Invited Speakers

Sarah Horack is Research Director of Opinion Leader, the specialist research company in London. She concentrates on policy research for government, regulatory authorities and public bodies whose agendas include sustainability and citizen social responsibility in areas as broad as equality and diversity and as specific as saving for retirement and installing water usage meters.

Opinion Leader is known for pioneering deliberative research, which examines how attitudes and behaviour change in peer group settings, as new information is added, and over time. Thus, the change process itself can be studied as well as attitudinal and behavioural outcomes.

As Vice President of Yankelovich, Inc. in the 1970s, Sarah developed one of the first commercially successful services to benchmark corporate social responsibility in the US. The service included a predictive model of policy-making to help companies anticipate pressure for action on issues such as the environment, equal opportunities and consumer protection.

Previously she was Research Director of PricewaterhouseCoopers' Policy, Research and Economics Group in London, and prior to 2008 she established and managed RS Consulting's respected Corporate Finance and Public Policy research division. She did her PhD work in political behaviour at the University of Michigan and was a lecturer in research methodology at the University of Essex and Visiting Research Scholar at the Survey Research Archive there.