Meet the Speakers

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.

Gael O’Sullivan, MBA is a thought leader in the social marketing and behavior change fields. She is Director, Social and Behavior Change, in Kantar Public’s International Development Practice, and she is Adjunct Professor, McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, where she teaches ‘Social Marketing for Global Good’ in the MBA program. Ms. O’Sullivan has more than 30 years of international development experience designing, implementing, and evaluating programs that improve health outcomes and empower women and girls. These global health programs are based on mixed methods audience research, pre-testing, and comprehensive monitoring and evaluation techniques to measure program outputs and outcomes at the individual, community, and social norms level. Ms. O’Sullivan has worked in the US and in over 40 other countries across topics such as: family planning and reproductive health, gender equality, infectious diseases (e.g., HIV/AIDS, malaria, avian influenza), alcohol harm reduction, and tobacco control and prevention. These programs have been funded primarily by the US Agency for International Development and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  Ms. O’Sullivan speaks fluent French and has lived in Switzerland and Togo. She is a founding board member of the International Social Marketing Association (iSMA), where she chaired the Communications Committee for several years. Currently, she co-leads with Liz Foote iSMA’s ‘Orbit Committee’ on academic offerings.

As a filmmaker and communications specialist in the public health field, Iman has had an intersectional career with a through line of promoting optimal health for all. She is the Director of Media & Communications at the Institute of Women & Ethnic Studies (IWES) and holds a BA from the University of Southern California and an MFA from Columbia University in film. As a writer, director and editor, she has created over 50 short films, PSAs, and web series, and three feature films (both narrative and documentary), which have been featured in multiple festivals both nationally and internationally. She has also implemented a variety of health prevention programs (reproductive health, HIV prevention, positive youth development, etc.); developed, launched, and maintained multiple social marketing campaigns; and presented at over 15 conferences on her work. In 2016 Iman launched her first city-wide public will campaign (which later became a social marketing campaign) entitled In That Number, and in 2020 she launched the most recent IWES social marketing campaign, #ThisIsWhy. In 2016 she was also selected as a participant in Spitfire's Executive Training Program and in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s first Culture of Health Leaders cohort. Finally, she received the New Orleans-based Millennial Award in the Changemaker category that year, as well. In 2019 she joined the innovative Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program’s (iTP3) Design Cadre and received training in Human Centered Design, to complement her extensive background in social marketing. She has applied that training to the design of strategies and interventions to optimize health for a variety of audiences. Outside of film and communications, Iman has further experience in graphic design, focus group facilitation, photography, positive youth development, and participatory action research. She is also a professional dancer with an avid passion for movement and fitness.

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.

Livingston A. White was born in Kingston, Jamaica.  He earned a Bachelor of Arts (First Class Honors) degree from the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona Campus, in 1997. At UWI, he studied at the Caribbean Institute of Media and Communication (CARIMAC), where he read for his bachelor’s degree majoring in Mass Communication with a specialization in television production and a minor in Linguistics.  After graduating from UWI in 1997, he freelanced in television production and planned environmental awareness campaigns.  In 1999, he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study in the United States where he completed his Master’s degree in Communication Research and Theory at the College of Communication of Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida.  In 2001, he returned to Jamaica, where he worked as an assistant lecturer at CARIMAC, teaching undergraduate courses in Social Marketing, Communication Analysis and Planning, and Communication Research Methods.  During his time at CARIMAC, he conducted research and training in communication planning for, as well as consulted with, various regional Caribbean-based agencies including the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization, Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, and the Bernard van Leer Foundation’s Caribbean Child Support Initiative, focusing on issues ranging from the coverage of health in Caribbean media, advocacy communication for sustainable environmental management to early childhood development.  He returned to Tallahassee in August 2006 to complete his doctoral studies in mass communication focusing on health communication and statistical applications in communication research. After completing his PhD in August 2009, he resumed working at CARIMAC, where he continues to teach courses in communication research methodologies and social marketing.
Dr. White is a member of various professional and academic associations including the International Communication Association (ICA), Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) and the International Social Marketing Association (iSMA).

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.

Professor Sharyn Rundle-Thiele is the Founding Director, Social Marketing @ Griffith and Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Social Marketing. Drawing on her commercial marketing background Sharyn’s research focuses on applying marketing to benefit people and the planet.

Sharyn wants to see marketing applied more often. Marketing is the only voluntary approach that can be applied to change people’s behaviour.

Bringing people with you is the ONLY way to go!

Sharyn is committed to:

1. Building social marketing capacity through training
2. Advancing scientific understanding so that we know what works, when, where and why
3. Delivering changes to benefit people and the planet

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.

Catherine is the Head of Analysis at the Government Information Cell, which was set up in February 2022 to tackle disinformation related to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Before that, she was Head of Insight and Evaluation for the Prime Minister's Office and Cabinet Office, leading on developing the communication evaluation programme for HMG's Covid-19 response as well as setting up an extensive programme of research to track public behaviour and develop and deliver policies and communication throughout the crisis. Before joining Government, she worked in the media and leisure sectors. 

Jeffrey will be presening a talk at the conference entitled "Introducing the Intentional Equity Framework: How to Design Equitable Social Marketing Campaigns"

Nearly every public health communications campaign includes health equity as an objective. But marketing channels are fundamentally inequitable, and campaigns that are not intentionallyequitable end up being unintentionallyinequitable. Health communicators must approach marketing channels with an understanding of their inherent biases and implement strategies to overcome those biases to design and implement truly equitable health communications campaigns.

Jeffrey is President and Founder of Rescue Agency, a behavior change marketing agency focused on making healthy behaviors easier and more appealing. His passion for social change began in high school when he started Rescue at the age of 17. While growing Rescue, Jeff studied Marketing for his undergraduate degree and received a Master’s in Experimental Psychology. He has led Rescue to manage dozens of behavior change programs across North America, tackling issues such as tobacco, obesity and violence. Rescue’s work includes the FDA's national tobacco prevention campaign for multicultural teens and its LGBTQ+ young adult effort, as well as active contracts with over a dozen state and local health departments. 

Jeffrey has presented keynote and plenary presentations at dozens of conferences including the Agents of Change Summit; CDC's Health Communications, Marketing, and Media Conference; the World Social Marketing Conference; and more. 

Links: @jeffreywjordan / https://www.linkedin.com/in/rescuejeff / @rescueagency

Judy Kepher Gona is a sustainable development practitioner with over two decades of working in sustainable tourism in Africa as a thought leader, strategist, researcher, lecturer, global speaker, motivator, and consultant. Her interests are in sustainable tourism strategy and design, particularly inclusion, equity, supply chain sustainability, sustainability assessment and accountability through reporting.

In 2020, Centre for Responsible Tourism awarded a lifetime achievement award for her contribution to sustainable tourism. In the same year she was named amongst 40 global shakers in sustainable tourism. In 2018, Women Academics in Tourism (WAIT) recognized Judy among top 50 awesome scholars in tourism. In 2019, she was awarded the Sustainable Citizen Award by Forbes Woman Africa in recognition of outstanding contribution to awareness and knowledge of sustainability in tourism in Africa and beyond.

Judy founded Sustainable Travel & Tourism Agenda-(STTA), a pan -African organisation, to equip, enable, and empower tourism stakeholders to design value led organisations with sustainability as the foundation

Marina is an internationally renowned policy, planning and sustainable development expert and Professor of Tourism and International Development at Brighton School of Business and Law, which is an Affiliate Member of the UN World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO).

She is a geographer with a background in economics, with significant experience of high-quality research, consultancy, PhD supervision, teaching and curriculumm development.

Since 2017, she has been playing a key strategic role as Academic Lead for the University’s Responsible Futures’ Research and Enterprise Agenda, an initiative aimed at fostering innovation through impactful  interdisciplinary research and consultancy collaborations, at local, national and international level.

She has advised on numerous international cooperation and research assignments funded by International Development Organisations (IDOs) such as: The World Bank, the European Union, The UN (UNESCO, UNIDO, UNWTO), the Commonwealth Secretariat, National Ministries and Tourism Boards, Regional Development Agencies and NGOs. Such work has provided the basis of 2 REF2014 and REF2021 highly rated Impact Case Studies. Examples of projects undertaken are also available here. 

In 2018 she was appointed as REF2021 panelist for UOA C24: Sport, Tourism and Leisure. 

She is known globally for her excellence in leading and collaborating with multi-disciplinary, multi-stakeholder and multi-cultural teams and for her commitment to generating new knowledge on ways in which tourism can play a key role in sustainable development by stimulating local economies, conserving the environment, developing peoples and changing lives.

Sayantan will be bring a new perspective to social change through economics at the conference and will present his inspiring and pioneering work in Kolkata addressing inequalities, stigma and self-image of sex workers. Hear an engrossing tale of how a journey to provide economic safety and security for this marginalised and often at risk group grew into a wider and more powerful platform for positive change.

Sayantan is Professor of Economics at the Adam Smith Business School and Dean of Interdisciplinarity and Impact at the College of Social Sciences. He was a Professor of Economics at the University of Warwick from 2004 to 2013 where he was Research Director of the ESRC funded Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE). He also has a PhD from CORE, Universite Catholique de Louvain under the European Doctoral Program in Quantitative Economics. 

Sayantan undertakes a number of activities; he: 

• co-ordinates the interdisciplinary network “Behavior, Structure and Interventions”at the University of Glasgow
• is the academic lead for the ESRC funded Impact Acceleration Account at Glasgow
• is an academic ambassador for the research beacon “Addressing Inequalities”
• is a co-investigator on the ESRC funded “Rebuilding Macroeconomics Network”, and
• is the Principal Investigator in an ESRC-DFID funded project based in India starting in March 2018.

He is also also:

• a member of the ESRC Capability Committee,
• an external Research Fellow for ESRC Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE) where he was Research Director from 2010 - 2012

Nedra Kline Weinreich, the president and founder of Weinreich Communications, is widely recognized as an expert in the field of social marketing. She is the author of the classic book Hands-On Social Marketing: A Step-by-Step Guide to Designing Change for Good.

Since starting Weinreich Communications in 1995, Nedra has provided effective and innovative social marketing services for clients like the US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, Public Health Service, National Cancer Institute, Department of Energy and numerous state, local and international organizations. She has worked closely with the entertainment and news industries to encourage accurate depictions of mental health issues as staff on the Entertainment Industries Council. Prior to her work with Weinreich Communications, she designed health education and communication programs for public and private organizations.

Nedra is a frequent speaker at conferences and trainings, using her expertise to build the knowledge and skills of professionals who want to put social marketing, social media and transmedia storytelling to work for their organizations. She taught a graduate course on social marketing at UCLA’s School of Public Health for many years and was adjunct faculty at Georgetown University. Nedra earned her Master's degree in Health and Social Behavior from the Harvard School of Public Health and her bachelor's degree in Conservation and Resource Studies from the University of California, Berkeley.

In addition to serving on the board of directors of the International Social Marketing Association and the editorial board of the Social Marketing Quarterly, Nedra has been invited to participate on numerous Federal expert advisory panels and committees. She is also the founder of the Transmedia for Good Network.

Nedra is active on Twitter as @Nedra.