Contributors

Leigh Skene is a Canadian who has been involved in financial markets ever since he first purchased equities when he was a teenager. He became involved in debt analysis and trading at the Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada. He moved to the sell side and became Head of Fixed Income Trading at investment bank Burns, Fry and Company (now BMO Nesbitt Burns), then became Chief Economist. In 1980, he left Burns Fry and established himself as an independent economic consultant specializing in financial markets and wrote articles for several publications.
He has been a director of Lombard Street Associates since 2004, and wrote three key reports in 2007; The ABC of 21st Century Risk; The Sub-prime Mortgage Fiasco – The Start of Something Big; and Credit and Credibility which pointed out the dangers of the new financial system, warned of the impending credit crunch and forecast the ensuing financial turmoil. He has written five books on money and credit. His latest, The Impoverishment of Nations (2009) is a treatise on the long term outlook.

Geoff Smart is Chairman & Founder of ghSMART, an advisory firm that helps leaders to run their organisations at full power. He is author of two New York Times bestselling books, Who and Leadocracy. Geoff earned a PhD in psychology from Claremont Graduate University, where he was mentored by Peter F. Drucker.

Navid Sinaki is an artist, filmmaker and poet. He was born in Tehran and currently lives in Los Angeles. His works have screened at museums and art houses around the world, including Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Lincoln Center, British Film Institute, REDCAT, and Cineteca Nacional in Mexico. His writing has most recently appeared in BOMB Magazine. He is a professor at UCLA Extension and a film programmer, most notably at the Echo Park Film Center www.navidsinaki.com

Jeremy Silver, CEO of Digital Catapult, is an entrepreneur, author and angel investor. He is a Trustee of the British Library and a member of the UK Creative Industries Council. Jeremy sits on the boards of HammerheadVR Ltd, Imaginarium Studios Ltd and FeedForward.AI.

He was previously Executive Chairman of Semetric (acquired by Apple), founder CEO of Featured Artists Coalition (FAC), a strategic advisor to Shazam (acquired by Apple), and CEO of Sibelius Software (acquired by Avid). He was also Worldwide Vice-President of New Media for EMI Group in Los Angeles and Head of Media at Virgin Records where he worked with Genesis, Massive Attack, Brian Eno and Bryan Ferry, among others.

His earlier book Digital Medieval is a history of the music industry online. Jeremy has spoken at TEDx Houses of Parliament, the CBI, SXSW and Midem among many trade events and is an Industry Fellow at the University of Glasgow. He can be found online @JeremyS1.

Elif Shafak is an award-winning British-Turkish novelist and storyteller. She has published 20 books, and her work has been translated into 57 languages; her novel 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2021. A Vice President of the Royal Society of Literature, Shafak holds a PhD in political science, and has taught at various universities in Turkey, the US and the UK. In 2020 Shafak was awarded the Halldór Laxness International Literature Prize for her contribution to 'the renewal of the art of storytelling', and in 2021 she was chosen among the BBC's 100 most inspiring and influential women.

Kenneth R. Sewell is a nuclear engineer and a US Navy veteran who spent five years aboard the USS Parche, a fast attack submarine that was the Navy's most decorated ship. The USS Parche conducted a number of special operations. In addition to Code Name Caesar, he is the author of the New York Times bestseller Red Star Rogue, All Hands Down and Blind Man's Bluff. He lives in Columbus, Ohio.

Gene Sharp (born 21 January 1928) is Professor Emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and a Nobel Peace Prize nominee. He is known for his extensive writings on nonviolent struggle, which have influenced numerous anti-government resistance movements around the world, most recently the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011.

Raja Shehadeh is Palestine's leading writer. He is also a lawyer and the founder of the pioneering Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq. Shehadeh was a National Book Award finalist in 2023 and is the author of several acclaimed books published by Profile, including the Orwell Prize-winning Palestinian Walks. He lives in Ramallah.

Fiona Shaw is the author of three previous novels:The Sweetest Thing, The Picture She Took and Tell it to the Bees. She has also written a memoir, Out Of Me. She lives in York.

Michael Shermer (born September 8, 1954) is an American science writer, historian of science, founder of The Skeptics Society, and editor-in-chief of its magazine Skeptic, which is largely devoted to investigating pseudoscientific and supernatural claims. The Skeptics Society currently has over 55,000 members. Shermer engages in debates on topics pertaining to pseudoscience and religion in which he emphasizes scientific skepticism.
Shermer is producer and co-host of the 13-hour Fox Family television series Exploring the Unknown which was broadcast in 1999. From April 2001 to January 2019, he was a monthly contributor to Scientific American magazine with his Skeptic column. He is also a scientific advisor to the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH).
Shermer was once a fundamentalist Christian, but ceased to believe in the existence of God during his graduate studies. He also describes himself as an advocate for humanist philosophy as well as the science of morality.

Alix Kates Shulman is the author of fourteen books, including Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen, which established her as a primary figure in feminism's second wave. A political activist, she joined the Congress of Racial Equality in 1961 and the Women's Liberation Movement in 1967. Shulman lives in Manhattan and continues to speak on issues such as feminism and reproductive choice.

Charlotte Shane is a nonfiction author and essayist based in the USA. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times magazine, Harper's, Bookforum, the TLS, and elsewhere.

Anja Shortland is Professor of Political Economy at King's College London, and a world expert in the economics of crime, particularly on art theft and fraud, and hostage and ransom negotiations. We Know You Can Pay a Million is her first trade book. Her books for an academic readership include Kidnap. She lives in Wiltshire.