George Hosking OBE, Chief Executive Officer and Research Director

George is an economist, accountant, psychologist and clinical criminologist. He is also a traumatic stress counsellor.

Before focusing on social issues, George had a successful career in business, first as a senior line manager working in the field of international strategy, then as a strategy consultant and corporate turnaround specialist.

At 26, he became one of the youngest ever senior managers in Unilever. After a 17-year career there, where he became responsible for helping create and produce the strategic plans for 30 countries, he left to open his own consultancy. His major lines of work were international strategy and turning around loss-making businesses. He has carried out around 30 successful corporate turnarounds in a range of countries and industries, adding more than £10 million per annum to the profitability of such companies as the Mothers Pride Bread company and Booker Cash & Carry.

In the mid-1990s he founded (and for many years funded!) WAVE Trust, to adapt his corporate turnaround technique to transform the lives of children. Since then he has advised the Met Police, Scottish Government, Cabinet Office, Home Office, Departments for Education and Health and No 10 Downing Street on policies for children or to tackle violence.

As a clinical criminologist he has worked with victims and perpetrators of violence, in prisons and in the community delivering WAVE’s very successful ‘An End to Violence’ programme.