Lee Elliot Major

Professor of Social Mobility,

University of Exeter

The biggest barrier to talent isn't ability — it's mistaking learned advantage for merit. The organisations that win next are the ones that dismantle that confusion first.

THE PROBLEM AFTER NEXT: As AI transforms work, the greatest competitive advantage will be identifying and developing human talent that others overlook. As technical skills become easier to acquire and automate, organisations will need to take a forensic approach to talent — distinguishing the human capabilities that drive performance from the learned cultural advantages too often mistaken for merit.

ARTICLE: Five Myths of Meritocracy in the Modern Workplace

BOOK: Cracking the Class Code (forthcoming)

BIO: Lee Elliot Major OBE, FAcSS is Britain's first Professor of Social Mobility and one of the world's leading voices on opportunity, talent and social mobility. Combining lived experience with decades of research expertise, he advises business, education and government leaders around the world on how to identify and develop talent more fairly. Lee left home at 15 and worked as a street cleaner, refuse collector and in other manual jobs during a period away from education before becoming the first in his family to attend university. Before joining the University of Exeter, Lee served as Chief Executive of the Sutton Trust, one of the UK's leading social mobility foundations. He is the author of several award-winning books, including Social Mobility and Its Enemies and Equity in Education. A regular media commentator on the BBC and national and international media, he has spoken widely on the future of opportunity, including in his TEDx talk, "Levelling the Playing Field of Life." In 2019, he was awarded an OBE by Queen Elizabeth II for services to social mobility.