‘The Real Cost of the Cost of Living Crisis’ – MEET THE SPEAKERS

Lord Prem Sikka

Member of the UK House of lords and Emeritus Professor of Accounting

Prem Sikka has been a member of the UK House of Lords since October 2020. He is also Emeritus Professor of Accounting at the University of Essex and University of Sheffield. His research on accountancy, auditing, tax avoidance, tax havens, corruption, corporate governance, money laundering, insolvency and business affairs has been published in international scholarly journals, books, newspapers and magazines. He has appeared on domestic and international radio and television programmes to comment on business matters. He has advised and given evidence to a number of UK and EU parliamentary committees, including the UK House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee for its investigation into the collapse of BHS and Carillion. 

Prem holds the Working for Justice Award from Tax Justice Network, Accounting Exemplar Award from the American Accounting Association (AAA), Lifetime Achievement Awards from the British Accounting and Finance Association (BAFA) and PQ Magazine, Personality of the Year Award from Accountancy Age and the inaugural (in 2017) Abraham Briloff Award from The Accountant and International Accounting Bulletin for promoting transparency and public accountability of businesses. In January 2019, he was named by Accountancy Age as one of the 50 most influential individuals in the world of accounting.  

Michel Scholte

Director at Impact Institute and True Price

Michel Scholte is an impact entrepreneur, director and cofounder of True Price and Impact Institute. True Price focuses on calculating and improving the true price of products, including social and environmental costs. Impact Institute provides data, software, (digital) education and advice on impact measurement and management. His businesses focus on tech and impact and employ more than fifty people and work globally, from São Paulo to Singapore, for the world’s largest banks and most disruptive social enterprises. In addition, he is a founding board member of Impact Economy Foundation, that develops the open-source impact accounting method together with Harvard Business School’s Impact Weighted Accounts Initiative.

In the past Michel was steering board member of the Netherlands Food Partnership and a member of the World Economic Forum Global Shapers. He is a frequently asked key-note speaker and publishes daily columns on news and sustainability via LinkedIn. He holds a master’s degree in Sociology from VU University Amsterdam, where he specialised in social research, agent-based modelling and living wages

Jennifer Wallace

Director at Carnegie UK

Jennifer is a public policy analyst and writer. She has held a range of positions in the public and voluntary sector and is currently Director at Carnegie UK, where she applies a wellbeing approach to government policy and promotes wellbeing as a narrative for social change. She has written extensively on this topic and has a specific interest and expertise in the role of wellbeing approaches in small jurisdictions.

Jennifer currently leads the team that produces Gross Domestic Wellbeing: An Alternative Measure for Social Progress and programs on wellbeing in Northern Ireland and the North of Tyne region of England. She is also chair of the What Works Centre for Wellbeing Advisory Panel and was a member of the REF 2021 Main Panel for the Social Sciences.