Shirin and Leila are a mother-daughter team, recognising that the future needs an intergenerational perspective. Shirin started working on the Corset Economy more than a decade ago after years spent researching the future and was joined by Leila several years ago.

Shirin is a scenarios expert with more than 15 years of managing scenario projects for a range of organisations including UN agencies and major corporations on areas as diverse as the future of work, mobility and intellectual property. She started her professional career as an architect and learned to apply that practical understanding of the creative process to build scenarios for the future as a tool for strategic change. The Corset Economy evolved out of consolidating the research across her professional career as she started to notice the corseting phenomenon happening across sectors.

Leila started her career in international development working for charities across Africa, Asia and the Caribbean managing large scale programmes delivering healthcare, skills training, disaster resilience and addressing gender-based violence. Whilst still wanting to make a difference in the world she became more interested in complex systems and foresight, eventually following Shirin’s footsteps and learning about scenario planning under her. The Corset Economy became a way to pursue her different interests – curiosity about the future as well as creating change and addressing inequality.