Gordon Lishman CBE BA (Econ) FRSA

Gordon Lishman is Director General of Age Concern and Chief Executive of the Age Concern England (ACE) Group, which comprises the charity, Age Concern England; its trading companies, primarily Age Concern Enterprises and Aid-Call; and the membership organisation, Heyday. The ACE Group is the UK’s largest charitable operation. Gordon has worked for ACE since 1974.

Gordon leads the charity’s campaigning, and has achieved major successes on pension reform, particularly for older women, and on age discrimination including the setting up of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Current priorities include a new system for financing high quality long-term care and better treatment of older people in the health and social care sectors. This includes a strong focus on tackling malnutrition in hospitals and care homes, an issue that both Gordon and ACE are passionate about solving. As a result, Gordon was asked by Ivan Lewis, Minister for Care Services, in Autumn 2007 to chair the Department of Health’s Nutrition Action Plan Delivery Board.

Gordon has a long history as a campaigner including the Committee for Homosexual Law Reform/Campaign for Homosexual Equality; Stop the Seventy Tour; former member of Racial Equality Councils in Manchester, Northamptonshire and East Lancashire; campaigner on age equality since first publication: A Redefinition of Retirement in 1971; member, Liberty, the Fawcett Society, British Humanist Association, Friends of Ruskin’s Brantwood.