Author and economist Ann Pettifor visited a school in St Albans to raise awareness of the role of international debt and creditor institutions.

The veteran campaigner visited Year 12 and 13 pupils at St Albans Girls School last week.

She explained that after having a successful and illustrious career as a finance advisor in London during the 1980’s & 90’s, she became bored with making money and decided to seek out a more fulfilling role.

In 1998 incensed by the unjust global imbalances between rich and poor Ann Pettifor decided to set up ‘Jubilee 2000’, a worldwide campaign to pressurize the rich into writing off mountains of third world debt.

Together with the help of high profile supporters such as Pope John Paul II, Mohamed Ali, Bono, Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, she successfully persuaded the G8 to write off $100 Billion of debt owed by the 35 poorest nations.

Year 13 Sociology student George Crysanthou said: "Her talk was refreshing, she was very open minded, gave a good broad overview of the economy and told you things they definitely don’t tell you in the text books."

Ann’s career advice to students was to try to immerse themselves in a subject for which they had a passion and to pursue a job that energizes them, and makes them use all their capacities.

Ann is now executive director of a finance consultancy and continues to write books on the subject of world economics.