Clive Bates has had a diverse career in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors. Starting out with IBM, he then switched career to work in the environment movement. From 1997-2003 he was Director of Action on Smoking and Health (UK), campaigning to reduce the harms caused by tobacco. In 2003 he joined Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Strategy Unit as a civil servant and worked in senior roles in the public sector and for the United Nations in Sudan. He is now Director of The Counterfactual, a consulting and advocacy practice focussed on a pragmatic approach to sustainability and public health.  

Fiona Patten is a Member for Northern Metropolitan Region in the Victorian Parliament’s Legislative Council. Leader of the Reason Party, Fiona was first elected in 2014 and re-elected in 2018. Since being elected in 2014, Fiona has garnered respect from all sides of the political divide and has worked tirelessly to deliver legislative reforms that many thought impossible. Fiona is now working towards improving Victoria even further, and is pushing to legalise and regulate cannabis for adult use, continuing to implement electoral reform, religious accountability and greater separation of church and state, legalise sex work, and spent convictions legislation.

Marc Gunther is a veteran reporter whose interests include philanthropy, tobacco control, drug policy and psychedelic medicines. He began writing about vaping in the Chronicle of Philanthropy in 2021 with a story headlined Bloomberg’s Millions Funded an Effective Campaign Against Vaping: Could It Do More Harm Than Good? His coverage continues at The Great Vape Debate on Medium.

Marc was a senior writer at Fortune magazine from 1996 to 2008. His reporting has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian and Mother Jones. 

A graduate of Yale University, Marc lives in Bethesda, MD.