Our Team
Ours is a dynamic, professional, hard-working team with big achievements to their credit. But they're human too: approachable, keen and above all, committed.
Ann Pettifor
Ann was born in South Africa and took her degree in politics and economics at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. She spent a formative period of her life in Tanzania in the early 1970s before coming to Britain, and working at the Headquarters of the British Labour Party. During the 1980s, she was a leading figure in the campaign to increase the representation of women in Parliament. In the early 1990s she undertook strategic roles in the government of London, working as parliamentary adviser to the leader of the Greater London Council (GLC), Ken Livingstone, and as Head of Office to the Leader of the Inner London Education Authority, Frances Morrell. She played a key role in defending these institutions from abolition, and helped steer major legislation through the British parliament. Later, she moved into the private sector where she worked for one of Britain's biggest commercial lobbyists, advising chief executives in the energy, retail, and property sectors.
In 1994 Ann was appointed director of the Debt Crisis Network, a national alliance of British NGOs working to minimise the debts of low income countries. In February, 1996 she launched a campaign for the cancellation of third world debt, sponsored by major British aid agencies. Later that year, she joined with Martin Dent and co-founded the international Jubilee 2000 campaign, which in 1999, succeeded in persuading OECD governments to write off more than $100 billion in debts owed by 42 countries. Ann mobilised more than 70,000 people at the Birmingham G8 summit in 1998 to form a human chain calling on leaders to break the chains of debt.
Jubilee 2000 was an innovative campaign, global in its reach and cutting-edge in its use of new technology and the internet. It has since become a template for campaigns, like that of Howard Dean in the US primaries; and the international Make Poverty History campaign. Jubilee 2000 mobilized the first-ever worldwide petition of 24 million signatures; built what President Clinton called a "big tent" of a coalition; enrolled the support of world leaders like Clinton, Tony Blair; Gerhard Schröder; the Pope; the Dalai Lama; Muslim leaders and the Archbishop of Canterbury; celebrities like Mohammed Ali, Youssou n'Dour, Bono of U2, Bob Geldof of Live Aidand Thom Yorke; and many thousands of international policy makers.
In September, 1999 Ann led a Jubilee 2000 delegation of distinguished figures to meet Pope John Paul II, an event given worldwide coverage, and which resulted in the Bill Clinton making the breakthrough promise of 100 per cent cancellation of debts owed by poor countries to the US.
In 1999, Ann was awarded the Freedom of the City of Callao in Peru and the 2000 Pax Christi International Peace Prize. She has an honorary doctorate from the University of Newcastle and, in 2002, received the Order of the Niger from the President of Nigeria for her work on behalf of African governments. She was advisor to the United Nation's Human Development Report 2003 on the Millennium Development Goals. In 2004/5 she served on the High-Level Group of the Helsinki Process on Globalisation and Democracy, sponsored by the Finnish and Tanzanian governments. She continues to be an Associate of the New Economics Foundation where she worked after the end of the Jubilee 2000 campaign. She co-founded Advocacy International Ltd in 2004.
She has edited a review of the global economy - the Real World Economic Outlook (Palgrave Macmillan 2003) and her latest book on the international financial system, "The Coming First World Debt Crisis" was published by Palgrave in 2006. She has authored numerous articles in journals, including the Carnegie Council on International Affairs, and other media. She has given lectures to the UN General Assembly, Schumacher College; the London Business School, the LSE and numerous other institutions.
She lives in London with her partner, and has two grown-up sons. Her hobbies include, rambling, music, photography and cooking and she is a bad birdwatcher.
