News

Sara Parkin OBE

We are pleased to announce that Sara Parkin OBE, Founder Director and Trustee of Forum for the Future, will be a keynote speaker at the Design PhD Conference 2015.

Sara Parkin has had a long career in education and sustainability. At Forum for the Future, she designed a pioneering Masters programme in Leadership in Sustainable Development, and has run several projects for government, for example, on integrating sustainability literacy into the strategies and practices of bodies that plan, fund and regulate post-school education. She initiated the Engineers of the 21st Century project which brings major employers and young engineers together to solve shared sustainability challenges, and in 2010 she published a book The Positive Deviant: Sustainability leadership in a perverse world now becoming an essential text in universities around the world.

Her experience in establishing Forum for the Future as a major UK not-for-profit employing nearly 70 people, and on the boards of large complex governmental organisations such as the Environment Agency of England and Wales, the Natural Environment Research Council and The Leadership Foundation for Higher Education, means she is fluent in organisational management, policy and governance matters.

Sara is a Companion of both the Institution of Civil Engineers and a Fellow of the Institute of Energy and holds 10 honorary doctorates as well as other awards.