Speaker Biographies

Speakers are shown in the order they confirmed...

Mark Ruskell  Member of Scottish Parliament Rod King MBE Dr Adrian Davis

Mark Ruskell

Member of Scottish Parliament

Mark Ruskell was re-elected as an MSP in May 2016, having served as an MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife between 2003 and 2007. During this time, he sat on the environment committee and introduced legislative proposals on climate targets and GM crops. In this session he is a member of the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform committee. Mark launched a consultation on his proposal for a member’s bill to reduce the default urban speed limit from 30mph to 20mph; which was very well received. The bill, and its accompanying documents, have now been finalised and introduced to the Scottish Parliament. The bill will shortly be considered by the Parliaments REC committee before being moved to the Scottish Parliament Chamber.

Mark Ruskell was re-elected as an MSP in May 2016, having served as an MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife between 2003 and 2007. During this time, he sat on the environment committee and introduced legislative proposals on climate targets and GM crops. In this session he is a member of the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform committee. Mark launched a consultation on his proposal for a member’s bill to reduce the default urban speed limit from 30mph to 20mph; which was very well received. The bill, and its accompanying documents, have now been finalised and introduced to the Scottish Parliament. The bill will shortly be considered by the Parliaments REC committee before being moved to the Scottish Parliament Chamber.

Rod King MBE

Founder and Campaign Director
20's Plenty for Us

Rod King started to campaign for lower speed limits in Warrington, UK in 2004. He went on to set up 20’s Plenty for Us in 2007 in order to assist others in communities which wanted lower speeds and speed limits. With a focus on the single issue of campaigning for 20mph limits for most roads across a complete local authority, 20’s Plenty for Us now has 400 local campaigns in UK and elsewhere. It works by empowering local campaigns and acting as a catalyst for communities to change their speed limits. It has been influential in government and transport thinking and guidance on the use and benefits of 20mph limits.

Rod has also engaged with many of the places implementing wide-area 20mph limits which now include the majority of the UK’s largest 40 urban authorities and 80% of Inner London Boroughs. In June 2013 Rod was awarded an MBE for Services to Road Safety in the Queen’s Birthday Honours. Rod has an honours degree in Automobile Engineering and provides his time on a voluntary basis. He has spoken at transport, active travel, road safety and public health conferences around the world. In 2017 he worked with the World Health Organisation on developing a Slow Down Day Toolkit for UN Global Road Safety Week which was used in over 1,000 campaigning events around the world.

Professor Adrian Davis

Visiting Professor
University of West of England

Professor Davis has an international reputation in the interdisciplinary field of road transport and health in which he has worked and helped to shape for 30 years. He has devoted much of his work to developing a better understanding as to the importance of health within transport planning, and the need for intersectoral collaboration in order to assist behaviour change away from habitualised motorised travel to active travel. He is the first academic across the globe to hold the title of Professor of Transport & Health. He started this part-time position in September 2018 with the Transport Research Institute at Edinburgh Napier University. He retains a Senior Fellow role with the University of the West of England.

Adrian has academic, consultancy, public and voluntary sector experience. He has undertaking a review of the evidence as to the effectiveness of 20mph speed limits with regards to casualty reduction, active travel, and air pollution for the Welsh Government. He has 10 years’ experience of local government work, having been ‘co-located’ into Bristol City Council’s transport department of since 2008 where he has represented Bristol’s Director of Public Health. During this time he was the academic adviser for the design, roll-out, and monitoring of the 20mph speed limits programme. He developed the Council’s approach to road danger reduction and co-authored Bristol City Council’s Safe Systems Road Safety Plan in 2015.

Dr Alan Tapp  Professor of Social Marketing University or West of England Paul Butcher Donna Price  Co-Founder International Road Victims Partnership

Professor Alan Tapp

Professor of Social Marketing
University or West of England

Alan Tapp is Professor of Marketing at UWE-Bristol. He is the founder and former Director of the Bristol Social Marketing Centre. His research interests centre on the use of marketing working alongside other fields to influence and change behaviour. He has led and worked on over 50 marketing research projects with funding over £1.5m, including projects funded by research councils and working with partners such as Sport England, the Department for Transport, DH, the National Social Marketing Centre, Public Health England, and Cancer Research UK.  Most recently Alan was awarded £250k in 2017 to progress the successful Wheels Skills and Thrills project, funded by The Road Safety Trust and Department for Transport to examine the use of social marketing to improve driving behaviours. He is also leading a £91k Public Health England project to examine how social marketing might help transform cultures around end of life care and death in England. Alan was nominated for the Vice Chancellors prize for Research in 2017.

 

Professor Tapp also works with researchers internationally, including in Australia where he has made a number of professorial visits since 2013 at Griffith University in Brisbane. His research track record includes over 100 publications including many international quality refereed journal articles and a bestselling text book. He is a frequent speaker on behaviour change and social marketing and was keynote for the 2016 European Social Marketing Association conference in Finland. Alan is still a very active sportsman and was formerly British Indoor Champion and a GB indoor International for high hurdles.

Dr Paul Butcher

Director of Public Health
Calderdale Council

Paul Butcher (53) has been appointed as the Director of Public Health at Calderdale Council.  He has served as the interim director since the retirement of Graham Wardman in April 2013.

Paul joined Calderdale PCT in 2002 as a consultant in public health, after working at Blackpool Health Authority, Leeds Community Trust and Calderdale and Kirklees Health Authority.

In 2007 he was appointed the Deputy Director of Public Health, a position he held until 2013, when he was promoted to Interim Director, after the service was transferred to the local authority

Leading by example, Paul is a keen cyclist, undertaking a number of endurance events in his leisure time, including a 1,400 km London to Edinburgh ride completing the event in less than five days.

Donna Price

Co-Founder
International Road Victims Partnership

Donna Price founded the Irish Road Victims’ Association (IRVA) following the sudden death of her 18 year old son, Darren, in a car crash in Ireland in March 2006.

IRVA provides free information, counselling and support to victims and their families and assists families at every stage of Garda investigations, Coroner's inquests and legal proceedings.

IRVA host an event to mark World Day of Remembrance every year which is attended by 100s of bereaved families. Donna is also the Founder & Co-Chair of the International Road Victims' Partnership (IRVP) - 65 NGO members, from all regions of the world, working together to reduce road dangers, improve the post crash response and ensure that adequate provision is made for road traffic victims and their bereaved families. Donna was appointed to the board of directors of the Irish Road Safety Authority in January 2018 by the Minister for Transport, Shane Ross TD.

Caro Wild  Cabinet Member for Strategic Planning & Transport City of Cardiff Council Kaarina Ruta Dr Sarah Jones

Caro Wild

Cabinet Member for Strategic Planning & Transport
Cardiff Council

Caro is a Councillor for the Cardiff inner city ward of Riverside and Cabinet Member at Cardiff Council with responsibility for Strategic Planning and Transport. He has been in this role for a year and has recently brought forward Cardiff’s Transport and Clean Air Green Paper: ‘How we move around a growing city’.

The paper sets out why Cardiff’s transport system needs to change and proposes 18 ideas for change, including controversial proposals such as Clean Air Zones and cycle superhighways. Caro was a founder of Cardiff Cycle City, a movement of people trying to make Cardiff the best cycling city in the UK. Cardiff is leading the way for cycling in Wales and is in the process of rolling out a bike hire scheme alongside major changes to local road infrastructure.

Prior to working in politics, Caro worked in London and Wales in the sport of Rugby League, and with the national sports poverty charity, StreetGames of which he is still a Director.

Kaarina Ruta

Campaign Leader
20's Plenty for Sully

Kaarina lives in Sully together with her husband and four young children. There she started campaigning for 20s Plenty. Kaarina is Finnish and German, has an MA in International Relations from Geneva, worked for the UNHCR in Morocco and is teaching Public International Law and European Union Law at Cardiff University Law School. She is fluent in Finnish, German, English, French and Italian.

Dr Sarah Jones

Consultant in Environmental Health Protection
Public Health Wales

Sarah is a Consultant in Environmental Health Protection with Public Health Wales. Sarah has been involved in road safety research for a number of years, most notably in relation to Graduated Driver Licensing, but more recently looking at the Public Health benefits of 20mph.

 

 

David Melding

Dr Chrissie Pickin

Director of Health & Wellbeing
Public Health Wales

Originally from the United Kingdom, Dr Pickin has worked in a number of senior local, regional and national public health roles across a range of settings in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. She joined Public Health Wales as Director of Health and Wellbeing in 2015 following three and a half years as Chief Adviser for Population Health at the Ministry of Health in New Zealand.

Dr Pickin’s role at Public Health Wales covers health improvement, health intelligence and improvements in primary care. This work entails working closely with key partners to introduce improvements that will enable people to stay healthier for longer and reduce the health inequalities that exist in Wales.

Dr Pickin has a strong track record of leading change across complex systems and working collaboratively across organisations to improve health outcomes. Her experience includes delivering successful national and state wide public health improvement programmes involving many partners across a range of sectors.

 

John Griffiths AM

Labour Assembly Member for Newport East, Wales

John Griffiths is the Labour Assembly Member for Newport East, having first been elected in May 1999. In 2016, he was re-elected for his fourth term, with a majority of 4,896.

John and his wife live in Newport and have two grown-up sons and 6 grandchildren, and more recently a great-grandchild.

Brought up in Pill in Newport, John attended Duffryn Comprehensive and completed his A Levels at Coleg Gwent, formally Nash College. John then worked as a Lecturer in Further and Higher Education before becoming a solicitor in private practice dealing with criminal law, personal injury and general civil litigation, prior to his first election to the National Assembly.

John has served as a Minister in the Welsh Government over successive Assembly terms including being Deputy Minister for Skills, Counsel General and Leader of the Legislative Programme, Minister for the Environment and Minister for Culture and Sport. He has also previously served as a Gwent County and Newport Borough councillor. His political interests are economic development, social inclusion, education, Europe, sport and Sub Saharan Africa.

John Chair’s the Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee, and is also a member of the Children, Young People and Education Committee and Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister. In addition John is the Chair of the Cross Party Group on Further Education and Future Skills and is Chair of the newly formed Cross Party Group on Policing.

David Melding

Assembly Member
National Assembly for Wales

David Melding has been a member of the National Assembly for Wales since its creation in 1999. Before entering politics David worked in the voluntary (not for profit) sector and was the Welsh director of a major UK campaigning charity.

He served as Deputy Presiding Officer of the National Assembly between 2011-16. He is currently the Welsh Conservative Spokesperson on Environment, Sustainability, Planning and Housing.

He is the author of ‘Will Britain Survive Beyond 2020?’ and ‘The Reformed Union: The UK as a Federation’. He is an acknowledged authority on constitutional reform and regularly takes part in TV and radio discussions on the UK’s changing constitution.

He currently chairs the Welsh Governments Ministerial Advisory Group on Improving Outcomes for Children.

Anna Semlyen National Campaign Manager 20

Roxanne Moore

Campaigner
20's Plenty for Near Misses

Roxanne Moore - Parent and Local Road Safety Campaigner. Following a near miss with her child, Roxanne and a fellow parent at her childs' school have starting campaigning for improved and enforced safety provisions, with focus on protecting 20 zones

 

Anna Semlyen

National Campaign Manager
20's Plenty for Us

National Campaign Manager for 20’s Plenty for Us - since 2010 assisting over 400 branches of volunteers lobbying for 20mph limits. Former City of York Councillor, previous Campaigner of the Year winner. Author of Cutting Your Car Use on traffic reduction. Recovered road victim.

 

Dr Eurgain Powell

Change Maker 
Office of the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales

Eurgain is a Change Maker for the Office of the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, advising on policy issues including climate change, transport and procurement. She joined the Office in April 2016 from Cynnal Cymru where she had been running the Climate Change Commission for Wales.  Eurgain has fifteen years of experience working in the field of sustainable development and climate change within the public sector in Wales – during this time she has been responsible for developing policies and implementing a range of successful initiatives within local government and also with the Welsh Government.

Eurgain has a M.Sc. in Environmental Biology and a PhD in Marine Microbiology from the University of Wales Swansea, and has worked in the field of environmental marine research in various marine laboratories in the UK. A welsh speaker originally from west Wales, now living in Penarth, she feels passionate about the natural environment and enjoys spending time outdoors with her two children. 

Anna Purvis

Project Manager - 30km/h Trial
Yarra City Council  Melbourne  Australia

Anna is an urban strategist with a background in land-use planning. She has extensive experience in land use and transport planning, place-making and streets design and stakeholder and community engagement, which she has gained in local government, state government and private sector roles. She is working with Yarra City Council, in Melbourne, Australia, to deliver a Trial of 30km/h Speed Limit, which she hopes will start to change the way that Melbournians, and Australians, look at urban speed limits.

Paul Carter

Head of Transport 
Cardiff Council

Paul leads on Cardiff’s Transport Strategy that brings together all of the main transport component elements of the approved Local Development Plan and the Local Transport Plan. He has considerable experience of working as a transport planner and has delivered complex transport infrastructure and regeneration projects as part of a larger integrated team including the Millennium Stadium and the St David’s development.  Paul’s passion is to encourage residents, commuters and visitors to move away from single occupancy car travel to more sustainable ways of getting around the City Region and a 20 mph city is consistent with that vision.


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20's Plenty for Wales

2 October 2018

Glamorgan County Cricket Ground, Cardiff

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