174: Oli Barrett on making the connections that matter most

174: Oli Barrett on making the connections that matter most

From Call To Action by Giles Edwards

March 27, 2026 · 56 min · Episode 174

About this episode

Oli Barrett MBE discusses the art of networking and his initiatives for social change.

This week we spent all our time pressing the flesh (until finding out we’d misunderstood what that means and getting very firmly asked to leave Subway) all in order to win the approval of this week’s guest, the master networker Oli Barrett MBE. Blessed with the ability to bring together the right people with the right ideas at the right time, Oli has built a reputation for being the nation’s ultimate connector. But, being a fine fellow as well as a canny-business operator, he has used his powers for good – forming remarkable social change initiatives like ‘Tenner’, the UK’s largest schools entrepreneurship competition and ‘Turn On The Subtitles’, a global children’s literacy campaign. Deftly uniting the worlds of entrepreneurship, innovation, education and social impact, Oli has been rightly lauded and awarded for his considerable efforts – bagging, among other accolades, the title of ‘Most Connected Man in Britain’ from Wired and a place in GQs ‘Top 100 connected figures’. Plus there’s the small matter of being awarded an actual MBE from the actual Queen who, we assume, Oli was able to successfully introduce to an off-the-grid artisan driving-goggle manufacturer based in the…

People in this episode

Host: Giles Edwards

Guest: Oli Barrett MBE

Topics covered

  • networking
  • social change
  • entrepreneurship
  • education
  • innovation

Keywords

  • networking
  • social impact
  • entrepreneurship
  • education
  • innovation
  • Oli Barrett
  • Tenner
  • Turn On The Subtitles

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Tenner, Turn On The Subtitles, Wired, GQ

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