Ann Pettifor (UK)

Ann Pettifor 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 GLC and as Head of Office of the Leader of the Inner London Education Authority. Later, she moved into the private sector and worked as an adviser to 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 on sovereign debts. In 1996, she co-founded the campaign, which was to grow into the international Jubilee 2000 movement for the cancellation of the debts of the poorest countries. In May 1998, Ann led a protest of more than 70,000 people in Birmingham, to form a human chain around the annual G8 Summit, demanding debt cancellation. A year later, the G8 agreed at their Cologne Summit to cancel, over time, $110bn of debt owed by 41 of the poorest countries. Jubilee 2000 - one of the most effective global campaigns - mobilized the first-ever global petition of 24 million signatures; the support of world leaders like Tony Blair, Bill Clinton; Gerhard Schroeder; the Pope; the Dalai Lama; Muslim leaders and the Archbishop of Canterbury; celebrities like Bono, Bob Geldof, Youssou n'Dour and Thom York; and many thousands of international policy makers. Awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Newcastle in 2000 and an honorary Masters by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 2001, Ann has been granted the freedom of the city of Callao in Peru, the 2000 Pax Christi International Peace Prize, and honoured by Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition. Continuing in her capacity as an advisor to the United Nation's Human Development Report 2003 on the Millennium Development Goals, Ann was first enlisted to advise on HDR 2002: Deepening Decomocracy in a Fragmented World. She is a prolific writer and is in great demand as a speaker, particularly in the US. Ann is a Director at the New Economic Foundation, leading NEF's work on international finance, and is the editor of Real World Economic Outlook 2003 - The Legacy of Globalization: Debt and Deflation. Ann enjoys music (particularly 50's Blues), long countryside walks and digging her garden.