James Partridge is Founder and Chief Executive of Changing Faces, the leading UK charity supporting and representing people with disfigurements (www.changingfaces.org.uk) which is now a £1.6m organisation with a 30-strong staff team. Before setting up Changing Faces in 1992, James worked as a health economist in public health in the NHS in the ‘70s, and established a dairy farming business and taught A level economics in Guernsey in the ‘80s.

He launched the charity after the positive response to his book, published by Penguin (1990), ‘Changing Faces: the Challenge of Facial Disfigurement’ (available from Changing Faces, www.changingfaces.org.uk). He writes and presents widely on disfigurement, disability, inclusion and social entrepreneurship in the UK and internationally. In November 2009, he was a guest newsreader for a week on national TV (Channel Five News), an appearance designed to foster acceptance and inclusion of people with disfigurements in society.

Married with three ‘grown-up’ children, he lives in Guernsey and London.

He was appointed an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 2005 and has Honorary Doctorates from both of the Universities in Bristol, his birthplace. In 2010, he was the winner of Britain’s most admired Charity Chief Executive for 2010 and the Beacon Prize for Leadership. He was given the Directory of Social Change’s Lifetime Achievement Award 2012 following a public vote.