver CBE is principal of Lewisham College, London. She has worked in government developing national education policy on personal effectiveness in young people and is an adviser to the House of Commons select committee. She is a fellow of City and Guilds and a visiting professor in educational development at London Southbank University.

Baroness Glenys Thornton

Glenys is a backbench Labour and Co-operative member of the House of Lords.

In 1979 she worked for the Mutual Aid Centre for the late Michael Young, where her job was to test-bed ideas for community and other projects, including establishing and managing a recycling workshop in Hackney. Although a lay member of the London Co-operative Society since 1973, from 1981 to 1992 she worked for the Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society and then the CWS as a public affairs advisor. She helped to establish Co-operative Development Agencies across London and supported individual workers co-operatives (including Poptel).

She has been a Board member of Social Enterprise London since its inception. More recently Glenys has been convening and chairing the Social Enterprise Coalition which is a broad based group of social enterprise organisations. The objective of the coalition is to provide a voice on a national stage for the promotion of social enterprises. She is also a trustee of the Fifteen Foundation and Training for Life.

Stewart Wallis

Stewart graduated in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University. His career began in marketing and sales with Rio Tinto Zinc followed by a Masters Degree in Business and Economics at London Business School. He then joined the World Bank in Washington DC working on industrial and financial development in East Asia.

Following his seven years at the World Bank, he worked for Robinson Packaging in Derbyshire for nine years, the last five as Managing Director. He joined Oxfam in 1992 as International Director with responsibility, latterly, for 2500 staff in 70 countries and for all Oxfam’s policy, research, development and emergency work worldwide. He was awarded the OBE for services to Oxfam in 2002.

After a brief spell as Oxfam’s livelihoods Director, Stewart joined the New Economics Foundation as Executive Director on 1 November 2003. His interests include: global governance, the functioning of markets, the links between development and environmental agendas, and new forms of enterprise.