Is there a corporate responsibility for business leaders to help to bridge divides? Business leader and co-author of “Poles Apart” Laura Osborne spoke with experts Sunder Katwala, CEO British Future, Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, US Business Editor Financial Times, and Nick Adams, Venture Partner, Ame Cloud Ventures. 

Program curated in partnership with Wearepolesapart Limited.

Chair: Laura Osborne is a professional communicator, spokesperson and podcaster with a background in public affairs and government communications. Currently Corporate Affairs Director at London First, the voice of the city’s largest employers, she was previously Communications Director at Which?, the UK's consumer association. Laura has led large teams, working with some of the UK’s biggest corporations to apply lessons from communications, consumer insight and behavioural science to making business a force for good. She is a co-author of Poles Apart, a Penguin Random House title on why people turn against each other and how to bring them together.

Sunder Katwala is the director of British Future. He has previously worked as a journalist. He was general secretary of the Fabian Society think tank from 2003 to 2011, and was previously a leader writer and internet editor at the Observer, a research director of the Foreign Policy Centre and commissioning editor for politics and economics at the publisher Macmillan. His support for Everton and Southend United football clubs reflects an upbringing in Cheshire and Essex, though he was born in Doncaster, Yorkshire, to parents who came to Britain from India and Ireland, to work for the NHS.

Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson is the FT's US business editor, leading its coverage of the forces and people shaping corporate America. In more than 20 years at the FT he has held writing and editing positions on both sides of the Atlantic, including US news editor and media editor.

Nick Adams joined AME Cloud Ventures in 2012. A techie at heart, he loves geeking out in all forms of automation, machine learning, and software defined infrastructure both in and out of the office. Prior to AME, Nick spent five years in China and India, where he led business development for Cloud Valley and founded two startups. Nick earned his Masters in Engineering from Imperial College.