Dr Andrew Lyon
Andrew Lyon was born in Kilmarnock in 1954. He left school at 16, working in a tailor’s shop and then a hi-fi store before becoming a carpet weaver in 1973. He studied sociology and economics at Edinburgh University 1976-80. He conducted research for his PhD in India between 1981 –83 and again in 1985. Based in two villages in North India, he looked at the relationship between family building patterns, the social organisation of childbirth, the economy, society and environment. Following a short spell as a research associate at the University of Edinburgh and a researcher on the 1981 Labour Force Survey, he went to the Vale of Leven Health Promotion Project. Based at Polaroid (UK) Ltd, this project was a factory based, community oriented programme. In 1986 he became co-ordinator of the Glasgow Healthy Cities Project, part of the WHO Europe programme. During this period he also acted as a consultant for the WHO in Europe and Bangladesh.
He moved to Forward Scotland, the sustainable development charity, as development manager in 1996, becoming acting chief executive in 2000. He left in May 2001, joining the International Futures Forum (IFF) as Converger. The IFF is a non-profit organisation established to support transformative responses to complex and confounding challenges, and to restore our capacity for effective action in a change of age.
Andrew has engaged in voluntary activity for most of his adult life, including a spell as the Scottish Director of Sustrans, the cycle path charity. He was, until recently, a founding director at Common Wheel, a charity which helped rehabilitating mental health patients to recycle bicycles at prices people can afford. Currently he is a director of Community Renewal, a charity which supports people living in deprived circumstances to fulfil their aspirations, and of AdHom, a medical charity based in Glasgow. He has also worked as honorary lecturer in Public Health at the University of Glasgow. In his spare time he says he can play the flute and the uilleann pipes. His children say he can’t. In fair weather, he is an enthusiastic but poor amateur astronomer and likes to cycle whenever he can.