Monday, 14 July 2014
11.00am: Professor Malcolm Green, Hon DSc

3.00pm: Professor Steven Katz, Hon DLitt

3.00pm: Mr Tarell Alvin McCraney, Hon DLitt

 
Professor Malcolm Green, Hon DSc

Professor Malcolm Green is an internationally renowned chemist. He pioneered the development of the organometallic chemistry of the transition metals and was the first to demonstrate the intermolecular insertion of transition metals into carbon-hydrogen bonds (‘C-H bond activation’). His mechanism for the polymerization of alkenes (eg polythene) is the standard taught in textbooks. He developed a new taxonomy of chemical compounds – the Covalent Bond Classification. In the 1990s, he initiated fundamental studies into carbon nanotubes and other carbon nanomaterials. He also worked in the field of heterogeneous catalysts of hydrocarbon reactions leading to the discovery of highly selective metal carbide catalysts for the catalytic partial oxidation of methane. This resulted in the formation in 2006 of the highly successful spin-off company, Oxford Catalysts plc.

Malcolm Green received his BSc from Acton Technical College in 1956, and his PhD from Imperial College London in 1959. After two years at Cambridge University, he was appointed a Septcentenary Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford in 1963; a lectureship followed in 1965. In 1989, he was appointed Professor of Inorganic Chemistry, Head of Oxford’s Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory and Fellow of St Catherine’s College. In 2004 he became an Emeritus Research Professor and continues his work with a substantial research group. His career also included many distinguished visiting positions at universities around the world.

Professor Green has received numerous awards, including the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Medals in Inorganic Chemistry, Transition Chemistry, and Organometallic Chemistry, the Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson Medal and Prize, 2000, and the American Chemical Society’s Annual Awards for Inorganic Chemistry and Organometallic Chemistry. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1985, and received the Royal Society’s Davy Medal in 1995.

 

Professor Steven Katz: Hon DLitt

Professor Katz holds the Slater Chair in Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Boston University and is the former Director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1972.

He is the Academic Advisor to the Chair of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), a member and former co-chair of the Academic Committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and Chair of the Holocaust Commission of the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture. His numerous works on the Holocaust and Jewish philosophy include Post-Holocaust Dialogues: Studies in 20th Century Jewish Thought, 1983, which won the 1984 Jewish Book Award in Jewish thought, and The Holocaust in Historical Context, vol. 1, 1994, selected as the “Outstanding book of 1994 in the category of philosophy and religion” by the American Association of Publishers. He has also edited five important books on comparative mysticism, all published by Oxford University Press, the most recent of which is Comparative Mysticism: An Anthology of Original Sources, 2013. He edited Volume IV of The Cambridge History of Judaism: The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period which won the 2007 US National Jewish Book Award in the reference category, and he founded and continues to edit the prize-winning journal Modern Judaism.

Professor Katz has published over 120 articles in the fields of Jewish Studies, Holocaust studies, philosophy of religion, and comparative mysticism and has lectured at universities around the world including India, China, and recently Iran.

In 1999 he was awarded the University of Tübingen’s Lucas Prize for Holocaust studies. He holds an Honorary Doctorate in Hebrew Letters awarded by Gratz College in 1987.

Mr Tarell Alvin McCraney: Hon DLitt

An award winning American playwright, director and actor, Tarell McCraney is a member of Teo Castellanos/D Projects Theater Company in Miami and was RSC/Warwick International Playwright in Residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company, 2009-10. In April 2010, he became the 43rd member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Ensemble. His plays have premiered at theatres such as Steppenwolf, Chicago, the Royal Court, London, and the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon.

Tarell graduated from the New World School of the Arts High School in Miami in 1999, with the Exemplary Artist Award and the Dean’s Award in Theater. He holds a BFA in Acting from DePaul University, and has a Master’s Degree from the Yale School of Drama’s playwriting programme, graduating in 2007 with the Cole Porter Playwriting Award. He won the Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Competition and was the 2009 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University.

In the summer of 2006, with Catherine Filloux and Joe Sutton, Tarell McCraney wrote The Breach, premiered in 2007 to mark the second anniversary of the Hurricane Katrina tragedy in New Orleans. His recent plays include Head of Passes; Choir Boy; American Trade; Wig Out! and the trilogy, The Brother/Sister Plays. His work on Shakespeare includes an adaptation of Hamlet for young people, which he directed for the RSC’s Young Shakespeare Programme.

Tarell McCraney’s many awards include the 2007 Paula Vogel Playwriting Award; the 2007 Whiting Award; the 2008 London Evening Standard Award for the most promising playwright; the inaugural Windham Campbell Literary Award for Drama and the MacArthur Foundation ‘Genius Award’, 2013, and in 2014 a prestigious Doris Duke Artist Award and nomination for an Outer Critics Circle Award.

Tuesday, 15 July 2014

11.00am: Professor Richard Parry-Jones CBE, Hon DSc

11.00am: Dr Subra Suresh, Hon DSc

3.00pm: Professor Michael Doyle, Hon LLD

Professor Richard Parry-Jones CBE: Hon DSc

Richard Parry-Jones has had around 40 years' global career experience in the automotive industry. Having obtained his BSc in Mechanical Engineering at Salford University, he joined the Ford Motor Company in 1969, rising to become Group Vice-President Global Product Development, Chief Technical Officer and Head of global R&D operations. He was a key player in shaping and implementing Ford’s global business strategy, including the acquisition of Volvo and Land Rover. He was named Man of the Year by Autocar magazine in 1994 and by Automobile magazine in 1997; in 2001, he received the Golden Gear Award for outstanding automotive achievement from the Washington Automotive Press Association.

In 2012 Professor Parry-Jones became Chairman of Network Rail, where he has launched the Safety Culture Change Programme and has led the submission of a major investment bid to the UK government. He is also a Senior Independent Director of both GKN and Cosworth Group Holdings Ltd. He has played an important role in public life: he chaired the Ministerial Advisory Group for the Deputy First Minister of the Welsh Assembly (2006-11), and, with Secretary of State Vince Cable, currently co-chairs the UK Automotive Council. In 2005, he was made a CBE for services to the automobile industry.

Professor Parry-Jones is a Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. He holds honorary degrees from Salford, Bangor, Cranfield and Swansea Universities and was Pro-Chancellor of Loughborough University from 2003 to 2012. He also served for five years on the Advisory Board of Warwick Business School.

Dr Subra Suresh: Hon DSc

Subra Suresh is President of Carnegie Mellon University. He is also a member of all three of the United States National Academies (the National Academies of Engineering and of Science and the Institute of Medicine), elected in recognition of his pioneering contributions to engineering, sciences and medicine. He has also been elected to membership of the Chinese Academy of Sciences – the highest honour bestowed by the People’s Republic of China – and of academies in India, Sweden, Germany, Italy and Spain.

From 2010 to 2013, Dr Suresh held the prestigious post of Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the United States. Here, he created the Innovation Corps, the Global Research Council, the Graduate Research Opportunities Worldwide Initiative and the Science Across Virtual Institutes Program. Before this, he was Dean and Vannevar Bush Professor of Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His research into the properties of engineered and biological materials and their connections to human diseases (published in over 300 articles, 21 patents and three books) has shaped many disciplines and technologies at the intersections of engineering, sciences and medicine.

Dr Suresh has a Bachelor of Technology degree (first class with distinction) from the Indian institute of Technology, Madras; a Master of Science degree from Iowa State University and a Doctor of Science degree from MIT. He holds ten honorary doctorates from institutes in the United States, Europe and Asia, and the 2013 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science from the Franklin Institute. In 2011, he received the Padma Shri award, one of the highest civilian honours, from the President of India.

Professor Michael Doyle: Hon LLD

Michael W. Doyle is an eminent international relations scholar. He is the Director of the Columbia Global Policy Initiative and the Harold Brown Professor of International Affairs, Law and Political Science at Columbia University. He has previously taught at the University of Warwick, Johns Hopkins University, Princeton University and Yale Law School.

Professor Doyle’s major publications include Ways of War and Peace; Empires; Striking First: Preemption and Prevention in International Conflict; Making War and Building Peace (co-authored with Nicholas Sambanis), The Question of Intervention: J.S. Mill and the Responsibility to Protect (forthcoming 2014). He has also published numerous articles, chapters in books and occasional essays including "Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs: Parts I and II," in Philosophy and Public Affairs and “Liberalism and World Politics,” in the American Political Science Review.In 2001-2003, he served as Assistant Secretary-General for Policy Planning and Special Adviser to United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan. His responsibilities in the Secretary-General’s Executive Office included strategic planning (the “Millennium Development Goals”), outreach to the international corporate sector (the “Global Compact’) and relations with Washington. He is the former chair of the Academic Council of the United Nations Community. He served as an individual member and the chair of the UN Democracy Fund, 2006-2013. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, New York.

Professor Doyle is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2009 he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society. He has received two awards from the American Political Science Association: the biennial Charles E. Merriam Award for his significant contribution to the art of government through the application of social science research, and the Hubert H. Humphrey Award for notable public service.

Wednesday, 16 July 2014

11.00am: Mr Gautam Banerjee, Hon LLD
11.00am: Dr Susan Brock, The Chancellor's Medal

3.00pm: Ms Alexandra Pringle, Hon DLitt

Mr Gautam Banerjee: Hon LLD

Gautam Banerjee joined Blackstone Singapore as Senior Adviser and Chairman on 1 January 2013. On 9 May 2014, he was appointed a Senior Managing Director of Blackstone Group and Co-Chairman of the firm's Asia Operating Committee. In his new role, Mr Banerjee brings senior focus and oversight to risk, controls, and governance in Asia for the firm, across offices, businesses and functions. He continues to be a key external ambassador for the firm.Previously, Mr Banerjee served as Executive Chairman of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Singapore for nine years until his retirement on 31 December 2012. He spent over 30 years with the firm in various leadership roles in Singapore, India and East Asia.Mr Banerjee is a Vice-Chairman of the Singapore Business Federation and sits on the boards of Singapore Airlines Limited, The Straits Trading Company Limited and Piramal Enterprises Limited. His public sector board appointments include GIC Private Limited and the Economic Development Board. Mr Banerjee’s roles in the not-for-profit sector include being a Governing Board member of Yale-NUS College, a trustee of the Singapore Indian Development Association (SINDA) and a Member of the Singapore Legal Service Commission. He was a Nominated Member of Parliament in Singapore from 2007 to 2009.Mr. Banerjee is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) and the Institute of Singapore Chartered Accountants (ISCA). He has a Bachelor of Science (Honours) degree in Accounting and Financial Analysis from the University of Warwick.

Dr Susan Brock: The Chancellor's Medal

Dr Susan Brock has made a unique and lasting contribution to creativity and high quality teaching and learning at Warwick. The University has benefitted enormously from her engagement with the Shakespeare community in Stratford-upon-Avon, the UK and internationally, her scholarship on early modern theatre and Shakespeare in performance, and her administrative talent and capacity for hard work.

From 2005 to 2010, Susan was Administrator at Warwick’s CAPITAL Centre – a Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning focusing on creativity and performance, which included a variety of collaborative activities with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and other theatre practitioners. In 2010, she became Academic Manager of the University’s Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning, where she remained until her retirement in March 2013. She has been a significant figure in a series of innovative projects, including Open-space Learning, Teaching Shakespeare, and WBS Create. She was also a distinguished teacher of palaeography in Warwick’s Centre for the Study of the Renaissance.

Susan qualified as an archivist in 1975, and subsequently began a long association with the Shakespeare Institute of the University of Birmingham – first as a postgraduate student, then as a Research Assistant, and finally as Librarian. From 1997 to 2000 she was Executive Secretary of the International Shakespeare Association and Head of Academic Development, and from 2000 to 2005 worked as Head of Library and Information Resources at the Shakespeare Trust. Her publications include (with Marian Pringle), The Shakespeare Memorial Theatre 1919-1945; (with E A J Honigmann), Playhouse Wills 1558-1642 and Walter Hawkesworth: ‘Leander’ and ‘Labyrinthus’. She has contributed to the Oxford Companion to Shakespeare and is on the editorial board of the Revels Plays Companion Series. She was made an Honorary Fellow of the Shakespeare Institute in 1992.

Ms Alexandra Pringle: Hon DLitt

Alexandra Pringle is Group Editor-in-Chief of Bloomsbury.She studied for her degree in English and English History at the Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology, now Anglia Ruskin University. She began her career in publishing as Editorial Assistant on the art magazine Art Monthly. She joined Virago Press in 1978; here she edited the acclaimed Virago Modern Classics series that encompasses writers such as Elizabeth von Arnim, Pat Barker, Edith Wharton and Angela Carter. In 1984 she was made Editorial Director, later becoming part of the management team to steer Virago through their management buy-out from Cape, Chatto and Bodley Head.In 1990 she joined Hamish Hamilton as Editorial Director and four years later left publishing to become a literary agent. She joined Bloomsbury in 1999. She heads up Bloomsury's Adult Editorial Department and edits her own list of authors, which includes Donna Tartt, Madeline Miller, Barbara Trapido, Richard Ford, Esther Freud, William Boyd, Georgina Harding, Kate Summersdale, Ann Patchett, Jay McInerney, Margaret Atwood, Kamila Shamsie, Colum McCann, Patti Smith, TC Boyle and Elizabeth Gilbert.Alexandra Pringle is a Patron of Index on Censorship and is organiser of literary events at the Chelsea Arts Club. She has an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Anglia Ruskin University.

Thursday, 17 July 2014

11.00am: Ms Vivian Hunt, Hon LLD

3.00pm: Mr Matthew Taylor, Hon LLD

 

Ms Vivian Hunt: Hon LLD

Vivian Hunt is Director and Managing Partner of McKinsey & Company's United Kingdom and Ireland Offices. Vivian's primary consulting focus is serving leading pharmaceutical companies on a broad range of strategy, development, and organisational topics. Recent examples of her work include global corporate strategy, BU turnaround, Health Technology Assessment (HTA) and health economic collaborations with acute hospitals. She also worked on due diligence and post-merger integration in a number of recent global pharmaceutical transactions.

Vivian has led the development of corporate and commercial strategy and operational plans for more than 25 major ethical and over-the-counter drugs in therapeutic areas such as hypertension, diabetes, respiratory, smoking cessation, thrombosis, depression, sexual health, and oncology. She has worked in a range of specialty health contexts, such as Primary Care Trusts (PCTs), acute and mental health trusts; this work has included efforts in brand and channel performance, industry consolidation, regulatory change, and global turnaround strategies.Vivian serves on the board of several UK charities including the Henry Smith Charity and Action on Addiction. Additionally, she sits as chair for the UK Black British Powerlist and was previously named most influential black woman in Britain.Prior to joining McKinsey, Vivian worked in both management and performance-improvement roles in the healthcare and consumer sectors. She has also worked as a Regional Co-ordinator, midwife, and volunteer in the US Peace Corps (Senegal) and as a healthcare project director in New York City.

Mr Matthew Taylor: Hon LLD

Matthew Taylor has been Chief Executive of the RSA since November 2006. During this time the Society has substantially increased its output of research and innovation, has provided new routes to support charitable initiatives of its 26,000 Fellows – including crowd funding – ­and has developed a global profile as a platform for ideas.Prior to this appointment, Matthew was Chief Adviser on Political Strategy to the Prime Minister. Previous roles include Labour Party Director of Policy and Deputy General Secretary and Chief Executive of the IPPR, the UK’s leading left of centre think tank.Matthew is a regular media performer having appeared several times on the Today programme, Daily Politics and Newsnight. He has written and presented several Radio Four documentaries and is a panellist on the programme Moral Maze. He has written for newspapers including the FT and Observer and journals including Management Today and the Municipal Journal. He has posted over a thousand times on his RSA blog site and tweets as @RSAMatthew.

Friday, 18 July 2014

11.00am: Professor Nigel Hitchin FRS, Hon DSc

3.00pm: Mr Martyn Day, Hon LLD
3.00pm: Mr Douglas Miller, Hon LLD
 

Professor Nigel Hitchin FRS: Hon DSc

Professor Nigel Hitchin FRSNigel Hitchin was born on 2 August 1946. His early education took place in Duffield, near Derby, and he then went to study Mathematics at Jesus College, Oxford, obtaining his BA in 1968.He subsequently gained a DPhil and continued research with Michael Atiyah at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton until 1973. After a year at New York University, he returned to a Research Fellowship in Oxford and in 1977 played a key role with Atiyah and Singer in showing how the physicists’ “instantons” could be constructed mathematically. This formative experience of using pure mathematics at the interface with physics governed much of his future research, involving differential and algebraic geometry in a variety of contexts.In 1979, he became Tutor in Mathematics at St Catherine’s College, Oxford and in 1990 was appointed Professor at Warwick. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1991 and was President of the London Mathematical Society from 1994-96.In 1994, he was elected to the Rouse Ball Chair in Cambridge, but then in 1997 accepted the offer of the Savilian Professorship of Geometry in Oxford, where he remains.Professor Hitchin has won the Whitehead, Berwick and Pólya prizes of the London Mathematical Society and the Sylvester Medal of the Royal Society. He is frequently called upon to give named lectures in the USA, Europe and Asia and has served on numerous committees both national and international.

Mr Martyn Day: Hon LLD

Martyn Day is the Senior Partner of Leigh Day and Co, a firm of solicitors based in the City of London. Martyn trained with Colombotti and Partners; he moved to Clifford and Co in 1981 and then in the same year to the civil rights practice, Bindman and Partners. In 1987, he set up Leigh Day and Co with Sarah Leigh OBE. The firm now has 30 partners and some 250 staff.

Leigh Day and Co specialises in representing individuals both in the UK and abroad. Martyn is head of the International Claims Team which brings legal actions on behalf of people, primarily in the developing world, against multi-national corporations as well as the British Government. Recent cases have included successful claims on behalf of 30,000 Ivorians against Trafigura Limited following the dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, successfully representing the family of Baha Mousa, an Iraqi tortured and murdered by British soldiers, as well as hundreds of other Iraqis, and suing Shell on behalf of some 30,000 Nigerians following two very large oil spills in 2008.

Martyn is a former Chair of Greenpeace in the UK and CHEM Trust, and is now a Trustee of The Greenpeace Environmental Trust. He is an Executive Committee Member of the Society of Labour Lawyers, and a Fellow of the Association of Professional Injury Lawyers. He is the co-author of Personal Injury Handbook, Toxic Torts, Multi-party Actions and Environmental Action: a Citizen’s Guide. In 2004 he co-authored a report with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Environmental Law Foundation, Environmental Justice. Martyn regularly addresses lectures, seminars and media on environmental and justice issues.

Mr Douglas Miller: Hon LLD

Doug is an American, born in Kansas. He lived in London for 32 years and presently resides in Concord, Massachusetts. He is a University of Kansas Honours graduate in International Relations and Economics (1966) and obtained an MBA in 1971 (interrupted by three years in the Army). He has been active in the finance industry for over 40 years with senior positions in commercial lending, international leasing, investment banking and private equity. For the last 20 years, he has run his own company, International Private Equity Limited, which specialised in raising capital from institutional investors from 20 countries for private equity funds, raising over US$ 6.5 billion.

Doug is Founder Chairman of both the European Venture Philanthropy Association (EVPA) and the Asian Venture Philanthropy Association (AVPA); together these organisations have over 340 members in 40 countries. He has been a personal start-up investor in a number of venture philanthropy funds in the UK, Japan, Hong Kong, Estonia and India. He also has direct social enterprise investments in the UK and Mozambique.

He has supported the development and expansion of an existing Multicultural Scholars’ Programme at the University of Kansas from an original nine students up to over 130 students in nine colleges of the University. At the University of Warwick, he was the initiator of a similar Multicultural Scholars’ Programme in the School of Law in 2005. This programme has attracted nearly 80 students, 39 of whom are now graduates. The Programme was expanded in 2012 to Warwick Business School, which at present has ten students in the programme. There are plans for further expansion into other departments at Warwick. Other charitable activities include international development projects in South Asia, Africa and mine clearance projects in Vietnam, Laos, and Sri Lanka.

Saturday, 19 July 2014

11.00am: Professor Ed Byrne AC, Hon DSc

3.00pm: Ms Julie Meyer MBE, Hon LLD

3.00pm: Ms Dorothy Wilson, MBE FRSA, Hon DLitt

 

Professor Ed Byrne AC: Hon DSc

Professor Ed Byrne became President and Vice-Chancellor of Monash University in 2009, having previously been Vice-Provost (Health) at University College London (UCL). At Monash, he has established a close strategic alliance with the University of Warwick: he is a key proponent of the globally networked research university concept.

Professor Byrne graduated with first class honours from the University of Tasmania in 1974. He became Neurology Registrar at Royal Adelaide Hospital in 1978. In 1983, he was appointed Director of Neurology at St Vincent's Hospital and Professor of Clinical Neurology at the University of Melbourne in 1992. He was a founding director of the Melbourne Neuromuscular Research Unit and the Centre for Neuroscience, 1993, and in 2001 was made Professor of Experimental Neurology at Melbourne. From 2003 to 2007, he was Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences at Monash.Professor Byrne is a non-executive director of Cochlear Pty Ltd, and was previously a Director of BUPA. He is an Executive Committee Member of the Australia Japan Business Co-operation Committee. He was an executive board member of the Committee for Melbourne from 2009 to 2013. In 2012 he was appointed as a third-term economic consultant of Jiangsu Provincial People's Government. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE), and in 2013 became Chairman of the Board of the Global Foundation, an organisation that promotes high-level thinking within Australia and co-operation between Australia and the world.

Professor Byrne has honorary professorships from UCL and Warwick. He holds a Doctor of Science degree from Melbourne, awarded in recognition of his demonstrated record of research excellence. He was admitted as an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2006 and a Companion of the Order of Australia in 2014.

Ms Julie Meyer MBE: Hon LLD

Julie Meyer MBE is Chairman and Chief Executive of Ariadne Capital and a Managing Partner of the Ariadne Fund.

She founded Ariadne Capital in August 2000 to create a new model for the financing of entrepreneurship in Europe and the UK – ‘Entrepreneurs Backing Entrepreneurs’. She created the founding Investor Partnership of 60 leading entrepreneurs and business builders who are Ariadne's core shareholders.

She was part of the early team at Tom Teichman's NewMedia Investors in 1998, where she co-managed deals in key technology companies including ArcCores, lastminute.com and WGSN. She founded First Tuesday, the network of entrepreneurs, credited by many for igniting the Internet generation in Europe, and sold in 2000 for $50 million in cash and shares.

Julie has appeared in the BBC’s award-winning Dragon's Den Online. She is setting up a ‘Dads and Daughters’ foundation to support and extend her thesis that women's identities are shaped by the messages they receive from their fathers as children and young adults. Her first book, Welcome to Entrepreneur Country, was published in 2012.

Julie is on the Board of Directors of Medikidz, Vestergaard Frandsen (a for-profit humanitarian development firm), and INSEAD, her business school. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Humanities and English Literature from Valparaiso University, near Chicago, in 1988, having spent her junior year in Cambridge, UK in 1986.

She has been named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, World Economic Forum Global Leader of Tomorrow, TIME Magazine Digital 50, one of Wired's 100, and one of the Top 30 Most Influential Women in Europe. In 2011, she was asked to be on the Secretary of State's Entrepreneurs Panel and the Secretary of Health's Innovation Panel. In 2012, Julie received an honorary MBE, for her services to entrepreneurship.

Ms Dorothy Wilson MBE FRSA: Hon DLitt

Dorothy was educated in Northumberland, at the University of Wales and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music: she has continued to pursue her interests as a singer, instrumentalist and vocal coach. Since 1990, she has been Artistic Director and Chief Executive of mac birmingham (Midlands Arts Centre). She is a very experienced venue manager and programmer in local authority venues as well as independent theatres and arts centres.

Before joining mac birmingham, Dorothy spent 14 years at West Midlands Arts, including seven years as Deputy Director, working across a range of art forms. For eight years till late 2009 she chaired the West Midlands Regional Arts Council and served on the national board of Arts Council England. She is currently Chair of the boards of a number of charitable organisations, including the BBC Performing Arts Fund, Artrix - Bromsgrove’s Arts Centre and Motionhouse Dance Theatre. She is a Council member of Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, a Board member of Dancefest Herefordshire and Worcestershire and of Culture Coventry.

Dorothy has been instrumental in establishing new initiatives delivering lifelong learning, arts development, performance and exhibition opportunities to communities throughout the West Midlands. She is an associate of The Leisure Consultancy Ltd, and UK, Ireland and Scandinavia representative for the Alexander String Quartet (San Francisco).

In 2005 she was made ITV Central's Midlander of the Year in the Arts and Media category and received an honorary doctorate from Birmingham City University, then UCE. Dorothy was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2006 and received an MBE for services to the arts in the New Year’s Honours list 2011.