Munira Mirza (Chair, Advisory Board)
Munira Mirza is the Chief Executive of Civic Future, a charity that identifies and trains talented people for public life. She has over 20 years of experience in senior roles across government, academia, business, and the cultural sector. She served as Director of the No 10 Policy Unit from 2019 to 2022 and was previously a Deputy Mayor for London.
She studied at Oxford University, completed a PhD at the University of Kent, and is the author of The Politics of Culture: The Case for Universalism (2011). She has served on the boards of the Royal Opera House, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, the Royal College of Music, and the West London Children’s Zone. Currently, she is an Honorary Professor at the Strategy and Security Institute at Exeter University and is a member of the Programme Committee for the Ditchley Foundation.
Jon Benjamin
Jon Benjamin was UK Ambassador to Mexico between 2021 and 2024. Jon joined the Diplomatic Service in 1986, and previously represented the British government in Chile, Ghana, Turkey, Indonesia, and the United States, during his 35-year career.
Before his role in Mexico, Jon was Director of the Diplomatic Academy in London. He was responsible for creating and implementing an academy giving the British foreign service, and others working internationally for the government, the skills and diplomatic and linguistic knowledge they needed to implement UK foreign policy.
He served as UK Ambassador to Chile (2009 to 2014), High Commissioner to Ghana (2014 to 2017), as well as concurrent Ambassador to several other neighbouring countries in West Africa. He was also Consul General in New York, having represented the United Kingdom in Indonesia and Turkey. Among those overseas assignments, in London he also headed the Human Rights department and was chief of staff for the Minister for European Affairs.
He is CEO of Free Speech Union International and International Adviser to VP Capital.
David Finlay
David Finlay has worked at senior levels in the public, private and voluntary sectors. He has just completed four years as a non-executive director of the National Infrastructure Commission drawing on his previous experience as the Director of the National Audit Office Infrastructure team where he led reports to Parliament on large government projects including those using the high profile Private Finance Initiative (PFI) programme. In recent years David has also been on the regional NHS Board for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough and was Chair of the National Youth Agency, liaising with Ministers on programmes to support the development of young people. David has also written about the skills needed by Ministers and public officials to assist effective decision making.
Inaya Folarin Iman
Inaya Folarin Iman is a broadcast journalist who has worked as a feature writer and columnist for various national publications. Her work focuses on questions around identity politics, immigration, integration and free speech.
She is the Founder and Director of The Equiano Project, a forum to promote freedom of speech and open dialogue on the subjects of race, identity and culture. For the political talent incubator Civic Future, she has convened salons, conferences and seminars that grapple with many of the most important moral and technological questions of our time.
She is the Cultural Management and Youth Engagement Trustee for the National Portrait Gallery and was the creator and host of The Discussion, a weekly ideas, culture and politics TV show on GB News.
Lord Glasman
Lord Maurice Glasman is a political theorist and Labour life peer in the House of Lords. He is founder of the Blue Labour political movement and previously taught at London Metropolitan University and St Mary’s University. He is also the Director of the Common Good Foundation whose work includes community organising in Grimsby, and he worked for ten years on the Living Wage Campaign.
Liam Halligan
Liam Halligan has written his multiple-award winning weekly “Economics Agenda” column in the Telegraph since 2003. He also co-founded and co-presents the Telegraph’s “Planet Normal” podcast. He has reported from Moscow for The Economist, was Political Correspondent at The Financial Times and then spent a decade leading the economics and business coverage at Channel Four News. A highly-qualified economist, Halligan has worked in asset-management, served on the Advisory Board of the UK’s Department of Trade and provided expert testimony to numerous Parliamentary committees – on subjects ranging from monetary and fiscal policy to housing and AI.
Annalisa Jenkins
Dr Annalisa Jenkins, M.B.B.S., F.R.C.P. is a biopharma thought leader with over 25 years of global industry experience. She has built and financed biotech companies focused on innovative treatments for rare and serious diseases and was President and CEO of Dimension Therapeutics, a gene therapy company she took public on NASDAQ and which was subsequently acquired. She previously held executive roles at Merck Serono, including head of global R&D, and at Bristol Myers-Squibb, where she served for 15 years, culminating as SVP and head of global medical affairs. Earlier in her career, she served as a medical officer in the British Royal Navy during the Gulf Conflict, rising to the rank of surgeon lieutenant commander.
Dr Jenkins sits on and chairs numerous public and private boards across the lifescience and healthcare industry including Genomics England, COMPASS Pathways, Affimed, Mereo Biopharma, Gemma Therapeutics and Ori Biotech. She also serves as a trustee for a number of major UK charities including The British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research Horizons and The Kings Fund.
James Johnson
James Johnson is the co-founder of the leading polling company, JL Partners, having previously served as the Senior Opinion Research and Strategy Adviser at 10 Downing Street. In that capacity he conducted opinion research and private polling, and presented recommendations to the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, as well as the rest of Whitehall and the Conservative Party. James has also played an active role in a number of strategic communication and policy campaigns, and was recently named the most accurate pollster of the 2024 U.S. Election.
Douglas Murray
Douglas Murray is a journalist and bestselling author of 8 books, including On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization (2025), The War on the West (2022), The Madness of Crowds (2019), and The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam (2017). He has been a contributor to Spectator since 2000 and associate editor since 2012. He is a columnist at the New York Post and regularly writes for the Telegraph and the Sun. Mr. Murray is also a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor of City Journal.
Ben Southwood
Ben Southwood edits Works in Progress, a magazine about economic and technological progress. Previously, he was Head of Research at Create Streets, Head of Housing at Policy Exchange, and a consultant at KPMG. He has been a part of three successful Emergent Ventures grants.
Ben is a co-author of the Foundations paper and The Housing Theory of Everything.