The Advisory Board

Stephen is Director for Analysis and Data at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.

A government economist by background, he has also worked in the Department of Trade and Industry; various predecessors to DLUHC; the Cabinet Secretariats and Cabinet Office; and Her Majesty’s Treasury.

Stephen is a trustee and director of the Centre for Homelessness Impact; a member of the international advisory board to the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence; a member of the Public Policy Committee of the British Academy and other bodies. He is a fellow and Council member of the Academy of Social Sciences and a continuing fellow at the Centre for Science and Policy at the University of Cambridge.

Stephen was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in the Queen’s birthday honours list 2007.

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Felix has circa 25 years of experience and expertise in providing transformational leadership and direction in policy and development, service design and transformation, communication, and partnerships. Prior to his current role at the West Yorkshire Combined Authority, his career had spanned both the public and private sectors including academia, local government, regional development, and international consultancy.

Felix leads a team of about 160 FTEs that focuses on education, careers, skills, training, work and health, business support and investment, and culture, heritage, and sport. He recently led the development of the Combined Authority’s Local Growth Plan. This involved very close working with academic partners across key policy areas like early years and the informal economy.

He is married with two children and enjoys watching sport and travelling.

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Miles has held the role of Chief Executive Officer since September 2016. He is also a board member of UK Finance and the Financial Services Skills Commission. He sits on a number of government groups.

Miles began his career in broadcasting, making and presenting radio and television programmes for the BBC and others. He moved on to work in the UK Parliament, where he focused on foreign affairs and defence issues. Miles subsequently worked in a number of leading public policy consultancies.

In 2007, Miles joined HSBC’s policy function to lead political engagement. Miles moved to Prudential in 2009 as Director of Group Public Affairs & Policy and became Director of Group Strategic Communications in 2013. He was a member of Prudential’s Group Leadership Team.

Miles was awarded an OBE for services to financial and professional services in the King’s New Year Honours List 2025.

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Moira joined the Civil Service in 1999, and has worked in a range of policy, project delivery and operational roles in the Northern Ireland Office, Department of Justice, Department of Regional Development and Department for Infrastructure. Moira is also the Trustee of a local charity, The Turnaround Project, which supports people in their journey out of the justice system.

As Chief Executive Officer of The Young Foundation, Helen leads a multi-disciplinary team of researchers and innovators to support stronger communities across the UK.

Prior to joining The Young Foundation, she spent nine years at Nesta as Executive Director, supporting, funding and scaling innovation in civil society, social tech, government, arts and education.

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Mark Halstead is a founder of and the Director of Data at Red Flag Alert, the UK’s only independently owned credit referencing agency and business data platform, and the Deputy Chairman of Reparo Finance, a secured lending business that aims to help businesses that struggle to access finance from traditional bank lead sources.

Mark has decades of experience in the procurement and analysis of business data and oversees the quarterly Red Flag Alert economic reports, which are a fixture of the economic reporting world and means he has his finger on the pulse of the UK economy, both regionally and nationally.

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Chris provides expert assistance to the University of York’s social sciences departments regarding all aspects of research impact, including but not limited to funding support, policy engagement, business engagement and commercialisation, public engagement, and Research Excellence Framework (REF) impact planning. He also manages York’s Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Impact Acceleration Account and was central to the development of York’s public policy function, the York Policy engine (TYPE). At a national level, he is the current co-chair of the Universities Policy Engagement Network (UPEN), and Chair of the Research England funded Aspect (A SHAPE Platform for Entrepreneurship, Commercialisation and Transformation) Operations Group. 

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Find out more about UPEN

Dr Rebecca Madgin is Professor of Urban Studies at the University of Glasgow and Programme Director for the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Place-Based Research Programme. Rebecca is an urban historian who works on place, placemaking and the role of heritage within urban development initiatives. Rebecca is particularly interested in lived and felt experiences of place and the relationship between the economic and emotional value of places. Rebecca has published widely on these topics using historical and contemporary examples drawn from urban and rural places across the UK and internationally. Rebecca is a member of Historic England’s Historic Places Panel and the Canal and River Trust’s Cultural Heritage Advisory Group as well as being on the Editorial Board for Context, the Institute of Historic Building Conservation’s professional journal.

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Sam Markey is Ecosystem Director for Place Leadership at Connected Places Catapult, overseeing strategic investments, partnerships and programmes with places which promote innovation-led levelling up across the UK. At present, this means a focus on fostering collaborative leadership between local organisations around shared strategies for economic renewal, empowering local service managers to adopt smarter spending practices which leverage public contracts to spark innovation, and civic investment which unlocks the power of private finance to curate inclusive, thriving hubs of innovation.

Before joining Connected Places (then Future Cities) Catapult in May 2016, Sam was a senior implementation advisor in the Cabinet Office, focused on public service reform, policy innovation, and the application of emerging technologies to tackle policy challenges. Sam started his career in the London Borough of Barnet where he was responsible for creating the original and infamous ‘Barnet Graph of Doom’. 

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Simon Marks is the City Executive for Arcadis responsible for over 350 staff in the Birmingham office. 

With 30 years construction and property experience Simon helps clients make the best of their built and natural assets in relation to achieving their vision, strategy and key priorities. He has led and delivered a range of projects across the public, private and infrastructure sectors and has a deep understanding of the housing and regeneration arena. Simon is a  Chair of the Executive Board of the City Centre Enterprise Zone.

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Chris Millward is Professor of Practice in Education Policy at the University of Birmingham. He has particular expertise on higher education policy, systems, institutions and practice, but leads a research group exploring different dimensions of education equity across the life course. 

Prior to joining the University of Birmingham in 2022, Chris worked for 20 years between government and universities as the Director for Fair Access and Participation (DFAP) at England’s higher education regulator the Office for Students (OfS), Director of Policy at the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and Head of Research programmes at the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).   

Chris is a Marshall Scholarships Commissioner, a trustee of the Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE) and Chair of the Advisory Board for the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education. He also currently serves on educational advisory groups for the governments in Scotland, Wales and the Netherlands, as well as the British Council.   

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Andrew Mowlah is Director of Research at Arts Council England (ACE). He has an extensive background in research and evaluation and joined ACE in 2013 having worked in strategy, policy and research for organisations including the Northwest Regional Economic Development Agency, a business lobby group and a management consultancy firm.

Andrew heads up the research and evaluation function at ACE. His team leads on generating robust knowledge and evidence to support delivery of the Arts Council strategy Lets Create and to inform future research strategy and policy development.  

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Tim is Chief Executive of Power to Change, a think-do tank that backs community business from the ground up, turning bold ideas into action so communities have the power to change what matters to them.

Before joining Power to Change, he held director-level roles at the National Lottery Community Fund, Office for Civil Society, and Numbers for Good and was a founder/Director of GLT Partners, a social sector consultancy. He is chair of the Enterprise Grants Taskforce and a member of the Impact Economy Collective.

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A graduate of the University of Liverpool in Geography and Civic Design, Nina has 20 years’ experience in public services in education, social and economic regeneration, and policy development/delivery.

As Head of Public Policy Engagement, she leads WU’s civic mission partnership strategy across North Wales, which delivers a wide range of co-created civic mission work in collaboration with a vast range of partners and communities and aims to end social inequality by 2030. This work ranges from enabling systems leadership and whole systems thinking to support the implementation of the Well being of Future Generations Act (Wales) 2015, to establishing a North Wales Children’s University and leadership education for Children and Young People focused on leadership, health & well being, skills for the future, aspiration, and food poverty. Earlier this year, she was recognised in the Future Generations Changemaker 100 list for Wales.

In her other roles, Nina is Vice Chair of the Civic Mission Network for Wales & Wrexham and Flintshire Public Service Board, a member of the Partnership Board for Actif North Wales, a member of 2025 social movement and Chair of Mold Netball Club.

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Tom is responsible for the RSA’s strategy development, project operations, and sponsors our interventions (projects) focused on hubs – organisations, communities and place. He oversees robust analysis of the RSA’s productivity and strategic initiatives to ensure optimum organisational impact. Tom also ensures effective cross-organisational project and programme management, from business development through to delivery, and leads flagship projects in line with our vision and values.

Prior to joining the RSA, Tom was the Senior Economic Advisor to the Levelling Up Taskforce in the Cabinet Office, leading the cross-Whitehall negotiations of UK Government’s twelve levelling up missions. He was previously the Deputy Head of Research at the Industrial Strategy Council and worked as an economist at the Bank of England from 2011 to 2020.

As Head of Outreach, Megan leads on the engagement with local government for What Works Growth. She has worked with local authorities in a number of roles over the last ten years. This experience underpins a commitment to collaboration with local officers and a desire to ‘meet people where they are’ when supporting them with the use of evidence and evaluation.

Prior to joining What Works Growth, she was Partnership Manager in the South of England at Sustrans where she supported local authorities on policy and strategy development as well as applications for funding.

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Peter Tyler is Emeritus Professor in Urban and Regional Economics in the Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge and Emeritus Professorial Fellow and former President of St. Catharine's College. He has been Project Director for a very large number of major research projects for governments relating to urban and regional development, twenty-five of which have been of book length. Besides his work in the United Kingdom for HM Government he has also undertaken research for the European Commission, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on urban, regional, industrial and evaluation policy. He has been an Expert Advisor to the OECD, European Commission and HM Government, including serving on the National Evaluation Panel for Sure Start (HM Government initiative for children under 5). He was a Programme Leader for the Cambridge MIT initiative and is a Policy Fellow at the Cambridge Centre for Science and Policy. During 2016 he was an Expert Advisor to UN Habitat III.

Peter was made a Master of the Royal Town Planning on the basis of his contribution to urban and regional spatial planning and a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors in the light of his considerable knowledge and experience in the spheres of land, property or construction. He is an Academician of the Learned Society for Social Sciences. In recent years he has been involved in research to value the benefits of urban regeneration and economic development (DCLG), the expert evaluation network delivering policy analysis on the performance of EU Cohesion Policy (DG Regio), Co-Investigator on Resilient Regions and Cities (ESRC), the British Urban Transformations project (ESRC) and the Long-Term Dynamics of Interdependent Infrastructure Systems (EPSRC). He has recently undertaken an assessment of the economic impact of the Babraham Research Campus Cambridge and just published with colleagues a book on Levelling-Up Left Behind Places; The Scale and Nature of the Economic and Policy Challenge (Rutledge, 2022).

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Andy Westwood is Professor of Public Policy, Government and Business at the University of Manchester and Policy Director of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded Productivity Institute. He has worked as an expert adviser to the European Union, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the International Monetary Fund, as well as a specialist adviser to the Select Committees on Economic Affairs and Digital Skills in the House of Lords. He was previously a special adviser in the last Labour Government on Further and Higher Education, Science and Local Government.

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