Pastor Maldonado and Adam Parr with the FW34 (Silverstone, 2017). The FW34 won the Spanish Grand Prix in 2012.

I am an English and French barrister and businessman; I have lived and worked in Europe, Japan, South Africa and Australia; and am fortunate to have worked for Sir Frank Williams as chief executive and then chairman of the Williams Formula One team between 2006 and 2012.

Since leaving Formula One, my business activities have centred on co-founding, investing in and chairing start-ups and early-stage businesses. These include Ingenie, QuantumBlack, MindFoundry, Ox Mountain Limited, Osler Diagnostics, OxSonics and OrthoSon. I co-founded and chaired Oxford Semantic Technologies Limited, an AI spin-out of the University of Oxford and Cheesecake Energy Limited, a spin-out from the University of Nottingham. For seven years I was a director of Cosworth.

I have worked with a number of non-profits over the years, in Australia and the UK. I believed throughout my career that any industry - from mining to Formula One - could work in a sustainable way, relying on the concept of sustainable development. However, in 2019 I realised that the maths of climate change doesn’t work: emissions are rising and temperatures are rising even faster. I set up The Downforce Trust, a UK charity dedicated to accelerating action on climate change, focusing on initiatives that have benefits for security, food sovereignty and the economy as well as for the environment. The Trust has helped launch Downforce®, a pioneering technology for measuring natural capital, and SRI 2030, an initiative to promote a method of rice cultivation that both halves emissions and doubles yield. The Trust also works with UK Parliamentarians on nuclear power and climate security.

Today I chair two companies, Apolitical and Downforce Technologies as well as The Downforce Trust. I live in Oxford, where I am a Research Associate at the John Porter Diplomacy Centre, Hertford College. Between 2020 and 2024, I studied for a doctorate and was a Business Fellow at the Smith School for Enterprise and the Environment, a great institution that punches way above its weight. I assist with the School’s Masters in Sustainability, Enterprise and the Environment.

I have written two books about Formula One: The Art of War – Five Years in Formula One; and together with Ross Brawn, Total Competition – Lessons in Strategy from Formula One. My first PhD was published as The Mandate of Heaven — Strategy, Revolution, and the First European Translation of Sunzi’s Art of War (1772) by Brill in 2019.

I was born in London in 1965 on the night Muhammad Ali floored Sonny Liston in Lewiston, Maine; and in the year that LBJ’s White House issued a study warning that fossil fuels were causing global warming and of the harms that would flow from it. Climate change and its consequences have, therefore, been understood throughout my life. The question for me and my generation is whether we can, finally, take the actions that are both necessary and urgent. The security and prosperity of the world - not just the countries most exposed to climate change itself, but the UK and Europe also - depend on this. Food security, national security, climate migration and conflict are critical factors, not in the distant future, but right now.

I have tried to study throughout my life. I started with an MA from the University of Cambridge University, and gained PhDs from the University of Oxford and UCL University of London in my forties and fifties. All this education will amount to nothing if it is not put to good use.

As LBJ put it, “modern technology, which has added much to our lives can also have a darker side. Its uncontrolled waste products are menacing the world we live in, our enjoyment and our health. The air we breathe, our water, our soil and wildlife, are being blighted by the poisons and chemicals which are the by-products of technology and industry. The same society which receives the rewards of technology, must, as a cooperating whole, take responsibility for control.”