How Do We Build an Open, Tolerant and Inclusive City? The Mayor’s State of the City Address 2021

Ian Goldin is Professor of Globalisation and Development at the University of Oxford and leads the Oxford Martin Programmes on the Future of Work, Technological and Economic Change and the Future of Development. Prior to becoming the founding Director of the Oxford Martin School, he was Vice President of the World Bank, after serving as Chief Executive of the Development Bank of Southern Africa and as an advisor to President Nelson Mandela. He also worked as Principal Economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London and as Programme Director at the OECD in Paris. He has served as a non-executive director on the boards of leading businesses, received a knighthood from the French government, and has advised many international organisations and governments. His latest book is Rescue: From Global Crisis to a Better World.

Image credit: David Fisher

Sado Jirde is Director of Black South West Network (BSWN). She joined the organisation in 2007 and took over as the director five years later. She has worked tirelessly to raise the profile of racial inequality at strategic and policy levels regionally and nationally, as well as locally in Bristol. She has also been leading on the discussion around inclusive growth and the role social investment could play in addressing economic inequality in Bristol. She sits on a number of boards of local and national charitable organisations and is also a member of a number of partnerships/networks. She is a member of Coalition of Race Equality Organisations (CORE).

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Musa Okwonga is a writer, broadcaster and musician. The co-host of the Stadio football podcast, he has published one collection of poetry and three books about football, the first of which, A Cultured Left Foot, was nominated for the 2008 William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award. His work has appeared in various outlets, including Africa Is A Country, Byline Times, Foreign Policy, the Guardian, The New York Times, The Economist and The Ringer. His latest books are In the End, It Was All About Love and One of Them: An Eton College Memoir. He lives in Berlin.

Caleb Parkin is Bristol City Poet 2020-2022. He is a poet, performer, facilitator and filmmaker with a particular passion for inclusive environmentalism; wellbeing; arts, culture and heritage; and LGBT+ pride. His poems have been published widely in journals that have included Poetry Review, The Rialto, Butcher’s Dog, Under the Radar, Coast to Coast to Coast, Envoi and Magma, in Bristol 24/7 and online.

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Marvin Rees is the elected Mayor of Bristol. He began his working life with Tearfund, an international development agency, and went on to spend time working in the US with Sojourners, a Washington DC-based social justice organisation, and President Clinton’s advisor Rev Dr Tony Campolo. On returning to the UK he worked with BBC Bristol as a broadcast journalist, with the Black Development Agency supporting the BAME-led voluntary sector and NHS Bristol’s Public Health team on Delivering Race Equality in Mental Health. He was appointed to the National Community Foundation, became a Yale World Fellow and co-founded the City Leadership Programme. He entered the political world having graduated from Operation Black Vote and Labour Future Candidate programmes. He was first elected mayor of Bristol in 2016 and, after serving an extended five-year first term due to the pandemic, was re-elected in 2021.

Alice Towle is a member of the Bristol Youth Council and is one of the two Bristol Youth Mayors for 2020-2022.

Liz Zeidler is Chief Executive, Centre for Thriving Places. She is an internationally recognised leader in sustainable wellbeing with nearly 30 years of experience in connecting, challenging and supporting change-makers across four continents. She has been a key part of the development of all Centre for Thriving Place’s wellbeing economy measurement tools and approaches. She is a globally in-demand speaker and advisor on place-based approaches to measuring, understanding and improving wellbeing in all sectors and putting people and planet at the heart of local decision making.

Image credit: Gareth Iwan Jones