“With a politics degree and having worked for an MEP… public affairs was an obvious route,” says Lewis North. The path itself, however, was less straightforward. Moving from Brussels to Westminster meant “a couple of sideways career steps” to learn the procedural differences — a reminder that even adjacent political systems require different instincts.

That early experience left him with something more durable than process knowledge. “The contact book has stayed quite strong,” he says, reflecting on a cohort that returned to the UK around Brexit. It is a quiet advantage in a profession where relationships, once formed, tend to endure.

Today, he operates in a sector where policy, finance and infrastructure intersect closely. Porterbrook is one of the UK’s leading rolling stock leasing companies, owning and financing thousands of rail vehicles used across the national network. Working with train operators and government, it plays a central role in how trains are procured, upgraded and deployed — a model that depends heavily on long-term investment and regulatory certainty.

That context defines his core concern. “The importance of attracting private investment into a nationalised railway,” he says — a tension at the heart of the UK’s rail model. As the system evolves, ensuring that private capital continues to flow into rolling stock and infrastructure is both an economic and …