Meet the Speakers

James Patrick is an intelligence specialist who served as a police officer for a decade. On leaving Scotland Yard he was commended by the British Parliament. He now focuses on threat mitigation and intelligence analysis, specialising in the digital and information landscapes.

James served as a police officer from May 2004 to October 2009 in the Derbyshire Constabulary, where he qualified as a Sergeant under the OSPRE Part 1 and 2 examination regime. During this time, he was commended for his work as an intelligence officer. In October 2009 he transferred to the Metropolitan Police Service in London and received three commendations in September 2010 for bravery in apprehending an armed suspect, leadership and fortitude at the scene of a fatal fire, and bravery at a life-threatening incident. In 2012 he was recruited by the Assistant Commissioner to work on a new strategic department following his presentation of a predictive policing model and enhanced intelligence briefing system.

During his time as a specialist analyst for Scotland Yard he discovered the mass under recording of serious sexual offences and serious acquisitive crime. He eventually acted as a whistle-blower, sparking a Select Committee inquiry by the British Parliament which exposed thirty years of crime figure manipulation across the country. As a result, the way crime is recorded and investigated in England and Wales was permanently changed and government-imposed targets were abolished.

The Committee’s final report commended James before Parliament, stating: “We are indebted to PC Patrick for his courage in speaking out, in fulfilment of his duty to the highest standards of public service, despite intense pressures to the contrary.” He retired from the force in 2014 after the inquiry concluded and the Home Secretary made a commitment to revise the treatment of whistle-blowers in policing.

James has consulted on a number of crime-related issues, notably working with a Mexican NGO in 2016 to review manipulation of recorded homicide and serious violent crime rates across the country’s states.

He is now the director of a company providing specialist analytical and intelligence products and services, working with clients globally to combat disinformation, extremism, and political interference through the manipulation of public discourse and human behaviour.

He has particular expertise in interpreting data patterns or anomalies, and in identifying investigative opportunities in both complex and incomplete evidential scenarios. James runs a number of public benefit projects.

Rohan holds the role of Economist (Regulatory & Public Policy) at AB InBev, the world’s largest brewer, with global brands Budweiser, Stella Artois and Corona. He has worked in the beer sector for almost 12 years, mostly in the topic of regulations. Prior to this, he was at London Economics, a microeconomics consultancy, working on a wide range of research topics. Most recently at AB InBev, he’s been involved in research recently published by Oxford Economics on the Beer Sector’s Global Economic Footprint. Rohan holds degrees in Economics from Cambridge (MA Cantab) and Birkbeck (MSc).

John is Chairman of Corporate Culture. He has just been recognised by HR magazine as one of the most influential thinkers in this year’s HR Most Influential 2021. He has been a consultant to dozens of organisations over 20 years. Clients have included water companies, regulators (Ofwat), telecoms (O2, BT), energy (EDF Energy), government organisations (NHS, WRAP), retail (ASDA, M&S), banking (Bank of America, RBS, Lloyds Banking Group), FMCG (Unilever) and many others. He is the architect with WRAP of the RecycleNow campaign and Love Food Hate Waste campaigns. His expertise includes long-term strategies, culture change and behaviour change at scale.

He is the author of several reports including The Human Organisation (2021), Innovation for Everyone (2021), Transformation, Reason and Human. John started life as an award-winning journalist. He worked with IBM for seven years and was group director of communications with United Utilities in the 1990’s. He flirts with photography and song-writing.

Jeff French is a recognised global leader in the application of behaviour change and social marketing. Jeff has extensive experience of developing leading and evaluating behaviour change projects, social marketing programmes and the development of communication strategies at international, national, regional and local level.

With over 30 years experience at the interface between government, public, private and NGO sectors Jeff has a broad practical and theoretical understanding of national and international health and social development issues.

Jeff and has published over 70 chapters, articles and books in the fields of behaviour change, social marketing, community development, health promotion and communications. Jeff is a visiting professor at Brunel University and Brighton University and a Fellow at Kings College University London and teaches at four other Universities in the UK.

Jeff was the Director of Communication and Policy at the Health Development Agency for five years from 2000 – 2005. In March 2005 From July 2006 through to July 2009 Jeff set up and managed the National Social Marketing Centre for England. In August 2009 Jeff became the Chief Executive of Strategic Social Marketing Ltd.

Strategic Social Marketing works with clients from all over the world in the private, NGO and public sector on the development and evaluation of social behaviour change programmes. Strategic Social Marketing also provides consultancy services to some of the world’s biggest corporate communications and research companies.

Jeff continues to act as the principle adviser to the National Social Marketing Centre and the Department of Health behaviour Change and Social Marketing policy team. Jeff also acts as an advisor to a number of national policy committees, the EUCDC Knowledge and Resource Centre in Health Communication project, and is a member of the organising committee of the Global Social Marketer’s network. Jeff is a member of the editorial Boards of the International Review on Public and Nonprofit Marketing and the Journal of Social Marketing.

Jeff is Conference Chair of the World Social Marketing Conference. His new book ‘Social Marketing and Public Health Theory and Practice’, published by Oxford University Press is now available. Jeff is also the author of the NSMC’s new guide to procuring and managing the delivery of social marketing service.

Sarah Cork is a Senior Lecturer in Social Marketing, Consumer Psychology and Marketing Ethics and Social Responsibility at Brighton Business School and leads the teaching of social marketing at Undergraduate and Postgraduate level, with research focused on  bringing together the public, private and third sector to make positive lifestyle behaviours more easy, attractive, affordable and socially normal.

She combines this with practical experience as a founder and CEO of leading social marketing consultancy, Brilliant Futures, combining social marketing and behavioural science to encourage and enable positive health, social and environmental behaviours. Projects have included tackling a range of public health issues including mental and emotional wellbeing, healthy eating, physical activity, sunbed usage, binge drinking, smoking in pregnancy and wider issues including road safety, sustainable transport, increasing access to employment and reducing social isolation in older people.
Having started her career in FMCG and retail marketing, Sarah  is particularly interested in bringing together a range of stakeholders to take a whole systems approach to tackling societal and environmental issues, focusing on using structural and policy levers to enable rather than just encourage positive behaviour change.