Sustainable Futures Through Regional Growth Pete Kilbane, Cahal Moran, Kate Pickett, Ryan Shorthouse and Paul Kissack (Chair)

Councillor Peter Kilbane came to York to study politics in 1986 and never really left – both the city and the subject. After graduating he spent 10 years at Nestle Rowntree and became active in the trade union movement. He went on to be a full time official for the GMB Union and a TUC adult education tutor. When his children arrived, he opted for self-employment running a consultancy and managing a charity. Most recently he has helped set up a couple of well-known and successful hospitality venues in the city. He became a Councillor for the Micklegate ward in 2019 and is currently Deputy Leader of the City of York Council with responsibility for Economy and Culture. He is also a member of the York & North Yorkshire Combined Authority where he fulfils the role of Deputy Mayor and is the Portfolio Holder for Transport.

Paul Kissack has been the Group Chief Executive of Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) and Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust (JRHT) since 2020. He was previously a Director General in the UK Government working on the national response to the COVID-19 crisis. He has held Director General roles at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department for Education. He was Deputy Chief Executive for Policy and Organisational Strategy at the Ministry for Children in New Zealand. Paul has also held senior roles at HM Treasury, the Cabinet Office, and a local authority. He has worked throughout his career on economic and social policy issues and public service reform.

Dr Cahal Moran is a behavioural economist and Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics. He is a passionate advocate of economic pluralism and has long been a member of the student-led campaign Rethinking Economics. He runs his own Youtube Channel, ‘Unlearning Economics’ which has over 200,000 subscribers. He co-authored the influential book The Econocracy: the Perils of Leaving Economics to the Experts. His new book Why We’re Getting Poorer explains how our dysfunctional and uneven economy is not benefitting the average person. In his academic research, Cahal is interested in understanding the impact that behavioural heuristics and biases have on our decisions in the real world. 

Kate Pickett OBE is Professor of Epidemiology in the Department of Health Sciences at the University of York where she leads the Public Health & Society research group and is the Director of the Born in Bradford Centre for Social Change. She is an academic co-director of Health Equity North and co-founder and patron of The Equality Trust. She is the co-author, with Richard Wilkinson, of the award-winning and best-selling The Spirit Level (2009) and The Inner Level (2018). The Spirit Level was awarded Publication of the Year by the Political Studies Association, chosen as one of the Top Ten Books of the Decade by the New Statesman, and one of the top 100 books of the century by the Guardian. In 2023, Kate received an OBE for services to societal equality.

Ryan Shorthouse is the Founder and Executive Chair of Bright Blue, an independent think tank that seeks to defend and improve liberal society and aims to change government policy and public attitudes. Ryan was appointed a Commissioner of the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission (CSC) by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). He is also a Senior Visiting Fellow at King’s College London and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Bath. He is also Deputy Chair of the What Works Centre, Transforming Access and Student Outcomes in Higher Education (TASO) and was previously a trustee for the Early Intervention Foundation (2017-2023), Young Women’s Trust (2014-2019) and the Daycare Trust (2010-2015). He sits on the advisory council of the University of Bath Institute for Policy Research, and was previously on the advisory council of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations and Shelter’s Big Conversation on Social Housing and is a mentor for the Social Mobility Foundation.