Kevin Steele

Kevin Steele, founder and Chief Executive of Climate Week has campaigned on social and environmental issues for over 20 years.

He conceived the anti-poverty Trade Justice Movement which in 2002 ran the biggest ever lobby of the UK Parliament, and he led one of the two largest UK sections of the Jubilee 2000 campaign that won $21 billion of debt cancellation for the world’s poorest countries. He also led the Ethics for USS campaign which resulted in the adoption of ethical investment policies by a £23 billion stock market fund and the formation of the £4 trillion Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change.

He founded Global Entrepreneurship Week, which inspires people to turn their own ideas into reality and in 2009 involved 7 million people attending 32,000 events in 88 countries.

He was the campaign consultant for The Big Lunch (which catalysed 8,000 street parties for community cohesion) and the Keep Britain Working campaign (promoting new employment policy ideas). He was previously chief executive of the enterprise promotion body Enterprise Insight and the director of the social justice organisation People & Planet. Before this he worked for the British Overseas Aid Group, Which? and the Audit Commission.

From 2007 to 2009 Kevin sat on the Council on Social Action chaired by the Prime Minister, and on the government’s Talent and Enterprise Task Force. He chaired the Enterprise Campaign Coalition and was on the selection committee of the Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion. He currently sits on the steering group of the Big Society Network launched by the Prime Minister, David Cameron in July 2010.