Chris Giles,
Economics Editor, Financial Times

Chris Giles leads the reporting of economics for the Financial Times and has been economics editor since 2004. He covers global and UK economic affairs and writes a UK economics column fortnightly. He was previously the FT’s lead writer on economic affairs.

Giles was named Business Journalist of the Year at the British Journalism Awards 2012. He has also won the Royal Statistical Society’s prize for excellence in journalism in 2008 and 2012. He was a member of the 2014 advisory board of the Journal of the European Economic Association. Before becoming economics editor, he spent a year at the communications regulator, Ofcom, writing reports into the digital switchover and public service broadcasting.

Prior to joining the Financial Times in 2000, Giles was an economics reporter at the BBC. He started his career in research, spending seven years as an economist for the Institute for Fiscal Studies and has a wide publications record. At IFS he led or worked on projects for clients including, the Treasury, OECD, and the European Commission.

He is a graduate of Cambridge University and holds a master’s degree in Economics from Birkbeck College, London University. 

Joe Garner,
Chief Executive, Nationwide Building Society

Joe Garner became Nationwide Building Society’s chief executive officer in April 2016, inspired by the Society’s principle of mutuality.

As a building society, Nationwide was founded for a social purpose; to help members buy their own homes and improve people’s lives. Nationwide is one of the UK's largest mutual organisations and the world’s largest building society, with 16 million members and a balance sheet of over £250 billion. Joe leads an employee base of 18 thousand and even throughout this pandemic, continues to be guided by the Society’s values and mutual difference.

Joe’s career started with Procter & Gamble and Dixons Carphone. Joe joined HSBC in 2004, latterly appointed as head of HSBC’s, Retail and Commercial Bank, UK. In 2014 he became chief executive officer of Openreach.

Frances O’Grady,
General Secretary, Trades Union Congress

Frances O’Grady became general secretary of the Trades Union Congress in January 2013, the first woman ever to hold this post.

Frances joined the TUC as campaigns officer in 1994 and launched the Organising Academy in 1997.

She headed up the TUC’s organisation department in 1999, reorganising local skills projects into union learn which now helps a quarter of a million workers into learning every year.

As deputy general secretary from 2003, Frances led on the environment, industrial policy, the NHS and winning an agreement covering the 2012 Olympics. She has served as a member of the Low Pay Commission, the High Pay Centre, the Resolution Foundation’s Commission on Living Standards, the Commission on Economic Justice and the government’s National Retraining Partnership.

In 2019 Frances became a non-executive director of the Bank of England Court of Directors.

Tony Danker,
Director-General, CBI

Tony Danker joined the CBI as director-general in November 2020. His career spans a range of roles in business, media and government.

Before the CBI, he was the first CEO of Be the Business, a business-led movement created to transform UK’s productivity founded by a group of FTSE-100 Chairmen and the former chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne. During his three years at the helm, Tony built the organisation from scratch, reaching thousands of firms every month and forming partnerships with dozens of leading UK companies.

From 2010-2017, Tony was international director, then chief strategy officer, at the Guardian News & Media (GNM), where he was responsible for expanding the Guardian’s global business, its restructuring plan and digital platform partnerships.

Tony previously spent 10 years at McKinsey & Company (1998-2008) in London and Washington DC, latterly in McKinsey’s global government and education practices as a senior government specialist. Tony then went on to spend two years as a policy advisor to the Cabinet Office and HM Treasury from 2008-2010.

Tony holds a Masters in public administration from Harvard Kennedy School and a law degree from the University of Manchester.