Login / RegisterDuncan Stephenson
Policy and External Affairs Director
Duncan is CTSI's Policy and External Affairs Director, with overall responsibility for CTSI’s policy, campaigning and communications activities.
Background
Over the last 25 years, Duncan has achieved considerable success - having led the policy, campaigns and communications for two national, member-based charities. Most recently, he served 7 years as Deputy Chief Executive and Director of External Affairs at the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH). There, he was directly responsible for developing a number of award-winning campaigns, formulating policy that influenced legislation and practice, building strategic partnerships worth millions and, ultimately, completely transforming the media and political profile of the charity.
He has led a considerable number of successful and impactful campaigns and profile-raising initiatives on a variety of issues including, advocating for drug policy reform, promoting a range of measures to tackle obesity, raising awareness of gambling related harms and challenging vaccination misinformation.
Prior to RSPH, Duncan led the parliamentary and stakeholder relations team for the Care Quality Commission, during a period of change. And, as Head of External Affairs at the YMCA, Duncan initiated and led a national campaign on body image, including establishing the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Body Image - which led to the formation of the national BeReal campaign. He also created a number of national health and wellbeing programmes, working in close partnership with the NHS, DWP and Department of Health.
After graduating with a Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) degree from Oxford University, Duncan started his career working in industry. Notably, at Unilever UK he led thought leadership on a variety of issues, such as food labelling, advertising to children and product reformulation and supported EU lobbying on issues including the Biofuels Directive. Outside of work, he enjoys weight-training, swimming and occasionally dabbles in magic!
