Greater London Authority

Founder of Disruptive Urbanism, Paula Hirst, previously worked for the Greater London Authority where she led the sustainable development work of the Mayor of London, advising on policies, organisational strategy, and management practices to advance sustainable development.  

During 2004, Paula led an internal initiative across the GLA Group to ‘mainstream sustainability’ across the GLA and the various functional bodies to ensure that internally the GLA Group was ‘walking the talk’ of the policies and strategies published by the Mayor of London. 

This initiative involved establishing a senior management internal working group across Directorates and the Group to agree a series of objectives, outcomes, and areas of intervention. Paula then worked proactively with various Heads of Service to identify areas where adjustments and improvements could be made on a range of social, economic, and environmental indicators. With a combined spend of over £5bn, a key focus was on the various procurement policies across the Group which Paula developed to create local employment opportunities, community benefit, and environmental improvements in London. The ‘mainstreaming’ initiative successfully integrated sustainable development throughout the management processes and business planning of the Authority, introducing new delivery management arrangements.