Name: Nic Marks

Position: Founder of the Centre for Well-Being, New Economics Foundation

Biography: Nic Marks is Founder of the centre for well-being and has led the well-being programme at New Economics Foundation (nef) since 2001. Nic is a recognised expert in the field of well-being research and undertakes innovative research in the use of well-being indicators in public policy environments. Nic has expertise in relation to individual, social, economic and environmental indicators of well-being and has previously applied his work in policy fields as diverse as sustainable development, health and social care, education, culture and the arts, and employment. Nic has experience of devising methodologies to measure well-being, statistical and analytical skills, and a proven ability to interpret findings in a way that makes sense for policy makers, practitioners and the general public. He also has a particular interest in how objective and subjective measures can be used alongside each other to create national and local accounts of well-being and in how we can best increase well-being within our environmental limits.  

Nic is regularly asked to attend speaking engagements and occupies a number of advisory positions as a result of his pioneering research. He was the lead author of nef’s innovative Happy Planet Index, a global index of human well-being and environmental impact. He was an advisor to the UK Government Office for Science’s Foresight project on ‘mental capital and well-being” which was published in October 2008, which included the creation of “the five ways to well-being”. He devised, together with others at the centre for well-being, the model and methodology behind nef’s report on National Accounts of Well-being, which gained extensive media coverage when launched in January 2009. 

Nic has a degree in Management Studies from Cambridge University, a Master’s degree in Operational Research from Lancaster University and a postgraduate diploma in Change Agent Skills and Strategies from the Human Potential Research Group at the University of Surrey.  He is also a qualified psychotherapist and a member of the International Society for Quality of Life Studies – ISQOLS.  In 2007 nef won the ISQOLS ‘Betterment of the Human Condition” award in recognition of their work on the Happy Planet Index. 

Summit Talk: Happiness doesn’t have to cost the Earth