Katy Milkman is the James G. Dinan Professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, host of Charles Schwab’s popular behavioral economics podcast Choiceology, and the former president of the international Society for Judgment and Decision Making.

She is the co-founder and co-director of the Behavior Change for Good Initiative, a research center with the mission of advancing the science of lasting behavior change whose work is being chronicled by Freakonomics Radio. Over the course of her career, she has worked with or advised dozens of organizations on how to spur positive change, including Google, the U.S. Department of Defense, the American Red Cross, 24 Hour Fitness, Walmart and Morningstar.

An award-winning scholar and teacher, Katy writes frequently about behavioral science for major media outlets such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, USA Today, and Scientific American. Her bestselling book How to Change: The Science of Getting From Where You are to Where You Want to Be is now available.

She earned her undergraduate degree from Princeton University (summa cum laude), where she studied Operations Research and American Studies and her PhD from Harvard University where, she studied Computer Science and Business.

Ben has over 10 years of management consulting experience from within strategy and big 4 consulting. He has successful experience in defining corporate strategy and leading large scale, multi-workstream, transformations in Europe and the Middle East – across the engineering, health and financial services sectors.

As a Director for Digital and Innovation in Financial Services, Ben is responsible for working with Atos’ Financial Services clients in transforming their businesses to become fit to meet the expectations of customers today and tomorrow. This includes changing the way they work and the services they provide to consumers, through the digitization of legacy operations, the introduction of new digital channels and the application of principles such as agile and experimentation. In his free time Ben can be found at his local rugby club, riding his motorcycle, in the gym, teaching his son and daughter to swim or renovating his house. He has two children and an understanding wife.

Ellie Lugt is a Senior Advisor in the Household Finance team at the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT). BIT, also known as the Nudge Unit, is a social-purpose organisation that exists to improve people’s lives and communities. It works in partnership with government, businesses and charities, often using simple changes to tackle major policy problems.

BIT has a strong track record of using behavioural insights to help consumers save, manage their credit and plan for their retirement. In 2016, the Money and Pensions Service (MaPS), created the Financial Capability Lab in partnership with BIT to generate and rapidly test new, behaviourally informed ideas to solve some of the most important money challenges facing people in the UK. The Lab has generated and rapidly tested hundreds of ideas to tackle some of the UK’s most common money management challenges. BIT is now working with partners such as banks and large employers to test some of these ideas at scale.

BIT has extensive experience in developing and testing innovative solutions on savings and pensions, working with a broad set of public and private partners including DWP, HMT, MaPS, financial institutions and pension providers.

Gavin Lewis is Managing Director at BlackRock.  He is responsible for the strategic direction and growth of the UK Local Government Pension Scheme segment.  Previous to this Gavin held several leadership roles at Vanguard Asset Management including Head of UK Institutional, Head of UK Retirement and Head of European Consultant Relations.  Gavin has also held positions UBS Asset Management and Russell Investments.

Gavin is a member of the asset management industry diversity project steering committee, he co-leads the ethnicity workstream and is a co-founder of #Talkaboutblack a movement dedicated to increasing the representation of black individuals in the corporate world.

Gavin hold a BA in History and Politics and from the University of London and holds the CISI Certificate of Investment Management.

Entering the workplace with a Master’s degree in European Politics, Tom didn’t anticipate making such extensive use of it during his early career. Working with Government departments, corporates and NGOs, Tom has led major research projects on issues including Brexit, devolution and immigration during one of the most turbulent periods in British political history. Tom has been a regular media commentator, appearing in outlets such as Sky News, BBC Radio 4 and the Times.

Tom’s other area of interest is financial services, having led the Financial Services Research Team at ComRes and worked with clients including Lloyds Banking Group, the Financial Times and the Financial Conduct Authority during his time at BritainThinks.

Away from work, Tom plays and watches as much sport as he can – particularly football, golf and running. He also speaks French and German fluently – with watching German football at the centre of his Venn diagram of interests.

Sarah Porretta is the Executive Director for Propositions, Insights and External Engagement at the Money and Pensions Service (MaPS). She brings a significant understanding of financial wellbeing gained over 10 years in financial services, and prior to that 10 years in responsible business roles across various sectors. Sarah joined the Money Advice Service In 2018, where she led on the corporate strategy and the financial capability strategy for the UK at the Money Advice Service (MAS) and then joined MaPS when it was formed in 2019.

She is the Executive Director responsible for the UK Strategy for Financial Wellbeing; Money, Debt and Pensions Policy and Propositions; Insights, Evaluation, Partnerships and Corporate Affairs.

Dr Priya Khambhaita, Co-Director of Health and Social Care at NatCen has over 12 years of experience in academic and policy research. Priya has explored different aspects of pensions, retirement and ageing including international perspectives on consumer engagement and individual decumulation journeys, satisfaction with social care services, and the implications of a longer life on health, education, housing, and employment. She has particular expertise in studying the experiences and unmet needs of vulnerable and hard to reach groups and making recommendations on how best to address them.

Otto has extensive experience in pensions, financial services and consumer issues across a range of private and public sector organisations.

Before starting his portfolio career he was Director General of the Association of British Insurers from 2011 to 2015. Previously he was chief executive of AEGON UK from 2005 to 2011. He was the independent reviewer of the Treasury Review of Generic Financial Advice – the Thoresen Review – published in 2008 which led to the creation of the Money Advice Service.

Otto became Chair of Nest Corporation on 1 February 2015. He is also Chairman of the Board of Aviva International Insurance, and the Board of Aberdeen Asset Management’s Life subsidiary. He is a governor of the Pensions Policy institute. In recent years he has served as a trustee of Young Enterprise (a charity supporting business and financial education in schools), StepChange, the debt advice charity and St Mungo’s, the homeless charity.

Will is the Managing Director of Strategy, Analytics and Nest Insight at Nest. He has spent almost 20 working in strategy, public policy, research and communications roles relating to personal finance and pensions, including working for the UK government on financial inclusion policy and the design and implementation of their landmark automatic enrolment programme. In 2008 he joined Nest, shortly after it was formed, and joined the Executive Team in 2010 as Strategy Director. In 2016 he oversaw the launch of the Nest Insight Unit, which he still leads alongside responsibility for Strategy, Data and Analytics for Nest more broadly.

In his role as Nest Will has published papers on pensions policy, workplace emergency saving and financial wellbeing in the AARP International Journal, the International Journal of Pensions Management and with the World Bank, among others, as well as authoring and contributing to a number of Nest Insight reports. He has spoken on these topics at conferences and events in the UK, Europe, Asia and North America.

Outside of Nest he has acted as an independent adviser and subject matter expert on research projects for Natcen and the Behavioural Insights Team. He previously served as a member of the International Centre for Pensions Management’s research committee.

Prior to taking up the Nest Insight role, Matthew was responsible for Nest’s proposition for its members. He joined Nest from the Department for Work and Pensions, where he developed public information strategies for State and Workplace Pension Reform. Before this, he headed up research and communications teams at PwC, Buck Consultants and Talking People.

Photo: Paul Treacy

Jo leads Nest Insight’s research programme, working closely with the rest of the team and our partners. She has over 15 years’ experience in social and commercial research across the public, private and third sectors and has led innovation work addressing a range of future opportunities and challenges in personal finance, pensions and beyond.

Jesal is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Nottingham (seconded into Nest Insight as Senior Behavioural Scientist). She holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Nottingham.

Jesal’s research interests are in consumer decision-making, and lie at the intersection of economics, psychology and finance. Her work is motivated by insights from behavioural economics to answer policy-relevant questions. In her research, she aims to understand how and why consumers make decisions, including behavioural biases that affect their decisions, and to provide policy recommendations to improve consumer welfare. She uses microeconometrics, experimental methods in the laboratory and field, and machine learning techniques to identify causal relationships and answer research questions.

Ellie is a Research Officer in the Rees Centre and is currently working with Dr Lisa Holmes on cost effectiveness of children’s services.

Her work on cost effectiveness involves devising and implementing time use studies, calculation of unit costs, and longitudinal analyses to assess the cost benefit/effectiveness of services. She is also engaged with a number of local authorities for their use of the Cost Calculator for Children’s Services (CCfCS). She is currently working on a project that investigates how economic value is conceptualised and justified in children’s social care.

Ellie has recently completed a PhD in Social Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) under the supervision of Professor Sir John Hills (Social Policy) and Professor Irini Moustaki (Statistics). In her PhD thesis, she examined the role of attitudes to long-term saving and the patterns of wealth accumulation among the younger half of the British working-age population.