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The Impact Equation
Lord Michael Barber: Tony Blair's Head of Delivery
Season 1, Ep. 88
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Lord Michael Barber is the founder of the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit under Sir Tony Blair, author of How to Run a Government, and the global pioneer of deliverology. Over the past three decades he has advised governments around the world on one of leadership’s hardest questions: not what to do, but how to get it done. In this episode, Lord Barber reflects on the experiences that shaped his approach to leadership, from his Quaker upbringing and early years as a teacher to building a delivery system at the heart of government. The conversation explores why execution so often fails, how leaders can create focus in complex organisations, and what it takes to sustain progress when priorities compete for attention. Michael explains the origins of the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit, the importance of trajectories, data and accountability, and why effective delivery depends as much on relationships and culture as it does on process.He also shares lessons from applying delivery approaches internationally, including in Pakistan, discusses public value and the future of public services, and argues for stronger dialogue between government and innovators, entrepreneurs and business leaders.
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87. Special Roundtable: Investing in Nature and Biodiversity
43:10||Season 1, Ep. 87This roundtable special brings together three founders working at different edges of the same question: how do we rebuild our relationship with nature through markets, products, and everyday economic choices? Cain Blythe is the founder of CreditNature, a platform designed to unlock large-scale investment into biodiversity and ecosystem recovery by making nature measurable and investable. His work sits at the frontier of nature finance, where ecological integrity and capital markets collide.Will Foulkes leads Stabiliti, which embeds a “Green Margin” into commerce to fund verified local restoration. His focus is on making nature funding frictionless within everyday transactions. And, Matteo Ninna is cofounder and CEO of Natur Contact, a footwear company grounded in natural movement, durability, and responsible production, translating sustainability principles into physical products.
86. Lucy Kellaway OBE: Award-Winning Journalist to Social Entrepreneur at 58
40:29||Season 1, Ep. 86Lucy Kellaway is an award-winning journalist, former Financial Times columnist, Business Journalist of the Year, and recipient of an OBE for services to education. Shortly after her 58th birthday, she left a 30-year career at the FT to retrain as a maths teacher and went on to co-found Now Teach with Katie Waldegrave. Joined by Graihagh Crawshaw-Sadler, CEO of Now Teach and former Director of Strategy and Learning at Teach First, who has helped turn the organisation from a compelling idea into a sustainable model supporting career changers into teaching. With thanks to our friends at Ark for helping us to make this episode happen!
85. Yossi Abramowitz: Nobel Prize Nominee & Powering the Middle East & Africa
52:51||Season 1, Ep. 85Yossi Abramowitz is a renewable energy pioneer, co-founder of the first utility-scale solar fields in both the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa, co-founder of Gigawatt Global, and a Nobel Peace Prize nominee. Over the past two decades he has helped build renewable energy infrastructure across Israel and Africa, bringing clean power to communities that had long been excluded from reliable energy access. In this episode of The Impact Equation, Yossi reflects on the activist movements that shaped him, from the Soviet Jewry campaign to anti-apartheid organising, and how those experiences informed his approach to building entirely new industries. He tells the remarkable story of arriving in Israel's Arava desert intending to write a book, only to discover that one of the sunniest places on earth generated almost none of its electricity from solar power. What followed was a years-long effort to create an entirely new regulatory and commercial framework for renewable energy in the region.
84.84. 84up
26:03||Season 1, Ep. 84.84Rafi and Adam reflect in this 20 minute conversation on the past 7 guests.
84. Ryan Kohn: From Popcorn to Climate
42:10||Season 1, Ep. 84Ryan Kohn has spent the last decade answering a challenge that stumps most founders: how do you scale a massive consumer brand while leaving the planet better than you found it. As the co-founder of PROPER, he took a kitchen-table startup and built it into Europe’s largest independent healthy snacking group. But alongside selling millions of packs across 15 countries, he embedded a deep commitment to the environment into the company’s DNA. Now, Ryan is turning his hand to climate philanthropy at scale, pioneering a new initiative called Point One to help reach more people to take responsibility for our world.
83. Professor Tim Spector: Microbiome revolution and future of public health
39:26||Season 1, Ep. 83Professor Tim Spector has spent three decades asking: why do people respond so differently to the same food? As a genetic epidemiologist at King’s College London and founder of the Twins UK registry, he built one of the world’s richest long-term datasets on health, genetics, and environment. The insight that our gut microbiome may matter as much as our genes when it comes to metabolism and disease risk, helped to launch ZOE, a science-led nutrition company combining large-scale research with consumer testing to personalise diet advice. ZOE’s studies, including the large Predict trials and the widely used Covid Symptom Study app, have brought epidemiology into the era of digital health and citizen science. Tim was awarded an OBE for services to medicine. This episode explores the science behind the microbiome revolution and what personalised nutrition might mean for the future of public health.
82. Edward Booty: Distributing essential medicines to the developing world
42:34||Season 1, Ep. 82Edward Booty is founder and CEO of reach52, getting essential healthcare products and services to people the system doesn’t reach. Edward has spent his career working across health systems in low and middle-income countries, where access isn’t just about clinics or medicines, but trust, distribution, and behaviour. Through reach52, he’s building a community-driven model that combines digital platforms with local health workers, integrating public and private sectors to reach millions of people typically left out of formal healthcare. This conversation is the third in our series with our friends and partners at Save the Children Global Ventures.
81. Didit Indraputra: Serving 3m families in Indonesia
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