Chris Underhill

Social Entrepreneur and Professional Mentor

Chris Underhill MBE is a social entrepreneur and professional mentor. He is a member of the World Economic Forum Global Futures Council on Mental Health and the Chair of the Catalyst 2030 Mental Health Collaborative. Chris is attending the Well Being Summit, Bilbao, with two interests in front of mind. Eldership and Community Mental Health Practice.

Regarding Eldership he is the cofounder of the Elders Council for Social Entrepreneurs. At the age of 73 he is a “young Elder” and is involved in the support of founders as they make transitions in their organisations and in the encouragement of younger social entrepreneurs as they field the complex challenges that inevitably confront them.

Regarding Community Mental Health Chris is the creator of the Model for Mental Health and Development which has been disseminated in some 15 developing countries. Over the years he has founded organisations in the field of wellbeing, resilience, and mental health. For example, Thrive, an organisation working in gardening, disability, resilience, and wellbeing. Also, Action on Disability and Development, working in the developing world with disabled people creating systems of representation, advocacy, and policy creation. In the field of global mental health, he has founded BasicNeeds working on community mental health, and co-founded citiesRISE in the field of mental health youth and the big city.

As a mentor and organisational development advisor he is working with a number of organisations including Spark Inside, CorStone, BecauseYou, Health Leads USA and VidaAfrolatina. Chris has been married to Giselle for 52 years, has three grown up children and six grandchildren. He is a recipient of the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, an awardee in Social Entrepreneurship of the Schwab Foundation, and a Senior Fellow of Ashoka and has been honoured with an MBE by HRH the Queen for his work in disability and development.

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