In conversation with... Minnie Moll, Design Council

In this episode, Katie talks to Minnie Moll, Chief Executive at the Design Council. Minnie spent years in innovation, design, advertising and brand consultancy. She was Managing Partner of HHCL, the ‘Advertising Agency of the decade’ and then Global Marketing Director of Innovation company? What If!, which won Great Place to Work Institute’s ‘Best Place to Work in the UK’ two years running.  Minnie was voted Vistage UK Business Leader of the Year in 2020. Always a purpose driven business leader, she has proved you can do well and do good. While Joint Chief Executive of the East of England Co-op, they won Alzheimer’s Society ‘Large Business of the Year’ in 2016. That year she was appointed by HRH Prince Charles as his Ambassador for Responsible Business in the East of England. She has passion for place making and has been a board member of two Business Improvement Districts and a Town Deals Board.  

Minnie has a First-Class Degree in Creative Arts. She is also a qualified Transformational Coach. When she’s not working, Minnie can be found animal wrangling and driving her 1952 little grey Fergie tractor.  

During this episode, Katie speaks to Minnie about how she came to join the Desing Council in 2021 and her involvement with their rebrand and new vision, mission and values which now fully align with ensuring environmental issues are at the heart of everything. We find out more about the 2023 Design for Planet Festival, now in its 3rd year. To find out more about the upcoming Design for Planet Festival, at which Katie with be in conversation with TOAST communications manages Madeleine Mitchell, head here: https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/our-events/design-for-planet-festival/

 

You can connect with Minnie and The Design Council here:

The Design Council website: designcouncil.org.uk

The Design Council Twitter: https://twitter.com/designcouncil

The Design Council Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/designcouncil/

The Design Council LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/design-council/

Minnie Moll Twitter: https://twitter.com/minniethemoll

Minnie Moll LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/minnie-moll/

 

Here are some episode highlights:

Why Design for Planet?

“I think the biggest area that we've worked in (over the past 2 years) has been what I'd call, curating and convening. So a big, big focus on designers and commissioners of design. We knew that, following research, that of the 1.97 million people working in design in this country, a massive majority said, I really want to design for planet and I don't really know that I have all the right skills and tools to do so. So a lot of our focus in the last two years has been on galvanising and supporting designers. The key thing that we've done has been our Design for Planet festival, we did the first one in the in support of COP, that was held in Glasgow in 2021. And then we held the second one last year with Northumbria University. And that's been about bringing together thought leaders, really inspiring people working in design, some of them at the very cutting edge of thinking, some of them that are actually really making a difference in the organisations that they're in. So that sense of bringing in evidence, inspiration for designers, you know, we can do this.”

Intelligent Collision

“And I think there's also a sense of one of the one of the values of making design circular is collaboration over competition