Lee Elliot Major OBE FAcSS is Britain’s first Professor of Social Mobility and one of the world’s leading voices on opportunity and talent. Combining lived experience with decades of research, he advises business, education and government leaders on how organisations can identify and develop potential more fairly.

Having left home at 15 before becoming the first in his family to attend university, Lee has spent his career examining why ability so often goes unrecognised, and how institutions can create genuine opportunity for people from every background.

His forthcoming book, Cracking the Class Code, draws on global research to uncover the hidden cultural rules that shape recruitment, progression and success inside elite organisations. Formerly Chief Executive of the Sutton Trust, Lee is the author of several award-winning books and was awarded an OBE in 2019 for services to social mobility.

I think this version feels particularly right for FAIR because it keeps his personal story, but positions him very clearly around talent, recruitment, progression and organisational opportunity, rather than making him sound primarily like an education-policy speaker.