Dr Halima Begum is Chief Executive of the Runnymede Trust, the UK’s leading race equality think tank. A disabled Muslim woman, Halima was born in rural Bangladesh and raised in a working-class community in 1980s East London. It was largely thanks to a community support campaign in her Brick Lane neighbourhood that Halima’s eyesight was partially saved as a toddler. Halima has worked tirelessly to achieve equality across minority communities since her teens, co-founding Women Against Racism to challenge the rise of the National Front in Millwall in the early 1990s. She began her career with the Commission on a Multi-Ethnic Britain and has subsequently gone on to hold senior leadership positions with a range of organisations including the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the British Council and LEGO Foundation.

Her work has seen Halima support disabled communities as far afield as Rwanda and Nepal, particularly in the area of children’s access to education. She sits on the board of bodies including the NHS Race and Health Observatory, ITV’s Cultural Advisory Council, and Toynbee Hall. In the last year, her leadership has been particularly visible in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd and through the COVID pandemic, during which she has vigorously supported the equitable rollout of the COVID vaccine to ensure protection from the virus was expedited to some of the country’s most vulnerable minority groups.