Policy Fellowships showcase: Adopting systems thinking in policy development

Dr Hayaatun Sillem CBE

Hayaatun is CEO of the Royal Academy of Engineering and Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering Foundation. She co-chairs with the Science Minister the government’s Business Innovation Forum and co-chaired with Sir Lewis Hamilton his Commission on improving Black representation in motorsport. She is a trustee of various charities, member of the government’s Levelling Up Advisory Council and Digital Skills Council and NXD at construction company Laing O’Rourke. She has been named as one of the ‘Inspiring 50’ women in tech in Europe and one of the most influential women in both UK engineering and UK tech. She has a Masters in Biochemistry (MBiochem) from Oxford and a PhD from Cancer Research UK/UCL. She is a Fellow of the IET, Honorary Professor at UCL and Honorary Fellow at The Queen’s College, Oxford. She has received honorary doctorates from UCL, Imperial College London, Newcastle, Brunel, Huddersfield and Southampton, as well as a Science Suffrage Award and the Engineering Professor’s Council President’s Medal. She was a finalist for the Veuve Clicquot Bold Woman Award and was made a CBE for services to International Engineering in 2019. Prior to her current roles, she was Deputy CEO at the Academy and served as Committee Specialist and later Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Science & Technology Committee.

Tamara Finkelstein CB

Tamara Finkelstein was appointed Permanent Secretary at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in 2019, having previously led the department’s work on EU Exit Delivery. Before that she led the Building Safety Programme in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. Much of her career has been at HM Treasury where she started as an economist, and her roles included private secretary and speechwriter to the Chancellor, and leading on public services expenditure including health, education and housing. She has worked in a number of other government departments on policy and delivery in health and children’s services including as Deputy Head of Sure Start, and as Director General for Community Care at the Department of Health and Social Care, with responsibility for social care and community services. Her board experience includes roles on the boards of NS&I, the Debt Management Office and the UK Border Agency. She was Secretary to Lord Hutton’s Independent Public Service Pensions Commission. She is head of the Government Policy Profession and senior sponsor of the Civil Service Jewish Network.

Dame Judith Hackitt CBE FREng

Dame Judith Hackitt is a chemical engineer by training and spent her early career working in the chemicals industry – both in manufacturing and also as an advocate for the industry at national and international level. She is a former President of the Institution of Chemical Engineers and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Throughout her career she has championed the importance of Engineering in delivering solutions which provide benefit to society and has been a role model particularly for young women wanting to enter the profession. Her current non-Exec roles are based around her continued passion for Manufacturing and Engineering, including the massive infrastructure project HS2. She cares deeply about safety in the workplace and more broadly. From 2007 to 2016 she was Chair of the UK’s Health and Safety Executive and in 2017 conducted an Independent Review for UK Government into Building Regulations and Fire Safety in the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster. Since publishing her final report in 2018 she has continued to press for regulatory change and for industry culture change and her recommendations for radical reform of the regulatory system received Royal Assent in the Building Safety Act 2022. She acts as an independent adviser to the UK Government and to the Government of Victoria on Building Safety.

Professor John Clarkson FREng

John is Professor of Engineering Design at the University of Cambridge, Professor of Healthcare Systems at Delft University of Technology, Director of the Cambridge Engineering Design Centre and Co-Director of Cambridge Public Health. His research interests are in the general area of engineering design, particularly the development of design methodologies to support inclusive design and health systems design. He led a team with the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Royal College of Physicians and the Academy of Medical Sciences to develop ‘Engineering Better Care’, a systems approach to health and care redesign and improvement, and has recently created an accompanying toolkit called ‘Improving Improvement’. He chairs the Academy’s Systems Approaches in Policy Working Group and provides systems training and support to their Policy Fellows.

Adam Mackenzie-Jones

Adam Mackenzie-Jones is an Operational Research Analyst leading the Net Zero Systems team at the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero where the team are committed to ensuring government takes a systems approach to net zero. He has previously worked at Dstl, Home Office, DfT and the Cabinet Office where he was part-seconded to the Systems Unit for a short period. Adam helped to set-up the cross-government Systems Thinking Interest Group (STIG) and has worked alongside Go-Science to develop guidance on bringing systems thinking into government work.