Dinah McLeod joined BT in 2007 to head BT Global Services’ sustainability practice, where her key responsibility is to work with customers to encourage the adoption of more sustainable modes of business operation. In her previous role as an independent consultant, she worked for clients including the UK’s Department for International Development, the Japanese International Development Agency, the African Development Bank, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Government of Uganda and the Overseas Development Institute. Her analysis of Uganda’s aid financing structure helped reorganise the aid industry in the country.

Until 2004, Dinah was a policy adviser in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit in London. Joining the unit in 2002, she managed its work on energy and international development, and was a liaison with the World Bank’s Business Partners for Development group. She also led an analysis of the effects of state failure on economic prosperity and social development. Previous to this, Dinah spent six years at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. as a social protection specialist. Among other community-based development work, she designed the community microprojects component of a US$17-million social fund project in Tajikistan, and conducted an assessment of the project’s first phase. She also worked on projects in Armenia, Romania, Poland, Albania, the West Bank and Gaza, Belize, Benin, Lithuania and the Kyrgyz Republic.

A Canadian citizen, Dinah gained her Master of Public Administration degree from Princeton University in 1996 and a BA (Hons) in Political Science from Columbia University, New York, in 1994. In 2008, she was elected a fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce – the RSA – joining 27,000 like-minded “achievers and influencers” who come from “an extraordinary range of backgrounds and are committed to civic innovation and social progress”.