Resilience in These Times | Graham Leicester and Margaret Hannah, MD

Graham spent his early career in the British diplomatic service, specializing in China and the European Union. He went on to establish and run Scotland’s leading think tank, the Scottish Council Foundation, founded in 1997. In 2001 he became founding Director of International Futures Forum, stepping down at the end of 2023. He remains closely connected with IFF, including work on special projects.

Graham’s professional interests include the practice (and funding) of system transition; governance; and developing people. He also takes a special interest in the arts, having spent some time in his youth as a professional cellist. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and a member of the Executive Arts Circle stewarding the intellectual legacy of Jim Ewing.

Margaret Hannah, MD, has a passion for improving the health and wellbeing of people, communities, and planet. With a background in medicine and public health and two decades of learning with International Futures Forum, Margaret supports innovative and wise initiatives addressing contemporary patterns of need. Her own work includes the SHINE programme, a conscious initiative to shift the culture of care in NHS Fife over many years, starting by addressing the needs of people with chronic and complex health conditions in ways which enable them to thrive. Margaret is also one of the creators of IFF Kitbag, the product of wider work initiated in 2005 to address the challenge of global mental distress. Kitbag is a resource for children, young people, and their caregivers which grows the psychological capacities required for a stable, empathetic, and creative future.

Margaret is author of two books on pioneering practice in the fields of health, healing and public health: Humanising Healthcare: patterns of hope for a system under strain (Triarchy Press 2014) and The Future Public Health (co-author, Open University Press 2012).