Meet the Team

Greg Fisher is the Managing Director of Synthesis. After growing up in the West Midlands, he studied Economics & Politics at St John’s College, University of Cambridge. Greg joined the Bank of England as a graduate entrant in 1995 and subsequently worked in a spectrum of roles that mixed economics and finance. Between 2004 and 2008, Greg worked for a hedge fund as a global macroeconomic strategist. Before joining the think-tank, ResPublica, in August 2010, he spent two years researching the new science of complex systems, and how it relates to economics and finance. Greg is a Senior Research Associate of the London School of Economics’ Complexity Group. His interests extend beyond pure economics, and include human psychology, neuroscience and cognitive science, and how these relate to our understanding of society.

Paul Ormerod is a Director at Synthesis. He is the author of 3 best-selling books on economics, Death of Economics (1994), Butterfly Economics (1998), Why Most Things Fail (2005), a Business Week US Business Book of the Year. He read economics at Cambridge and took the MPhil in economics at Oxford. He worked initially as a macroeconomic forecaster and modeller at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research in London. In the early 1980s he moved to the private sector as Director of Economics at the Henley Centre for Forecasting. The management team bought this from the Henley Management College and subsequently sold it to Martin Sorrel’s WPP Group. He founded Volterra Consulting in 1998 in order to carry out innovative work on practical policy questions in both the public and private sectors. In 2009 he was awarded an honorary DSc by Durham for the ‘distinction of his contributions to economics’. He publishes on complexity-related areas in a wide range of academic journals such as Proceedings of the Royal Society B(iology), Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Cultural Economics, Cultural Science, Physica A, Journal of British Academy of Social Science, Journal of Economic Interaction and Co-ordination , Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Mind and Society, and Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science.

Orit Gal is a political economist specializing in the practical applications of complexity theories. Over the past decade she has concentrated much of her work on issues of complexity in conflict environments and the intersection between economic development and security.
She served as a senior researcher at the Operational Theory Research Institute of the Israeli Defense Forces (OTRI) where she worked to develop the civil economic dimension of military operational design. Prior to OTRI Orit worked as a project director for the Economic Cooperation Foundation (ECF), where she participated in track-two negotiations vis-à-vis the Palestinians, and developed policy recommendations on economic peace-building, and the potential role of international intervention.  Previously an associate fellow at Chatham House, Orit is also a visiting lecturer at Regent’s College teaching International Political Economy, Development, and Strategy, all from a complexity perspective.

Rhett Gayle is a philosopher whose work has primarily focused on education and methods for improving thinking. He also has interests in the philosophy of leadership and teaching wisdom in the current academy. He is writing a book on the connections between Taoism and complexity science. Rhett is also involved in New Enlightenment Education, an initiative bringing together Chinese and Western approaches to education. He is Director of Philosophies at the University Project, a working group creating a new university in London. Through the miracle of the internet, while living in the UK he teaches philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder, from where he received his PhD.

Mark McKergow combines interests in complexity, philosophy, science and organisations.  His PhD in the physics of self-organising systems has led to more than two decades of taking an emergent view.  As Director of the Centre for Solutions Focus at Work, he has developed an international community of managers and consultants who utilise the Solutions Focus approach, a practical application of narrative emergence in management and therapy.  He is the author of three books including the best-selling ‘The Solutions Focus: Making coaching & change SIMPLE’, still selling well after ten years in print.  Mark edits the academic journal InterAction, is a visiting research fellow in philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire and leads an online certificate course for the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee.  He lives in London and works and teaches worldwide.

Bridget Rosewell combines business and policy responsibilities with an interest in changing and improving the way in which economic analysis is done.  She is a partner in Volterra, which she established with Paul Ormerod to further the use of methods of economic analysis which do not rely on equilibrium or optimising concepts and which try to account for dynamics and feedbacks in building models.  She has applied such techniques to areas of policy in competition, innovation and transport investments.  In particular, she developed an innovative approach to the analysis of the investment in Crossrail – a railway across London – which has started to change the way in which these investments are evaluated.  She is also Chief Economic Advisor to the GLA and to the Mayor of London and has given expert evidence at Planning Inquiries and other tribunals. She is a Non-Executive Director of Network Rail and sits on a variety of other bodies.

Sara J. Wolcott is a senior researcher at Synthesis. She combines knowledge of multiple crises with good processes for navigating complexity to enable systems-wide development, active citizenship and dynamic governance. This includes in-depth research, convening appropriate public and private-sector partners, developing appropriate change strategies, and delivering diverse communications. Her niche consulting practice focuses on human values to enable simplicity amidst complexity. This follows work with security, climate, food, fuel and financial crises at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex – including helping to steer their core research project, ‘Reimagining Development’.  She brings an wide perspective on both the multiple theories and practical processes available to illuminate, articulate, and measure human values to enable development. An entrepeneur, she has been engaged in over 8 start-ups and initiatives – including four years with a US-based think tank. Her original training was in Anthropology and her first love was radio. A fifth-generation Californian, she has been accused of being a food snob with a mild addiction to poetry, politics, sunshine and rambling walks to ‘think through’ complexity.