Alison O'Connell: Director, Pensions Policy Institute

Alison O'Connell has been the Director of the Pensions Policy Institute since it started in 2002. The PPI provides authoritative, non-political, independent comment and analysis on retirement income policy in the UK. At the PPI, Alison has led the work on reform options for state (public) pension provision.

Alison has a degree in Mathematics from St. Catharine's College, Cambridge and is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries. She went into pensions policy to put together interests in demography that she developed as an actuary, in the fashion for privatising welfare benefits that she worked on at McKinsey in the 1990s and in the social aspects of ageing that she researched for a postgraduate degree in Gerontology from King's College, London.

Alison is particularly proud to have been recently named as one of the UK's 50 wisest people by Saga, a magazine for older people.