Meet the Speakers
Training Facilitators
Diogo Verìssimo is a Research Fellow at the University of Oxford and Chair of the IUCN SSC CEC Behaviour Change Taskforce. A conservation scientist and social marketer, his work focuses on using behaviour change strategies to tackle global biodiversity challenges. Diogo has led international campaigns to reduce demand for illegal wildlife products and promote sustainable behaviours. With a background in biology and communication, he bridges science and practice to drive impactful conservation efforts. Diogo is a passionate advocate for evidence-based approaches to behaviour change and interdisciplinary collaboration in environmental sustainability.
Dr. Agnès Helme-Guizon is a Full Professor of Marketing at Grenoble School of Management (IAE), University Grenoble Alpes, France, and a researcher at the CERAG Lab. Her work, rooted in Social Marketing, focuses on promoting healthier lifestyles and enhancing well-being. She explores how AI-based tools can encourage positive behaviors related to food, physical activity, and sedentary habits, while also considering their potential downsides. Her research particularly addresses the general population as well as vulnerable consumers, including individuals with low socioeconomic status and seniors.
Dr. Carla Rodríguez Sánchez is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Alicante, Spain. She is in the Board of Directors of the International Social Marketing Association (iSMA) and in the European Social Marketing Association (ESMA). She has contributed to both the creation of the “Ethical Code” and the “Standards” of social marketing practices developed by iSMA. Furthermore, she has contributed to the translation into Spanish of the course “Key Principles in Social Marketing” delivered by iSMA and ESMA. She also collaborated with the NGO “Ayuda en Acción” in research studies on climate change and youth, and as a volunteer in social inclusion and female entrepreneurship programs. Furthermore, she has extensive experience in teaching and researching various topics related to social marketing. Her main line of research focuses on the study of consumer behaviour in the area of social marketing and sustainable tourism. Particularly focused on the conservation of natural resources and in the behaviour of young people regarding different addictions. She has participated in numerous international conferences on these topics and published multiple publications in prestigious academic journals.
Dr. Emmanuel Mogaji is an Associate Professor of Marketing at Keele University, UK, specialising in consumer behaviour, branding, and social marketing. His research explores how marketing strategies can address societal challenges, with a focus on public health, financial inclusion, and education. Dr. Mogaji has published extensively in leading journals and is recognised for his work on the intersection of culture, emotion, and behaviour change. A global speaker and thought leader, he brings valuable insights into inclusive marketing practices that promote equity, wellbeing, and positive social impact across diverse communities.
Edgar Ribeiro is a Programme Officer with the IUCN SSC CEC Behaviour Change Task Force and leads conservation education initiatives at Zoomarine Algarve in Portugal. With a strong background in environmental education and behaviour change, Edgar develops and implements programmes that inspire sustainable actions among diverse audiences. His work focuses on marine conservation, biodiversity protection, and public engagement, combining scientific insight with creative communication. Edgar is dedicated to fostering global collaboration in conservation and brings practical, on-the-ground experience to advancing behaviour change strategies that support a more sustainable future.
I have been an Associate Professor at the University of Alicante (Spain) since 2021. My current research focuses on social marketing related to pro-environmental and addictive behaviors (such as alcohol and Internet use). Notable findings on addictive behaviors have been published in the Journal of Social Marketing and Children and Youth Services Review. Additionally, I have extensive expertise in sustainable tourism and behavioral change, with publications in leading journals including the Journal of Sustainable Tourism, Journal of Destination Marketing & Management, Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, and Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, among others.
In terms of consultancy services, I have served as an external consultant for the Servei Català de la Salut in the Quality Department for several years. I was part of the team that developed the Strategic Tourism Plan for Singular Tourist Destinations for the Valencian Federation of Municipalities and Provinces. Moreover, I co-directed two projects related to climate change and climate anxiety for the NGO Ayuda en Acción.
I have been a regular member of ESMA since 2021 and, as of early 2024, I serve as the co-chair of the Professional Development Committee of iSMA. I am delighted to be part of the Social Marketing community and to contribute to using marketing to promote prosocial and pro-environmental behaviors.
Hollie Smith-Charles is Director of Creative Health & Change at Arts Council England, where she leads national strategy to embed creativity and the arts into health and social care systems. With a background in public policy and cultural development, Hollie champions the role of arts and culture in improving wellbeing, reducing health inequalities, and driving social change. She works across government, the NHS, and the voluntary sector to influence policy and practice. Hollie is a passionate advocate for creative approaches to tackling complex challenges and enabling healthier, more connected communities.
Lynda Bardfield transitioned from a global marketing career to social marketing in the late 1980s and has since spent over 30 years driving social and behaviour change worldwide. Her work spans the U.S., Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, creating award-winning campaigns grounded in audience insight. A member of SMANA’s Board, she teaches at Tufts University School of Medicine and serves on the editorial board of Social Marketing Quarterly. Her expertise and engaging plenary talks make her a strong contributor to the WSMC 2025 Planning Committee.
Martin is a playwright, stage director, and documentary creator who specializes in community performing arts. As the founder of Vostok Collective and co-founder of LaFANGdanga, he creates projects that combine documentary theater, audiovisual creation, and social participation, taking a strong transformative approach focused on memory, territory, and social justice. Since 2018, he has led numerous initiatives involving over 1,300 individuals and generating real impact in various urban communities in Catalonia. His work has been recognized by institutions such as the "la Caixa" Foundation and the Fundació Carulla, and he has collaborated with cultural, health, and educational entities. At LaFANGdanga, he and Stefania Vara combine art and ceramics to transform the lives of participants in their workshops and projects. Believing in the power of art to effect change, he strives to expand the scope of these practices, form new teams, and consolidate networks that strengthen the social fabric at the cultural, local, and collective levels.
Dr. W. Douglas Evans is Professor of Prevention and Community Health & Global Health in the Milken Institute School of Public Health at The George Washington University. Dr. Evans has published over 200 peer-reviewed journal articles, books and book chapters on health education, communication, and social marketing behavior change interventions. He has authored and/or edited four books, most recently Social Marketing Research for Global Public Health from Oxford University Press in 2016.
Specifically, Dr. Evans’ work focuses on the translation of communication and marketing strategies into intervention strategies to promote adoption of health behaviors and avoidance of health risk behaviors, both in the United States and in low and middle income countries (LMIC) worldwide. He studies digital health technologies, including mobile phones and social media, and their application to changing health behavior. He applies these methodologies to reduce health disparities and improve health equity.
In 2022, Dr. Evans founded the Behavioral Research Insights & diGital Health Technology (BRIGHT) Institute at GW. The BRIGHT Institute supports research on digital health technologies and their application to public health, promoting healthy behaviors, and preventing disease. Digital health technologies include all digital media and devices, such as the internet, mobile phones, social media, apps, SMS. The BRIGHT Institute supports faculty conducting research on the use of these technologies as platforms for interventions, to conduct surveillance (infodemiology), and to evaluate the effectiveness of new digital media as they emerge.
Dr. Evans has pioneered the design, evaluation, and translation of marketing and branding techniques into public health practice. Since 1998, beginning with his work in tobacco control, he has developed health branding as an extension and application of existing theories of behavior change, including the Social Cognitive Theory and the Integrated Model. Specifically, Dr. Evans views brand equity, a multi-dimensional higher order construct that represents the mental associations that consumers form with a product, service, or behavior, as a mediator of behavior change. Dr. Evans has translated this construct from commercial applications into public health and has validated a multi-dimensional scale for use in intervention research in multiple domains of public health worldwide, including LMIC.
Dr. Evans has had multiple National Institutes of Health and Foundation funded grants involving the design and evaluation of digital health interventions, primarily in non-communicable disease prevention including cancer and tobacco control, and nutrition and physical activity promotion. He is currently principal investigator of the National Cancer Institute grant entitled Digital Media for Cancer Control: Randomized Controlled Trial and Dose-Response Effects (CA253013). This 5-year study (2020-2025) will refine existing digital media exposure and dosage measurement techniques and conduct a series of studies to evaluate the effects of anti-vaping and anti-smoking digital messages on young adult tobacco use behavior.
Dr. Evans is also MPI on a grant from the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD; MD016829) to optimize and evaluate a previously developed mobile app to support exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) among African American/Black (AA/B) mothers as an adjunct to postpartum clinical care. Dr. Evans is leading an RCT to evaluate the app, entitled KULEA-NET (2022-2024). The app has several innovative features: a) EBF educational entertainment-based videos and testimonials from experienced AA/B mothers, and encouraging adoption and engagement with the KULEA-NET platform; b) Micro-learning related to EBF; c) Support network communication tools; d) Context-aware delivery framework; and e) a Virtual community support network bringing together AA/B mothers and their partners, spouses, and family members to foster a community of mutual support.
Dr. Evans is also PI of a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to evaluate the gestational and antenatal care (gANC) program in two states in Nigeria (INV-043363). This study is to conduct a quasi-experimental evaluation of gANC answer questions about its effectiveness in different settings as well as how gANC can be designed to be successful in different settings. The study will run from 2023-2025.
Dr. Evans is also co-I of a grant from NIMHD (MD018296) entitled “Changing the Narrative on Firearms Violence: A Community Collaborative Intervention. “This intervention seeks to address one of the ways that structural marginalization and racism fuel, over time, community-normative perceived life-course and identity options for youth that highlight violence as an attainable means of gaining reputation, status, efficacy, and tangible assets. This narrative reframing effort involves the identification of non-violent alternative identities or “possible selves” that offer at least some of the benefits currently attributed to the use of violence, dissemination of youth-generated media through multiple community channels that highlight narratives and trajectories featuring these alternate identities, and commensurate support from multiple community organizations to help youth pursue those alternative pathways. The combined GWSPH and community team will conduct both phases in partnership with, and as part of the CLIF-VP as a cooperative agreement.
Dr. Evans was PI on a recently completed a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) to design and evaluate the impact of a COVID-19 vaccination promotion social media campaign among health care workers in Nigeria (INV-033413). This project used the Facebook and Instagram (Meta) platforms to empower social influencers in Nigeria to promote the benefits of vaccination specifically among health care workers and seeks to overcome vaccine hesitancy in this diverse population. Dr. Evans led a 2-year impact evaluation (2021-2023) that used a novel social media recruitment and data collection strategy and evaluate the dose-response effects of pro-vaccination social media on vaccine hesitancy and COVID-19 vaccination rates in several large states in Nigeria.
Professor Sharyn Rundle-Thiele applies marketing to improve people’s health and wellbeing and to protect the planet. She founded Social Marketing @ Griffith and co-founded the Journal of Social Marketing. Sharyn has co-created behaviour change programs with community and stakeholders. Her projects deliver outcomes and impact including removing leaves from waterways, improved social connections for adolescents, reduced koala deaths from dog attacks by 40%, reduced koala deaths from car strikes by 83% and more. Her work is published in more than 265 books, book chapters and journal papers. Sharyn has received the Philip Kotler Social Marketing Distinguished Service Award.
I study how to boost human judgment and decision making (scienceofboosting.org) by investigating human and machine behavior and how humans themselves understand machines. I combine insights and methods from cognitive science, hybrid collective intelligence, heuristics, AI, and behavioral public policy. I also work on applications in digital environments and medical decision making.
I am the head of the research area “boosting decision making” and senior researcher at the Center for Adaptive Rationality at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin.
In 2010 I received the Hillel Einhorn New Investigator Award of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making. My research has been published in leading academic journals in psychology, cognitive science, judgment and decision making, medicine, and meteorology; has been covered in the popular press (e.g., Scientific American) and appears in academic and popular science books (incl. Tetlock and Garner’s “Superforecasting”").
I studied psychology, management, and computer science, and received my psychology doctorate in 2009 from the University of Basel.
- https://www.stefanherzog.org
- bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/stefanherzog.bsky.social
Stefania Vara is a ceramicist, sculptor, community artist, and nurse. After spending more than 20 years in healthcare, she discovered that art could be a means of healing, remembering, and transforming. She co-founded LaFANGdanga, a school and workshop where she produces handcrafted pieces for high-end restaurants, develops educational projects, and promotes art with vulnerable groups. Influenced by travel, rituals, and territory, her work embraces imperfection and celebrates the beauty of the everyday. Together with Mark García Guirado, she co-directs community projects such as Les parets tenen memòria, which was awarded by the “la Caixa” Foundation. Stefania views ceramics as a practice that connects the body, emotions, and memory. She also considers it a powerful means of initiating collective processes of care, creation, and belonging.
Donna is a highly regarded behavioural research practitioner, with thirty years of experience acquired in both the public and private sector. Donna began her career working in the Western Australian Department of Health and later with the Department of Premier & Cabinet, where she was responsible for developing social marketing and behaviour change policy, programs and communications in the areas of nutrition, tobacco control and domestic violence. She then spent twenty years in various roles at WPP / Kantar Public, where she developed the company’s Australian capability for behavioural insight research.
Dr Nadia Zainuddin is a behaviour and social change researcher. Her work focuses on the power of Marketing to influence social and behavioural change. Her research aims to understand the lived experiences of people, in order to inform programmes, interventions, and policy to improve well-being.
Conceptually, she is a specialist in the area of value theory, having pioneered work developing and applying the frameworks of value creation and destruction across a range of social marketing and consumption contexts. These include the cost-of-living crisis, cancer screening, wellness, disability, and transportation. Her projects focus on people who are more likely to experience marginalisation and vulnerability, such as women, older people, people with disabilities, culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) groups, and people in insecure work.
She is a mixed methodologist, trained in both qualitative and quantitative research techniques.
Nadia has experience working on funded research projects in partnership with a range of government and industry collaborators, including the Australian Research Council, Australian Marketing Institute, The Scottish Universities Insight Institute, Queensland Health, New South Wales Health, and the Australian Red Cross Blood Service.
Nadia also has a strong track record of academic governance, providing significant and extensive service contributions to the wider academic and research community. She is the current President of the Australian Association of Social Marketing, the peak body representing social marketers in industry, academia, and government in Australia. She has chaired the International Social Marketing Conference (the leading Australasian social marketing conference) and the World Social Marketing Conference (the leading international social marketing conference), guest edited special issues for the Journal of Social Marketing, sits on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Services Marketing and on the review panel of the Princess Alexandra Hospital Research Support Scheme, and is an ARC Detailed Assessor for Marketing.
Nadia is also an internationally-renowned researcher, having previously undertaken a Visiting Scholar position at the University of Glasgow, and is currently a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Coventry Centre for Business in Society.
Luke is a purpose driven social entrepreneur and innovative change agent who has built an international reputation for excellence in social marketing and behaviour change research and practice. He is a former director of The National Social Marketing Centre (UK) and an adjunct research fellow at Curtin University (Public Health), and Griffith University (Social Marketing). He’s also vice-president of the Australian Health Promotion Foundation, and served for nine years as a board member of the Australian Association of Social Marketing. Luke is committed to reducing health inequalities and amplifying the voice of lived experience in health-related policy and practice.
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