Cat Tully
Managing Director – School of International Futures (SOIF)
Cat Zuzarte Tully leads the School of International Futures (SOIF). She has extensive experience as a practitioner, helping governments, civil society and businesses be: more strategic, more effective, prepared for the future, and global citizens in an interconnected and uncertain world. Her mission is to inspire individuals, communities, organisations and governments to reinvigorate democracy by designing, scaling and embedding a range of innovations incorporating thinking about the future.
Prior to setting up the School of International Futures, Cat was Strategy Project Director at the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Senior Policy Adviser in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Before working in government, she worked in strategy and international relations across the not-for-profit and business sectors, including Christian Aid, Procter and Gamble and the World Bank. She is a non-resident fellow at the US Government Accountability Office’s Center for Strategic Foresight and a member of the Advisory Committee of the Chilean Council of Foresight and Strategy. Cat is also currently Specialist Adviser to the UK Liaison Committee’s inquiry Scrutiny of Strategic Thinking in Government.
In 2023 Cat led the first Public Policy Foresight Course at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government and co-authored with California100 a Strategic Foresight for Public Policy Toolkit for Educators. She is on the board of Academics Stand Against Poverty (ASAP). Previously Cat was Chairholder of the Professorial Chair in the field of Leadership at UNIRAZAK University in Malaysia and Visiting Professor at Moscow’s Presidential Academy for Public Administration.
School of International Futures (SOIF)
The School of International Futures (SOIF) is a not-for-profit international collective of practitioners who help people transform the present by using structured thinking about the future to build an equitable and sustainable world for current and next generations. SOIF works with wide variety of organisations like the UN, Omidyar, NATO, the Royal Society and national governments, to get insights, build capability and drive change. SOIF supports a growing network of 1000 Next Generation Foresight Practitioners in 90 countries. In 2024, SOIF is leading a programme to support countries catalyse long-term governance reform around the Summit of the Future, through weaving networks of civil society, political and official early adopters (including the Pledge). SOIF brings together three disciplines in the service of transformation:
– Foresight and futures: Advising decision-makers about how to use foresight approaches to address complex, future-facing policy and strategy questions across governments, foundations, civil society and corporations.
– Participation and governance: Putting people at the heart of the future and seeking to ensure that representation, legitimacy and participation are central to foresight work by acting as a bridge and connector between different groups.
– Networks of change: SOIF believes that building networks is central to systems change. SOIF weaves, incubates and scales networks of social change agents.
SOIF was founded in 2012. It is headquartered in the UK and operates globally, using diverse teams to work with leaders, organisations and communities.
