Waheed Nazir

Chairman
Arden Cross

Waheed has over 20 years of experience in planning, development and regeneration. He has held senior positions at Birmingham City Council, and more recently was appointed as the Non-Executive Chairman of Arden Cross Limited. He also advises public and private sector clients on regeneration and development projects across the UK. He is a visiting Professor at Birmingham City University and in 2017 was awarded an honorary Doctorate by Aston University. In October 2020, Waheed was awarded a Fellowship from the Academy of Social Sciences and in November 2020 was announced as the Property Personality of the Year for the Midlands. In 2019, he wrote and edited a book titled Regenerating Cities, which explores how leadership, vision and partnership working has shaped the development of UK cities over the last 30 years. Through this book he brought together some of the UK’s leading figures in the development sector, each providing their own unique and personal insight into their journeys and roles in leading some of the country’s biggest projects, including London 2012, the development of King’s Cross, estate renewal in London, and the rise of Manchester and Birmingham. He is passionate about helping young people grow and develop to unlock their potential. This has included establishing a number of programmes to provide mentoring, bursary initiatives, internships and graduate programmes in the built environment profession.

Andrew Allen

Head of Global Property Research and Strategy
Aberdeen Asset Management plc

Andrew Allen is Head of Global Property Research and Strategy and a member of the Global property management committee. 

Andrew manages a team of analysts located in Singapore, Norway, Germany and the UK. He is primarily responsible for the implementation of property research and strategy.

Andrew joined Aberdeen in 2011 from Oriel Securities (now Stifel) where he was a partner and analyst in the real estate securities team. Previously, Andrew  was a founding partner and head of research & strategy at Cordea Savills (now Savills Investment Management). He had additional responsibility as the fund director for the Charities Property Fund. Prior to that, Andrew held the role of senior manager within the property forecasting (Europe) team, at Henderson Global Investors from where he was seconded to Pradera Asset Management for a year. Prior to that, Andrew was a senior analyst at Property Market Analysis. 

Andrew graduated with an MSc in Property Investment at Cass Business School and a BSc in Economics and Business Finance at Brunel University.

Sir Edward Lister

Mayor’s Chief of Staff and Deputy Mayor, Policy and Planning
GLA

He has considerable experience of the housing sector. For the last 5 years he has been London’s Deputy Mayor for policy and planning and chief of staff at the Greater London Authority (GLA).

Professor Tony Travers

Director of LSE London
Visiting Professor in the Department of Government

Professor Tony Travers is Director of LSE London, a research centre at The London School of Economics and Political Science. He is also a Visiting Professor in LSE’s Department of Government. His key research interests include local and regional government and public service reform.

Professor Travers is currently an advisor to the House of Commons Children, Schools and Families Select Committee and the Communities and Local Government Select Committee.

He has published a number of books on cities and government, including Failure in British Government: The Politics of the Poll Tax (with David Butler and Andrew Adonis), Paying for Health, Education and Housing: How does the Centre Pull the Purse Strings (with Howard Glennerster and John Hills) and The Politics of London: Governing the Ungovernable City.

Pete Gladwell

Group Social Impact & Investment Director
Legal & General

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