Mary Portas is one of the UK's most high-profile businesswomen. After making her name transforming Harvey Nichols into London's sexiest fashion destination, Mary launched her own retail consultancy, Portas, which works with clients ranging from Louis Vuitton to Sainsbury's. She has been a regular on our TV screens, advised the government on the future of high streets and developed a fashion label. Her proudest achievement to date is the creation of twenty-six Mary's Living & Giving shops for Save the Children. She is the author of Shop Girl and Work Like a Woman. Author of How to thrive in the new Kindness Economy.

Emma Dabiri is a teaching fellow in the African department at SOAS, a Visual Sociology PhD researcher at Goldsmiths and the author of Don't Touch My Hair, which was an Irish Times bestseller. She has presented several television and radio programmes including BBC Radio 4's critically-acclaimed documentaries 'Journeys into Afro-futurism' and 'Britain's Lost Masterpieces'.

Nikesh Shukla is an author, screenwriter and one of the most prominent UK voices on diversity and inclusion in the arts. He is the editor of bestselling essay collection The Good Immigrant, which won the Reader’s Choice at the Books Are My Bag Awards, and was shortlisted for Book of the Year at the British Book Awards. He is the author of a number of novels for both adults and young adults including Coconut Unlimited (shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize), Meatspace, Run Riot, The Boxer and co-editor of The Good Immigrant USA. Author of Brown Baby: A memoir of race, family and home. 

Magid Magid is a Somali-born black Muslim refugee who became the youngest ever Lord Mayor of Sheffield and one of the last UK MEPs. Author of The Art of Disruption: a manifesto for real change. If you ever doubt that you can make a difference, read this book! Full of inspiration, imagination, and above all, hope, Majid Majid offers a guide for anyone who want to achieve change and fight injustice, and shows from his own experience the extraordinary things that can happen when you refuse to take No for an answer. - Caroline Lucas, former Leader of the UK Green Party

Brian Cox is a Professor of Particle Physics and Royal Society University Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, and works at the CERN laboratory in Geneva. Author of Universal

Robin Ince is an English comedian, actor and writer, known for presenting the BBC radio show The Infinite Monkey Cage with physicist Brian Cox, his appearances alongside Ricky Gervais, and his stand-up comedy career.

James Ball is a journalist, broadcaster, author and recipient of the Pulitzer Prize. Currently global editor of The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, he has previously worked for BuzzFeed, The Guardian and Wikileaks, where he was closely involved in Cablegate – the publication of 250,000 classified US embassy cables in 2010 – as well as working on two documentaries based on the Iraq War Logs. His latest book, "The System: who owns the internet and how it owns us" was published by Bloomsbury in August 2020.

Sarah Gilbert is Professor of Vaccinology at the Jenner Institute within the University of Oxford. Having devoted her career to developing vaccines against nasty diseases, since January 2020 she has been the Oxford Project Leader for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. Professor Gilbert is the mother of 21-year-old triplets, an experience which she says has helped to prepare her for the demands and pressures of her current role.

Jim is a well-known science communicator, author and broadcaster. He has written eleven popular science books, between them translated into 26 languages.

Dr Catherine Green is Associate Professor in Chromosome Dynamics at the Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics, a Senior Research Fellow at Exeter College, and Head of Oxford University's Clinical BioManufacturing Facility. As a specialist in manufacturing vaccines for clinical trials, she is an integral part of the Oxford Vaccine project.

Bella Lack, 18-year-old environmental and wildlife campaigner, is on a mission to redesign our future. She is an ambassador for the Born Free Foundation, STAE, RSPCA and the Jane Goodall Institute and utilises the power of technology (in the form of social media, video-making and blogging) to try to educate and inspire a wide group of people to protect the natural world. She's delivered speeches for the People’s Walk for Wildlife, the Illegal Wildlife Trade Conference and TEDX 2019.

Marie Le Conte is a freelance political journalist based in London. She writes for publications including the Guardian, the Sunday Times, VICE, GQ and Vogue, and her first book, Haven't You Heard? Gossip, Politics and Power was the i's political book of the year. Her second, Honourable Misfits: A Brief History of Britain's Weirdest, Unluckiest and Most Outrageous MPs will be out on July 22.

Arrested by the KGB, chased by cheetahs, hunting with the Bushmen of the Kalahari…Simon Reeve has lived quite a life. He’s the leading adventure traveller on British Television, travelling and filming in 120 countries, including many of the most beautiful, remote and dangerous parts of the planet. Simon’s also the New York Times bestselling author of more than six books. After a misspent youth he left school with no real qualifications and went on the dole - but went on to change his life, overcome his fears, and present over 20 TV series. 

Author of Step by Step: The Life In My Journeys 

Both an inspiring account of determination and adventuring spirit, and a field guide to some of the most remote, perilous and awesome terrain on Earth, Step by Step is Simon Reeve’s record of the thrills and challenges of his many and varied travels.

Extraordinarily creative and prolific, Chris Packham has led a remarkable life. He’s gained recognition as a naturalist, television presenter, writer, photographer, conservationist, campaigner and filmmaker.

As a broadcaster, he is a presenter of BBC’s BAFTA Award-winning Springwatch, Autumnwatch and Winterwatch series. He presents notable natural history series such as Nature’s Weirdest Events, World’s Weirdest Events, World’s Sneakiest Animals, Cats V Dogs, The Burrowers, Inside the Animal Mind, Operation Iceberg and Secrets of our Living Planet.

Co-Author of  Back To Nature: how to love life - and save it with Megan McCubin

Julia Bradbury is a television presenter and outdoor walking enthusiast who has dedicated her career to sharing beautiful walks from all over the world.  Passionate about conservation, she’s an eco-activist promoting a plastic-free environment.

TV presenter, radio personality, journalist, and co-host of Strictly Come Dancing.

Author of Quite.

Pandora Sykes is a journalist and broadcaster. She has written for the Sunday Times, Vogue, ELLE and the Telegraph amongst other publications, and was the co-host of The High Low, the UK's No.1 podcast for women. She lives in London. This is her first book.

Author of How Do We Know We’re Doing It Right?: essays on modern life

Christie Watson is a writer and Professor of Medical and Health Humanities. She is Patron of the Royal College of Nursing Foundation. Tiny Sunbirds Far Away, won the Costa First Novel Award and along with her second novel, Where Women Are Kings, was widely translated and achieved international critical acclaim. The Language of Kindness, published in 2018, was a number one Sunday Times bestseller and Book of the Year in the Evening Standard, Guardian, i, New Statesman, the Sunday Times and The Times. It has been translated into 23 languages, and adapted for theatre.

Author of The Courage to Care: a call for compassion

Jess Phillips was first elected as the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley in 2015 and was elected chair of the Women’s Parliamentary Labour Party in September 2016. Before becoming an MP, she worked with victims of domestic violence, sexual violence and human trafficking, and she continues to speak up on behalf of those who struggle to have their voice heard.

From the sublime to the ridiculous, the inner workings of Westminster are often a mystery to an outsider, in her new book Everything You Really Need to know About Politics: My Life as an MP, Jess Phillips lifts the lid on the systems and rules that govern us all, and in her own inimitable style shows us what's really going on in Westminster, what having a career is politics is actually like- and why it should matter to us all. Author and Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley, Jess is chair of the Women’s Parliamentary Labour Party and worked with victims of domestic violence, sexual violence and human trafficking before becoming an MP. She continues to speak up on behalf of those who struggle to have their voice heard.

Yomi Adegoke is a multi-award winning journalist, presenter and social commentator best known for Slay In Your Lane: The Black Girl Bible which she co-authored in 2018. 

She was named one of the most influential people in London by the Evening Standard, as well as winning the Groucho Maverick Award and the Marie Clare Future Shaper award. The follow up companion Slay In Your Lane: The Journal came out in 2019 and the anthology book 'Loud Black Girls' was released in 2020.

In recent years Yomi has become one of the country's leading voices on race, feminism and pop culture and how they intersect, as well as class and politics. She's also known for critiquing dating and relationships, reality TV, art, music and culture.

Yomi presented 'Where are the black women in Grime?' a BBC Radio 4 documentary and co-hosted a BBC Radio 6 takeover for Black History Month. She has been a regular guest on Sky, ITV news, and BBC Radio 4. She writes a weekly column on reality TV for the Guardian and has a monthly column at both British Vogue and the i paper. Yomi also writes regularly for The Washington Post, Vice and Elle amongst others and has been nominated for two British Journalism Awards and a total of five Comment awards.

Yomi has spoken at numerous literary festivals and appeared on various prestigious panels at events for Guardian Fresh Voices, The British Library and Intelligence squared among others.

She is a trustee for the charity Arts Emergency, which helps make the creative industries more accessible to marginalised young people and an ambassador for Eve Appeal, the leading UK national charity funding research into gynaecological cancer.