Geoff Mulgan

Biography

Mulgan obtained a First Class degree from Balliol College, Oxford and a Ph.D. in telecommunications from the University of Westminster. He was also a Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, trained as a Buddhist monk in Sri Lanka and worked for a spell during the 1980s as a van driver for the "Labour-supporting collective of musicians and comedians known as Red Wedge", opting ultimately for a career in local government and academia in the UK and going on to become an influential writer on social and political issues in various newspapers and magazines in the 1990s including the Independent, Financial Times, Guardian, New Statesman and Marxism Today. He worked as a reporter for BBC television and radio and was made a CBE in 2005. His current base, the Young Foundation, mainly works on social innovation - the design and launch of new social organisations, but also produces some publications, including recent ones on social innovation and the state of British society