Our People
Simon Randall CBE (Chair)
Simon Randall is a Consultant at Winckworth Sherwood and a Consultant and former Partner at LG (formerly Lawrence Graham), where he acts for local authorities and housing associations on a wide range of issues with the emphasis upon housing, externalisation, charitable trusts, regeneration, joint ventures and public procurement.
Simon has had a distinguished career in London local government, having been an elected member of Bromley Council for over 20 years and a member of the Greater London Council during the Ken Livingstone years. He served as Chairman of the London Boroughs Association Housing and Social Services Committee and in that capacity advised housing ministers on housing issues.
Simon lectures and writes articles regularly on local government and housing issues. He was appointed CBE in 1991 for his London housing and local government work.
Jesse Norman (Founder)
Jesse Norman is the Member of Parliament for Hereford and South Herefordshire. A former Director of Barclays, mainly working in developing countries, Jesse left the financial world in 1997 to do research and teach philosophy at University College London. He has huge experience of co-ops and employee ownership, having been a director of Job Ownership Ltd (now the Employee Ownership Association), a pioneering advisory and advocacy organisation for employee ownership.
Jesse writes regularly for the national press on political and policy matters. Among his books are Compassionate Conservatism (2006), acclaimed by the Sunday Times as "the intellectual guidebook to Cameronism", and Compassionate Economics (2008), which lays out the intellectual framework for co-ops within the conservative tradition.
Loanna Morrison
Loanna Morrison was the Parliamentary Candidate for the Conservatives in the constituency of Bermondsey & Old Southwark.
Prior to setting up her own business she enjoyed a 20-year career in journalism, writing for national and international newspapers. She has also worked as a producer and researcher in television on programmes including Sky News.
As an experienced campaigner she is concerned about the rise of bureaucracy on small businesses across Southwark and Bermondsey and strongly believes that the Cooperative Movement will have a major impact on collective autonomy in the same way that home ownership did on individual autonomy.
Marjorie Ellis Thompson (Chairman)
Marjorie Ellis Thompson is a highly accomplished professional with over 25 years of experience in public affairs/lobbying on both sides of the Atlantic, political PR and communications campaigning across the UK and Europe, and as one of the world’s authorities on cause-related or social marketing.
In 1983 she began a long association with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) working as their Parliamentary Officer, Head of Press and Public Relations and then as Vice Chair and ultimately Chair from 1990-93.
She is co-author with Hamish Pringle of the best-selling book ‘Brand Spirit: How Cause Related Marketing Builds Brands’ which is now in 8 languages and her book with Christian Conrad ‘Communicating Corporate Social Responsibility’ is expected to be out in January 2011.
Marjorie is a founding Trustee of Stand to Reason, charity promoting social justice in mental health and particularly in the workplace.
She is currently Chair of the Conservative Co-operative Movement and is a member of the Executive of the Camberwell & Peckham Conservative Association acting as their communications and fundraising officer.
Marjorie Ellis Thompson was born and educated in the USA, achieving a BSc Hons in History at the Colorado College before moving to the UK to study for an MSc Econ in West European Politics at the LSE.
Colin Hann
Colin Hann is part of MDA Global, a company specialising in providing support and advice targeted at improving organisational effectiveness and delivery of services and products. This includes providing advice on HR, management, and customer delivery issues, with a particular specialism in the fled of diversity as well as coaching, training and development, research and communications support.
Colin previously worked with top international law firm DLA Piper with the European employment group, and before that with the CRE as Director of strategy and communications. Colin has written and been published widely especially on diversity, housing and employment issues.
Colin now lives in Suffolk and is actively involved in local life, especially on rural and countryside concerns. Apart from work with MDA Global Colin is currently involved in a number of projects relating to food and an initiative with local and regional food producers and suppliers. Colin is married to an American lawyer and has three children and several dogs.
John Gully
John holds the position of Senior Vice-President, Communications with the International Co-operative and Mutual Insurance Federation (ICMIF) www.icmif.org
Working closely with the in-house communications team at ICMIF he delivers the Federation's communications programme embracing digital communications, publications and marketing material and is also actively involved in the recruitment of Supporting Members and obtaining Sponsors for ICMIF events.
Before joining ICMIF John’s role as a communications and media relations consultant saw him working with clients in the UK mutual insurance and building society sectors as well as with ICMIF and the Association of Mutual Insurers in the UK.
He previously spent over 25 years with the then fourth largest UK building society, leaving there as Head of Group Communications, a position he had held for 11 years.
He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Bankers (FCIB) by qualification.
Shaun Tarbuck
Shaun Tarbuck was appointed chief executive of ICMIF in 2005 having been with the organisation for 10 years prior to his appointment, latterly as its chief financial officer. ICMIF represents 216 mutual and cooperative insurers in 75 countries. He is also on the Board of the European association for mutual insurers AMICE. He is a Board member of Regis Mutual Management a company which focuses on the set up of new mutual insurers, and he has been a judge for the British Insurance awards for the last three years. He is President of Allnations Inc a US based capital support vehicle for mutual and cooperative insurers in developing countries.
Shaun regularly speaks at conferences on mutuality, demutualisation, governance, marketing and other strategic issues affecting the mutual and cooperative insurance sector. He writes articles on mutual insurance and has been involved in several research projects focusing on the value that mutuals and cooperatives bring to the insurance market.
He was also the chief executive of the UK based Association of Mutual Insurers (AMI) being involved in its formation in 2004 to 2009 when it merged to become the Association of Financial mutuals. AMI represented 38 UK mutuals when it merged and was responsible for the self-regulation of the mutual industry’s corporate governance through the Annotated Combined Code for Mutual Insurers published in 2005, a project that Shaun was very involved in.
Shaun, a chartered accountant, qualified in 1987 and subsequently worked in the captive insurance industry for 3 years in Bermuda before doing a year in corporate finance followed by three years as finance director of a newly demutualized life insurer in Manchester. He then set up his own successful insurance consulting and accounting practice before joining ICMIF full time in 1995. Shaun is married with 4 children and has a passion for rugby union being both a coach and referee.
Nick Vaughan (Communications)
Nick is a Senior Consultant at Heathcroft Communications, providing public affairs counsel in wide variety of business sectors.
Prior to joining Heathcroft, Nick has worked in the European Parliament as an aide to the Conservative spokesman on Transport and for the public affairs division of Financial Dynamics. His last post was with Pimlico based public affairs outfit, Gardant Communications. Nick is also former National Chairman of Conservative Future and was an elected member of Herefordshire Council until May 2011.
A politics graduate from Essex, he continues to contribute to various ‘blogs’ and was recently tipped as one for a future 'on the green benches' in the recent book: Blueprint: The Politics, Principles and Personalities of the New Conservative Government.
