Episode Eight of the Placecast Podcast dives deep into the power of place-based leadership and social entrepreneurship with guest Mark Swift, a social entrepreneur with over 15 years’ experience in health and care. Hosted by Nicola Headlam, the conversation explores how community-centred approaches can transform health outcomes, reduce demand on public services, and reconfigure system architecture for a more inclusive future. Mark shares his journey from NHS public health specialist to founding Wellbeing Enterprises, his lived experience shaping his mission, and his vision for civic imagination as a driver of social change.
PlaceCast is a Local Policy Innovation Partnership (LPIP) Hub production based at City-REDI, University of Birmingham. Our new podcast is essential listening for those keen to explore the ins and outs of knowledge mobilisation for influence in central and local government, based on the view that it’s only through animating the power of place-based leadership that the wicked problems of 2025 can become more manageable.
Mark Swift is a serial social entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience working with the public and private sectors. He is the Founder CEO of Wellbeing Enterprises – a healthcare social enterprise, and one of the first Community Interest Companies (CICs) to be established. His special interests include health creation and health equity, social entrepreneurship and social economy and accelerating social innovation processes and social value creation.
He has previously held positions in the NHS as a Public Health Improvement Specialist and a Senior Project Manager, leading on Clinical Quality. He is currently a Fellow of the Heseltine Institute for Public Policy, Practice and Place at the University of Liverpool and Ashoka, which identifies and supports the world’s leading social entrepreneurs.
Dr Nicola Headlam has more than 20 years of experience working within all aspects of the multi-helix innovation system; central and local government, civil society and campaigning, academic research and knowledge mobilisation and in industry. Along the way, she has honed expertise in urban and regional subnational economic development, the roles of government in making and shaping place, and in data and evidence for transformation.
In 2024, she became a freelance economic advisor on the role of leadership and partnerships, urban and living lab forms for research, future of cities and foresighting methods, urban transformations, place-branding and urban regeneration and the spatial consequences of public policy.
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