Kate Robertson is founder of One Young World, the premier global forum for young leaders, which she set up in 2009 with David Jones. Dubbed by CNN ‘the junior Davos’, the first annual summit was held in London in February 2010 and the next will be held in Ottawa in September 2016. The Summit is attended by 1,300 delegates from 196 countries - more than any youth event other than the Olympics – and luminaries such as Kofi Annan, Professor Muhammad Yunus, Sir Bob Geldof, Paul Polman, and Arianna Huffington among others.
Kate has Honorary Masters degrees from the University of Creative Arts and from the European Communications School. In 2012 she was named Advertising Woman of the Year by Women In Marketing and in 2014 was similarly honoured by Advertising Week Europe. In 2014 she also awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Lausanne Business School.
Kate has worked pro bono as a judge for the British Sports Industry Awards as well as for the Barclays Global Citizenship Awards with the CEOs of the Gates Foundation, of the Prince’s Trust and of the Clinton Global Initiative.
In 2009 Kate led Kofi Annan’s communications campaign, with former Havas CEO David Jones, to raise awareness before the COP15 (Climate Change) talks. The Tck Tck Tck campaign outperformed all the others with 18m online supporters by the time of the talks. She was also a non-executive director of YouGovStone from 2008 through to its sale in 2012.
Kate Robertson was formerly the Global President and UK Group Chairman of Havas Worldwide, where she was the highest place woman in the advertising industry worldwide.
The companies in her remit in this role included Havas Worldwide London, Havas Worldwide London PR, Havas People, The Maitland Consultancy, Conran Design Group and Havas EHS and the recently purchased Havas Work Club (Digital Agency of the Year 2012 and 2013 in Marketing Week and Campaign magazines respectively).