We were really proud to have been invited to sponsor the launch event on 4th October of the St Mary’s University’s new Centre for Social Innovation and Global Public Service.

The event was attended by Ministers, Peers, Mayors and Council Leaders, leading academics, civic innovators, and policy influencers including our Managing Director, Richard Harrison (Twitter:@richardwearecco).

Hosted in Lambeth Palace with our sponsorship, the event featured a key note lecture from Director of the Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School of Government Bloomberg City Leadership Initiative, Professor Jorrit de Jonge. De Jonge reflected on the capabilities of public leadership including his recent work with forty of the world’s city mayors – including Manchester, Merseyside, Teesside and Bristol. Piali Das Gupta, Head of Policy at the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives, was in the chair.

The Centre for Global Public Service and Social Innovation will focus on public leadership and social innovation broadly defined and most especially the skills, networks, challenges, innovations and opportunities that those seeking to build more inclusive and just societies will need in the coming decades.

The evening also saw addresses from Minister of State for Disabled People, Work and Health Penny Mordaunt, Lord Shinkwin, and Assistant CEO of London Borough of Newham Tony Clements.

The Centre has been created by the energy of St Mary’s Professor Francis Davis, who addressed attendees on the night:

“The Centre is born from a conviction that this generation – and the emerging generations – of ‘public servants’ will need to be more creative than ever before, more innovative than ever before, more inter-disciplinary than ever before, more able to cross boundaries of class, space and formal power than ever before, and be more agile than ever before in identifying needs, mobilising opportunities and managing change.”

Richard Harrison added,

“we were extremely proud to sponsor the launch event and to be selected as a key strategic partner working together with the Centre to drive innovation in this important area.”

For further information please visit the designated area of the St Mary’s University website www.stmarys.ac.uk or SpeakToUs@WeAreC.Co