Mel Young
| Specialist areas: | Social entrepreneurship and sport |
| Skills: | Set piece speeches, facilitating conferences and seminars, after dinner speeches |
| Popular speaking topics: |
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Mel Young is recognised as one of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship and is a Schwab Fellow of the World Economic Forum.
Previously he worked as a journalist; co-founded The Big Issue in Scotland in 1993; co-founded Senscot (Social Entrepreneurs Network Scotland); is a former President and Honorary President of INSP (International Network of Street Papers); also set up City Lynx magazine and New Consumer Magazine; and worked on a community newspaper in Wester Hailes in Edinburgh in the 1990s.
Mel is currently President and CEO of the Homeless World Cup which he co-founded in 2003.
He is also a non-executive director on two boards, Sportscotland and Glasgow Life, and a member of the World Economic Forum Sports Agenda Council. He has regularly attended and contributed at World Economic Forum meetings over the past 10 years.
He is a lifelong supporter of Hibernian FC and is the author of Goal: the story of the Homeless World Cup.
He studied economics at Heriot Watt University and has been awarded three honorary degrees.