Who we are
Richard Johnson
Richard is the CEO of the Healthy Brains Global Initiative. HBGI work internationally (currently in the USA, Africa, UK and India), transforming and building high-performing mental health (and associated) services and systems that maximize outcomes for individuals and their communities. They provide hands-on technical support in contracting, performance management and user-centred service design. They also contract new programs in partnership with service providers and funders, using a contracting model that links payments to outcomes, as opposed to reimbursing costs for inputs. They were founded in 2020 with the support of the WHO, World Bank, UNICEF and Wellcome, and are funded/contracted by donors, institutions and governments. HBGI’s current projects include improving the performance of services for homeless people with serious mental illness, connecting foster care leavers with safe and stable futures, deploying peers to support new mothers, finding efficiency gains across national children’s mental health services, and reducing harmful in-patient bed use.
Richard has been leading the transformation of services, shifting them to focus on performance and outcomes, for 26 years. He has run large-scale, for-profit organizations reaching over 1 million long-term unemployed people (delivering outcomes contracts paid strictly on results), advised central and local governments, worked as a Senior Consultant on outcomes-based contracting at the World Bank (mainly in Ethiopia and Afghanistan) and at the Global Fund (TB, HIV and malaria), and has chaired 11 Social and Development Impact Bonds (a type of outcomes contract backed by social investment), targeting unemployment, homelessness, mental health, school exclusion, care for carers and refugee integration. He is currently Chair of a youth employment Development Impact Bond in Palestine.
Richard had an early career in international education. He studied Philosophy and Psychology at Oxford, and Applied Linguistics at Exeter.
Jane Mansour
Jane Mansour is an independent policy consultant. Currently based in the US, recent projects include the development of an international framework for active labour market programmes and an assessment of workforce development opportunities in Minnesota.
Jane has a rich combination of operational and policy experience. She was the founder and Director of the Ingeus Centre for Policy and Research, a think tank embedded within a welfare-to-work delivery organization. Based in London, she and her team were responsible for the production and publication of original research and analysis and the development and co-ordination of contributions to welfare-to-work policy development. She has worked closely with a variety of non- and for profit organisations, academics, policy makers and experts to help inform and stimulate the policy debate.
With a particular interest in sustainable employment outcomes for those most disadvantaged in the labour market, she has focused on the effective procurement of outsourced employment services and performance measurement. Other areas of expertise include: funding and incentives for providers; improving integration between skills and work; flexible working; choice and voice in welfare reform; progression in work; and localising national initiatives.
Jane has been involved in welfare-to-work for fifteen years in the UK and Australia, in research, policy and operational capacities for both private and not-for-profit organisations. This has included the implementation, delivery and management of welfare-to-work programmes; developing new service delivery models; and, prior to joining Ingeus, she was a Senior Policy and Research Manager at Inclusion UK.
She has a Research Masters in Public Policy from Birkbeck College, University of London and a Masters in English Literature from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. She is now resident in Boston, MA. She is a Senior Associate of Social Inclusion USA.
Follow Jane on Twitter: @janemansour
Both Richard and Jane can be contacted at: buyingqp@gmail.com
Buying Quality Performance 
I have a plan. It is based on the idea that the reason government does not take much notice of the needs of ordinary people is that ordinary people are seriously underrepresented in the government. Today’s congressional districts average over 700,000, which is way out of line with other major industrialized nations. The House of Commons has 650 members to represent the 63 million people in the United Kingdom, and the Bundestag has 598 members to speak for 82 million German people. The relationship between the size of national legislatures and population in Italy, Canada, France and Spain are similar. We by contrast have 435 representatives and over 310 million people.
The plan is described in my book, Two Years to Democracy: The 2Y2D Plan. I’d be happy to send you a copy. The web site gives the gist of the book.