International Breakfast Seminars: Happy 50th!

15 Jul 2017
Ina Andersson

International Breakfast Seminars: Happy 50th!

In the summer of 2017 C3 turned eight years old. Its series of international breakfast seminars has been going for almost as long, and June saw C3 celebrating its 50th seminar. To mark this happy occasion, we take a look back at some notable events and fond memories we have shared with colleagues and friends over the years.

Suitably C3’s 50th international breakfast seminar was delivered by a long standing friend of C3’s. Lise Kingo was instrumental in the founding of C3 and strongly believes in its mission of working to prevent chronic disease. Now the CEO of the UN Global Compact, the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative with more than 13,500 signatories from 170 countries, Lise dedicated her seminar to speaking about how the UN Global Compact is inviting a broad coalition of UN, business, academic and civil society partners to commit to a future of health and wellbeing for all.

C3’s breakfast seminars began on 1 June 2010 with Tony Capon, who discussed the legacy of the Sydney Olympic Games that took place in 2000. At the seminar Tony also took the opportunity to look ahead to the London Olympic Games in 2012, which now has a legacy of its own. This makes us feel a little old!

Since 2010 C3 has featured a diverse range of speakers covering an equally diverse range of topics. We have welcomed speakers from the private, public and third sectors as well as academia, hailing from five continents and 20 different countries. Topics have included community health, the tobacco industry, obesity and McDonald’s nutritional journey. Over 1,000 individuals have attended at least one seminar over the years. In true C3 spirit professionals from all sectors have come together to collaborate and learn from each other. At the 50th seminar participants were asked to leave a note describing C3 in a word or a sentence and one participant choose to write ‘diverse perspectives’ – looking back at our breakfast seminar history this seems a very fitting description.

But things haven’t always gone to plan. C3 employees might for example remember Derek Yach’s brilliant seminar in January 2013 on the role of business in NCD prevention. The seminar took place in the lovely chapel of central London venue the House of St Barnabas, which unfortunately wasn’t particularly well-suited to the freezing winter weather conditions. Participants came instructed to keep their coats on and the post-seminar photo shows a tightly wrapped-up, rather red-nosed Christine next to Derek.

One of C3’s favourite memories however has to be when friend and colleague Denise Stevens delivered her first (of two!) breakfast seminars in June 2011, examining how the environment influences behaviour. Among the participants was Phil Veasey, who was so inspired by the content of the presentation that he ended up applying for a job with C3 – and got it. Since then, Phil has delivered some hugely successful community health projects with C3.

The breakfast seminars are great examples of what we mean by ‘collaborate’ in our name ‘C3 Collaborating for Health’. We would like to say a huge thank you to all our wonderful speakers and attendees – here’s to the next 50!

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