Kate Cooper

I’m the woman who started The New Optimists . . . for that story see here, and for why I’ve done what I’ve done, see here.

The rest of this page is something about who I am.

Based in Birmingham all my adult life, I have worked in the EU, the United States, Hong Kong, Malaysia and South Africa as well as the UK. I’ve advised blue chip companies on how to foster innovation and enable effective communication since the early-1980s. I am also an experienced facilitator.

I held a Senior Fellowship (1998-2000) and then Associate Fellowship (2000-05) at the Warwick Manufacturing Group where I was subject leader for innovation. From 2007-08, I was interim Secretary to the modern-day Lunar Society.

I am also a Trustee of Lench’s Trust, an almshouse charity founded in 1525, one of the oldest charitable organisations in Birmingham.

In September 2009, I began writing a blog for the Birmingham Post. In April 2011, I persuaded the Editor to set up a co-branded Birmingham Post Science Blog which now has twelve contributors, one of whom yours truly.

I was instrumental in instigating the Alan Turing Institute, now CICADA and helping them to get their £3M initial funding. My unique contribution is to bring together academics — here mathematicians, engineers and computer scientists with industrialists and enable them to see fertile common ground.
(Photo of the Pi in the Sky cafe, Turing Building at the University of Manchester reproduced here with kind permission of Professor Nick Higham FRS.)

In You Unlimited (1995, 2000, new edition pending) I wrote about the unconventional route (it involved a paddling pool and Col Gaddafi) by which I became a ‘portfolio professional’ (their somewhat grandiose term) and my article for the pending edition can be read here.