The Big Society

Martyn Rose

Chairman

Martyn brings business acumen and a record of success in creating early stage commercial organisations into the sphere of social enterprise.

Characterised by his long term view of commercial involvements, Martyn’s passion and commitment during his 40 year career has built some of the finest and best operations within their sector. Qualifying as a barrister and becoming chairman of his first listed company at 34, his eclectic business interests include engineering, radio, football, soft drinks, fine art, financial services and academic software. He has been appointed judge for the Entrepreneur of the Year awards for four consecutive years.

Martyn’s non-commercial activities embrace co-founding the pressure group, Small Business Bureau; the governorship of a prep school and the Chair of DanceEast, one of the nation’s leading dance organisations working widely to support the community through schools, hospitals and youth projects. As a long standing Trustee of the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, Martyn has raised over £2m for the charity during his term.

In 2007 Martyn was appointed with Michael Gove as co-chair of the National Citizen Service programme for 16 year olds, a key manifesto initiative for David Cameron. He is also senior advisor to the New Schools Network, endorsed as one of key initiatives of the Department of Education. In addition, Martyn has co-chaired with Theresa May the Get Britain Working group with David Freud. In 2009 he co-founded the Big Society policy initiative with Nat Wei. Martyn is married and has two children.

Paul Twivy CEO

During his 29-year career, Paul Twivy has started two seminal communications agencies, run some of the largest and most successful advertising agencies in Europe and helped set up Marketing at the BBC.

Throughout this career Paul has used these communication skills to help create and shape many inclusive, unstuffy and practical charity and public service initiatives. These include a 20-year involvement with Comic Relief, the establishment of both Pilotlight and TimeBank, the co-founding of We Are What We Do / “Change the World for a Fiver” and of The Big Lunch which he led last year as CEO.

"Change the World for A Fiver" has now sold well over a million copies worldwide and the movement has generated almost 5 million recorded actions by the public. The Big Lunch in 2009 resulted in over 8,000 events in every type of British community with 730,000 people meeting up with their neighbours.

Paul is a Fellow of the IPA, a FastTrack Business Leader of The Marketing Society, an Advisor to Comic Relief and Pilotlight, and sits on the Boards of The Partners and We Are What We Do. He is married with five children.