Meet the Committee

Angela Makris is a PhD Student in Public Health at the University of South Florida. Her research and practice interest involve the application of a systems approach to behavioral theory through the social marketing framework for health behavior change, prevention and wellness for people with disabilities. Her goal is to apply the social marketing framework to decreasing health disparities for people with disabilities through healthy lifestyle initiatives by adapting knowledge, facilitating uptake, and developing strategic partnerships to build community capacity and create sustainability. Her research aim is to create inclusive change for people with intellectual disabilities by integrating disability and health into health promotion activities.

Dr Ariadne Beatrice Kapetanaki is a lecturer in marketing at the University of York, United Kingdom. She has a PhD in social marketing and food policy from City University London, UK. Ariadne's research focuses on food policies and systems that effectively prevent and tackle nutrition-related non-communicable diseases; social marketing for behaviour and social change in relation to healthy eating and alcohol consumption and critical marketing. Her research projects have been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, the British Academy of Management, the Food Standards Agency and the Food Standards Scotland. Ariadne is a fellow of the Lancet Commission on Obesity and section editor of BMC Public Health.

Dr Nadina Luca is a lecturer in marketing at the York Management School. Her research is interdisciplinary drawing upon social marketing, sociology of health and service scholarship.

She has collaborated with the NHS and local authorities on Smokefree and wellbeing programmes and is the administrative officer of the European Social Marketing Association. Current research interests include value co-creation, networks, food wellbeing and consumer vulnerability.

Fiona is a senior lecturer in marketing at the School of Management, University of Bristol. Here, she teaches Sustainability and Social Impact in Marketing, which is an opportunity to explore social marketing in a sustainability context. Fiona has been a social marketer since she joined the National Social Marketing Centre as a consultant in 2006, working on the national demonstration sites programme in Stockport. She completed her PhD in social marketing at the University of the West of England in 2011 and has been teaching and researching social marketing ever since. Her edited book ‘Beyond Behaviour Change’ scopes out the range of different approaches to behaviour change which have emerged over recent decades, and asks important questions about the role of social marketing alongside other approaches. Fiona often calls for interdisciplinarity in tackling complex societal problems, and for innovative and critical uses of different theoretical perspectives to advance the way social marketers understand their role in meaningful, long term social transition. Fiona’s research tends to focus on understanding how physical activity emerges, or fails to emerge, from the organisation of everyday life for different groups. Increasingly, she is also interested in the role of social media in reframing collective understandings and experiences of physical activity, and the role of social media in consumer activism for sustainability-related social change. She aligns her research to the growing paradigm of critical social marketing, which seeks to question theoretical assumptions underpinning social marketing and use innovative theoretical ideas to work to advance the effectiveness, ethics and equality embedded in social marketing scholarship and practice.

Members Chair, International Social Marketing Association, Founder The Mindspark 

Leonidas is a Social Marketing professional  certified by the University of Brighton with proven experience and strong academic background in Marketing and Communications. Furthermore,  Leonidas is actively involved in the development and promotion of the field in Greece through events as keynote speaker, organizer, trainer and occasionally guest lecturer in Social Marketing, Marketing and entrepreneurship.

He has experience working as a consultant with public, non-profit and private sector organizations in the field of Marketing, Communications and Strategic Planning. He was a U.K. alumni awards finalist in Greece for 2019 and the founder of the Mindspark initiative, an initiative aiming to promote growth mindset in Greece expressed through events focused on marketing and creativity. Closing Leonidas is a Member of the Board of the International Social Marketing Association and National Rep of the European Social Marketing Association for Greece

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.

Rita is a social marketing professional specialising in strategic insight to inform, design and deliver user-centred behavioural change programmes.

A passionate advocate of the benefits of embedding social marketing in social policy, Rita travels into the heart of communities in order to fully engage with people from various target audiences to identify their situations, hopes and aspirations and work with them to create public-centred services that meet their needs.

Rita has been a board member of the European Social Marketing Association since January 2018 and is delighted to be part of the committee for ESMA’s 2020 conference.

Contact brophyr@sms-research.co.uk