Retrofit: challenges and opportunities

Will Hurst

Managing Editor, The Architects' Journal

Will Hurst is an award-winning journalist who has spent his career writing about architecture and construction. He has written extensively about the climate crisis and is currently leading the AJ’s anti-demolition campaign RetroFirst, which was shortlisted for Campaign of the Year at the 2021 British Journalism Awards and played a pivotal role in prompting last year’s public inquiry into M&S Oxford Street. Hurst has written for national titles such as the Guardian, Times, Telegraph, and Financial Times. His investigation into London’s Garden Bridge won him a British Journalism Award in 2017 and was shortlisted for that year’s Paul Foot Award.

Twitter: @WHurst1

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/will-hurst-a0404212/

Claire Spencer

CEO of the Barbican Centre

Claire Spencer joined the Barbican in May 2022 as the first-ever CEO. Claire was previously at the Arts Centre Melbourne where she successfully led a thriving cultural centre, re-positioned the organisation to be a key player in the district’s creative economy and steered it through the Covid-19 pandemic. In the 2020 Australia Day honours list she was conferred a Member of the Order of Australia for her work in the performing arts. Claire has been a champion of women in leadership and a supporter of organisations and projects that provide scholarships and mentoring support to those from marginalised or disadvantaged backgrounds. A Chartered Accountant and Theology graduate, she is married with three children. 

https://uk.linkedin.com/in/claire-spencer-am-3740878

Andy Haigh

Director, Climate Positive Solutions

Andy’s work as Director of Climate Positive Solutions ensures that Grosvenor responds to the latest climate science. He is responsible for developing best practice strategy and technical solutions on projects such as science-based targets, environmental resilience, energy efficiency in buildings and embodied carbon in developments.

Previously Andy was Senior Sustainability Manager, Canary Wharf Contractors where he achieved board approval for their science-based targets.  Before this he held a range of sustainability roles at Sir Robert McAlpine, leading the team between 2017 and 2019, and prior to that worked at Foster + Partners.

Lord Deben

Chairman of the Climate Change Committee

The Rt. Hon John Gummer, Lord Deben, set up and now runs Sancroft, a Corporate Responsibility consultancy working with blue-chip companies around the world on environmental, social and ethical issues. Lord Deben is Chairman of the Committee on Climate Change and Valpak Limited. He was the longest serving Secretary of State for the Environment the UK has ever had (1993-97). His sixteen years of top-level ministerial experience also include Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries & Food, Minister for London, Employment Minister and Paymaster General in HM Treasury. He has consistently championed an identity between environmental concerns and business sense.

(45) John Gummer, Rt Hon The Lord Deben | LinkedIn