Valerie Ann Amos, Baroness Amos, is a British Labour Party politician and diplomat who served as the eighth UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. Before her appointment to the UN, she served as British High Commissioner to Australia. She was created a life peer in 1997, serving as Leader of the House of Lords and Lord President of the Council from 2003 to 2007.
The Runnymede Trust is a British race equality and civil rights think tank. It was founded by Jim Rose and Anthony Lester as an independent source for generating intelligence for a multi-ethnic Britain through research, network building, leading debate and policy engagement.
Sir Geoffrey John Mulgan CBE is Professor of Collective Intelligence, Public Policy and Social Innovation at University College London (UCL). From 2011 to 2019 he was chief executive of the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (NESTA) and visiting professor at University College London, the London School of Economics, and the University of Melbourne.
Sir Richard Hughes Trainor,, is an academic administrator and historian who served as the Principal of King's College London from 2004 to 2014. He was previously the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Greenwich from 2000 to 2004. He is currently Rector (head) of Exeter College, Oxford.
Anthony William Hall, Baron Hall of Birkenhead, is a British life peer. He was Director-General of the BBC between April 2013 and August 2020, and chaired the board of trustees of the National Gallery from September 2020 to May 2021.
Paul Myners, Baron Myners, was a British businessman and politician. In October 2008 he was elevated to the House of Lords as a life peer and was appointed City Minister in the Labour Government of Gordon Brown, serving until May 2010. As City Minister Myners was responsible for overseeing the financial services sector during the global financial crisis and its aftermath, including leading the controversial 2008 United Kingdom bank rescue package. Myners sat in the House of Lords as a Labour peer until 2014, resigning to become a non-affiliated member before joining the crossbench group in 2015.
Anthony Juniper is a British campaigner, writer, sustainability adviser and environmentalist who served as Executive Director of Friends of the Earth, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. He was Vice Chair of Friends of the Earth International from 2000 to 2008.
John Charles McIntosh, CBE, FRSA was Headmaster of The London Oratory School for 29 years until his retirement on 31 December 2006.
Sir Malcolm John Grant,, FAcSS is a barrister, academic lawyer, and former law professor. Born and educated in New Zealand, he was the ninth President and Provost of University College London – the head as well as principal academic and administrative officer of the university – for over a decade from 2003 until 2013.
SharmishtaChakrabarti, Baroness Chakrabarti, is a British politician, barrister, and human rights activist. A member of the Labour Party, she served as the director of Liberty, a major advocacy group which promotes civil liberties and human rights, from 2003 to 2016. From 2016 to 2020, she served as Shadow Attorney General for England and Wales.
Sir Michael Bayldon Barber is a British former public servant and educationist known for serving as Head of the Prime Minister's Delivery Unit under Tony Blair’s government. He was knighted in 2005 for his contributions. He is the founder and chairman of Delivery Associates, a global advisory firm.
Dame Margaret Ebunoluwa Aderin-Pocock is a British space scientist and science educator. She is an honorary research associate of University College London's Department of Physics and Astronomy, and has been the chancellor of the University of Leicester since 1 March 2023. Since February 2014, she has co-presented the long-running astronomy television programme The Sky at Night with Chris Lintott. In 2020 she was awarded the Institute of Physics William Thomson, Lord Kelvin Medal and Prize for her public engagement in physics. She is the first black woman to win a gold medal in the Physics News Award and she served as the president of the British Science Association from 2021 to 2022.
Augustine John, known as Gus John, is a Grenadian-born writer, education campaigner, consultant, lecturer and researcher, who moved to the UK in 1964. He has worked in the fields of education policy, management and international development. As a social analyst he specialises in social audits, change management, policy formulation and review, and programme evaluation and development. Since the 1960s he has been active in issues of education and schooling in Britain's inner cities such as Manchester, Birmingham and London, and was the first black Director of Education and Leisure Services in Britain.
Dame Clare Lucy Marx was a British surgeon who was president of the Royal College of Surgeons of England from July 2014 to July 2017, the first woman to hold the position, and former chair of the Faculty of Medical Leadership and Management. From January 2019 until July 2021, Dame Clare was chair of the General Medical Council, the first woman appointed to that role.
Dame Ann Geraldine Limb is a British educationalist, business leader, charity chair and philanthropist. In September 2015, she became the first woman Chair of The Scout Association since the organization was founded by Robert Baden Powell in 1907. Limb also serves as the 789th High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire, the first Quaker to hold this office.
Priyamvada Gopal is an Indian-born academic, writer and public intellectual who is Professor of Postcolonial Studies at the University of Cambridge. Her primary teaching and research interests are in colonial and postcolonial studies, South Asian literature, critical race studies, and the politics and cultures of empire and globalisation. She has written three books engaging these subjects: Literary Radicalism in India (2005), The Indian English Novel (2009) and Insurgent Empire (2019). Her third book, Insurgent Empire, was shortlisted for the 2020 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding.
Nicola Rollock is a British academic, writer and activist. She is professor of social policy and race at King's College London, having previously been reader in equality and education at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and has written several books, including The Colour of Class: The educational strategies of the Black middle classes (2014). She has been included in the Powerlist of the most influential black Britons and has received the PRECIOUS award for her work in racial equality.
The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities (CRED) was a UK Government commission supported by the Race Disparity Unit of the Cabinet Office. It was established in 2020 in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests following the murder of George Floyd. Boris Johnson gave it the brief of investigating race and ethnic disparities in the UK. Johnson argued that the UK needed to consider important questions about race relations and disparities and that a thorough examination of why so many disparities persist and what needed to be done to work out to eliminate or mitigate them.
Samir Shah, CBE, is an Indian–British television and radio executive. He has worked for London Weekend Television, the BBC, and is the chief executive of Juniper TV, a British company. In 2021, he co-authored the UK government's Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report.
As part of the British honours system, Special Honours are issued at the Monarch's pleasure at any given time. The Special Honours refer to the awards made within royal prerogative, operational honours, political honours and other honours awarded outside the New Years Honours and Birthday Honours.
