Meet the Committee

Christene has used her drive for collaboration and efficient processes to help grow U.S.-based Marketing for Change from a small startup to a full-service behavior change marketing firm. As Chief Operating Officer, she is laser-focused on driving measurable social change for clients that do good for the world. Previously, as Marketing for Change’s director of behavior change marketing, Christene designed environmental, safety, public health and end of life campaigns for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Safe Kids Worldwide, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Known for cultivating effective partnerships, Christene has been tapped to lead two national Blue Ribbon Panels, which brought together disparate groups to bring attention to and develop solutions for emerging traffic safety challenges. Prior to joining Marketing for Change, Christene spent nearly a decade in traffic safety, developing social marketing-based solutions that moved away from the crowded risk-messaging market and focused instead on reinforcing positive norms. In her role on the iSMA Board, Christene applies her passion for mentorship to help iSMA develop more robust professional development and educational exchange offerings for social marketers around the world.

Debbie Ellis: Associate Professor in Marketing, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa; the Interim Chairperson of the African Social Marketing Association. She has 30 years of consulting, teaching, supervision and research experience.  She has performed the roles of conference chair, editor, Exco member, track chair and reviewer.  She has recently reviewed for the Academy of Marketing, Academy of Marketing Scientists, the Australian and the New Zealand Marketing Academy conferences. She is also on the editorial board and review panels for several journals. Her primary areas of research interest include eco-consumers, young consumers, social marketing, and consumer knowledge. Her work has been published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, Sustainability Science, the International Journal of Consumer Studies, Young Consumers, Business Horizons, and the International Review of Retail, Distribution and Consumer Research, amongst others.

Joy Parkinson (PhD) is Principal Health Scientist with the Australian eHealth Research Centre at CSIRO and an adjunct Associate Professor of Social Marketing at Griffith University. Joy is an implementation scientist working to create impact through translating research into evidence-informed practice in health service systems. She has published her work in a range of scholarly journals and is regularly invited to present both nationally and internationally. Joy is the Vice President of Australian Association for Social Marketing (AASM) and the AASM representative on the iSMA board.

Luke is an internationally recognised expert in behaviour change marketing and communications, with almost 30 years’ experience delivering positive change in Australia and overseas.

Luke has delivered behaviour change programs, training and advice in areas including non-communicable and infectious disease control, mental health, transport, disability services, family and domestic violence, suicide prevention, the environment, climate change, waste reduction, sustainable development, social welfare and public safety.

He’s a Fellow of the Royal Society for Public Health and Australian Marketing Institute and an Adjunct Research Fellow at Curtin University (Public Health) and Griffith University (Marketing).

Lynda Bardfield crossed over from a career in multinational marketing as a Senior Vice President, Creative Director into the world of social marketing in the late eighties. Since then, she has spent the past three decades committed to applying marketing principles and innovation to social and behavior change.

Lynda’s career has spanned the globe, designing social marketing interventions in the U.S. and behavior change initiatives in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Lynda’s unique global perspective and years of experience translating audience insights into award-winning campaigns makes her a valuable asset to SMANA’s Board of Directors. Her experience teaching social marketing at Tufts University School of Medicine, her contribution to the editorial board of the Social Marketing Quarterly, and her popular plenary presentations at the USF Social Marketing Conference, all translate into an immediate benefit for the WSMC Planning Committee.

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.

Social marketing is a core part of my professional identify, both in terms of teaching, research, peer-review, conferences and connections with practice. I have recently started a new role as Professor of Social Marketing at the University of Dundee. I have published on several social marketing topics, including theory, ethics and more applied research into alcohol advertising and graphic health warnings on tobacco products. Most recently, I co-authored an article on consumer dominant social marketing in the European Journal of Marketing. I serve as board member and Vice Chair of the European Social Marketing Association.

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.