Who we are

At Nesta Challenges, Andrea leads challenge prize advisory work with the Government of Canada, consulting on the research, design and delivery of outcome- based funding projects.

In this role she’s advised on projects to improve housing supply, design energy efficient boats, reduce harm from the opioid crisis and locate whales in real-time.

Andrea also helped deliver the Open Up Challenge, a prize fund to reward fintech companies producing next-generation products and services using open banking. Andrea continues to work on Nesta’s regulatory innovation and financial inclusion challenge prizes. Most recently this work has included the Rapid Recovery Challenge and supporting the Canadian government’s Centre for Regulatory Innovation.

Outside of work, you’ll find Andrea searching flights for her next weekend adventure, getting excessively competitive over casual board games, or training for her next triathlon.

Caroline is a Programme Manager working on the delivery of a number of prizes focused on Health, Disability, Government and Innovation. This includes one of our flagship programmes, the $4 million Mobility Unlimited Challenge.

Caroline joins Nesta from Y Care International, a youth-focused charity, implementing employment focused projects in West Africa​ in collaboration with YMCA organisations​. Prior to this, Caroline has worked on a variety of projects all over West Africa for DCAF, a Swiss-based foundation and the UNDP on issues ranging​ from conflict prevention to training the police and the military.

Based in London for the past four years, Caroline enjoys discovering the city as well as travelling, reading and playing video games.

Caroline is the Senior Programme Manager for the Global Health team, working on the Longitude Prize and a range of other health-related programmes.

Prior to Nesta, most recently Caroline worked as the Programme Manager for the Antimicrobial Resistance Programme at Public Health England. She has a passion for microbiology, global health policy and public health and has worked across multiple roles in scientific publishing, policy and project management.

Outside of work, she enjoys singing, going to gigs, cycling and anything a bit spooky but most of all she enjoys hanging out with her cat Melvin.

At Nesta Challenges, Catherine is a Programme Manager, currently focusing on the Ofwat Innovation Fund. The £200 million fund was set up by Ofwat to  grow the water sector’s capacity to innovate, enabling it to better meet the evolving needs of customers, society and the environment.

Catherine previously worked on Open Up Challenge 2020, a challenge prize delivered by Nesta in partnership with Open Banking Ltd., focusing on products and apps that use open banking to help people better manage their money through more transparent, accessible and fair products.

Prior to Nesta, Catherine led the Innovation team at the Fairtrade Foundation, working on new approaches to supporting farmers and workers in global supply chains with a focus on supply chain transparency, human rights, data visualisation and blockchain. Catherine has a background in tech-focused innovation, starting her career in fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) and more recently working in tech for good in the charity sector as part of the On Purpose Associate Programme. 

Catherine is passionate about the potential for businesses to have a net positive social impact, and outside of work is currently studying MSt Sustainability Leadership at Cambridge University. When not studying or working, Catherine can be found sampling incredible food, tinkering with the latest smart home devices, or attempting to get up in time for Park Run. 

Charlotte has built expertise in the design and delivery of impact-focused challenge-driven innovation tools. Working with a range of partners including the World Bank, the UK Government, the Canadian Government, Essex County Council and the Toyota Mobility Foundation. Since joining the Centre, she has designed and led the $4 million Mobility Unlimited Challenge as well as a range of other projects and prizes.

In her free time, Charlotte can often be found volunteering on community projects or eating brunch. She very much enjoys both activities.

Chris’s experience spans the public, commercial and social impact sectors and interactions between the three. He started his career in supply side policy and public finance at HM Treasury. In the commercial sector he has worked as a strategy consultant and in investment banking. In social impact, he has delivered a major capacity-building programme for UK small business leaders and developed impact measurement strategies for a wide range of non-profits.

In his spare time Chris is a keen (but green) Python coder. He is a volunteer mentor for the Year Here programme, which encourages talented graduates to develop innovative solutions to entrenched social challenges.

Constance has over 20 years-experience in the voluntary sector developing national and international programs which engage communities in addressing the issues that affect them. She has designed and delivered programs with the likes of USAID, World Bank, Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy and the Cabinet Office Constance provides strategic innovation guidance and has delivered over 25 challenge prizes in fields such as agriculture in South-East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, Social Innovation across Europe, UK prizes focused on Waste Reduction and Ageing populations, as well as youth focussed digital enterprise challenges.

At the heart of her work ethos is a practice of co-creation with communities and innovators, building effective stakeholder networks across a range of sectors to strengthen the market potential of products, technologies and services for sustainable and impactful change that help communities thrive.

Constance is engaged in a number of judging and speaker panels and was on the board of Trustees for Youth Music, serving disadvantaged youth. She also demonstrates her entrepreneurial spirit by running her own micro business.

Daniel heads up the Global Health team at Nesta Challenges including managing the Longitude Prize, which is a £10 million project designed to incentivise the development of a rapid diagnostic test to improve the use of antibiotics. Daniel represents Nesta in international One Health forums designed to address the challenge of antimicrobial resistance. This includes championing new strategies to address the market failure that has led to a lack of diagnostic products to address AMR.

Daniel is also exploring new prizes in Essential Surgery and non-pharmaceutical treatments of chronic pain.

Before coming to Nesta, Daniel worked for the World Health Organization in Ethiopia on a local pharmaceutical production project. Previous to that he was at Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) for more than 16 years. At MSF he had multiple assignments in the Access to Medicines Campaign which focuses on stimulating and steering innovation and access to medicines, diagnostics and vaccines.

From 2012-2015 Daniel was General Director of MSF Southern Africa, based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Daniel is currently a Trustee for QUAMED, a French NGO that supports humanitarian organisations and national procurement institutions to improve quality of medicines.

Elettra is the Interim Assistant Programme Manager working on Communications for the Ofwat Innovation Fund.

Before Nesta Elettra worked for a not-for-profit based at SOAS, University of London, which worked with national and international academic partners to tell the stories of marginalised communities across the globe through comics and animations. Developing connections and materials for UK schools based on the comics fuelled her curiosity for the education sector and brought her to acquire a certificate as a teacher of English for foreign students.

Outside of work, Elettra volunteers with a local Friends of the Earth group and enjoys reading, food and wine.

Francesca is a researcher and service designer, with a strong passion for speculative design. She uses her work to explore how to design preferable futures and inspire positive change. 

Following her Master’s degree at the Royal College of Art, she immediately joined the Xploratory research team at the RCA. Here she worked on the development of the HOLD app (in collaboration with Koa Health), which explored how mechanisms of self-reflection could support people’s mental wellbeing and increase their agency over their health and happiness in the long-term. Francesca also supported the RCA Service Design programme through lectures, tutoring and organisation of the annual Work in Progress and Final shows. 

Outside of work, Francesca is currently investigating how to combine service design and speculative design to envision a more detailed picture of what is ahead of us and empower individuals and communities to have more control over their future. She enjoys playing chess, long walks and learning random stuff (she’s currently learning Morse code, but she has yet to find a practical use for it). 

At Nesta Challenges, Fulvia is a Team Assistant and Programme Coordinator providing administrative support to the team and working across different projects.

Before Nesta, Fulvia worked for a fin-tech start-up that created a banking App which allowed customers to draw down on their salary to prevent debt issuance. She assisted the project by creating and implementing leaner processes that complemented the aggressive expansion and supported 60+ team members. 

In her spare time, Fulvia volunteers as a caregiver for elderly living with dementia which she finds very rewarding. She has recently qualified as a scuba diver and also loves yoga, films and music.

Gary works on social innovation, environment and tech for good prizes. 

Before joining Nesta he worked in the youth sector with vInspired and Generation Change – supporting young people to take action in their communities on the issues they care about.

Outside of Nesta he is a Social Enterprise Fellow at WCMT and serves on the Global Advisory Board of Social Innovation Academy. He holds certificates in Human Centred Design, Innovation Management and Community Organising, as well as an M.A. in Public Administration and Public Policy.

Hannah is an Assistant Programme Manager on the Amazon Longitude Explorer Prize and the Smart Cities Challenge.

Prior to Nesta, Hannah was at Girl Effect, a creative non-profit, where her role was as a coordinator within the Impact function. She worked across a number of international projects, one of which being a first-of-its-kind mobile innovation for girls in Nigeria called ‘Girls Connect’.

Outside of work she is usually either researching future travel destinations, running/hiking or exploring interesting talks and events happening in London.

Janet aims to practice collaborative working everyday – diverse, challenging people energise and drive her to improve her work. She is particularly interested in gender equality and female economic empowerment, entrepreneurship, and the environment / climate change, and is curious about how these link into the wider story of poverty alleviation and economic development.

Janet has a strong background in business processes, programme design and implementation, and direct client management. Before joining Nesta she was COO for the SPRING Accelerator, supporting growth stage businesses in East Africa and South Asia to design products and services for adolescent girls. Prior to that she worked in other international development charities and in management consultancy.

Outside of work Janet enjoys yoga and boxing – a combination that offers a surprising balance!

At Nesta Challenges, Karmel is part of the Rapid Recovery team and leads on the innovator journey, programme delivery and communications. Previously at Nesta she was part of the Future News Fund team – encouraging innovation in public interest news and also as part of the Rocket Fund team, taking an internal startup to scale, attracting investors and facilitating a spin out.

Karmel loves programmes, projects and ideas which have humans at their heart and has spent fifteen years working in grassroots community focused organisations around the UK designing and implementing programmes, often with a creative edge. She’s dabbled in festival coordination and knows her way around a comms strategy.

Since leaving Manchester and the epic music scene she was once part of, she’s swapped microphones for walking boots and surfboards and pursues a semi-rad outdoorsy life where and when she can escape le grande smog.

At Nesta Challenges, Kathy is the Head of Future Cities, where she focuses on place-based innovation and empowering cities to shape their destiny. Current and recent projects she has led include the Mayor’s Resilience Fund, the Mayor of London’s £1 million challenge fund to incentivise innovators solve 10 different challenges across the city; the Climate Smart Cities Challenge, a global initiative to reduce greenhouse gases in cities; the Rapid Recovery Challenge, aimed at improving access to jobs and money for people hardest hit by the economic shock resulting from COVID-19; and Flying High, a multi-sector collaboration to engage cities, industry, service users, residents and other stakeholders to shape the future of urban drone services.

Kathy is passionate about cities and communities, and has over a decade of experience in urban planning and working with local governments. She has designed and delivered capacity-building and technical assistance programmes to identify and scale up transformative new approaches to creating stronger communities and economies based on local assets and place-based strategies. She has worked on rural and urban development and regeneration schemes, planning proposals and transport plans in the public and private sector.

In her spare time Kathy enjoys running, yoga and country walks.

Kelly provides high level administration and operational support to the Nesta Challenges Executive Director and the wider team. Working across numerous projects, she is highly skilled at coordinating and tracking multiple programmes simultaneously.

Previously she worked for a West coast Canadian production house, specialising in feature films, episodic television and bringing new financing solutions to an entertainment industry.

In her spare time, Kelly enjoys travelling, cooking and playing Articulate.

At Nesta Challenges, Laura is an Assistant Programme Manager for Nesta Challenges, working specifically on the Ofwat Innovation Fund.

Before Nesta, Laura worked at an international business growth agency that was supporting the Google Digital Garage project. The project provides free digital skills training for small business owners and members of the public alike, empowering them to grow their businesses and their careers.

Outside of work, she loves to travel, read, catch-up with friends and family and Irish dance.

At Nesta Challenges, Lauren is an Assistant Programme Manager, working across the Rapid Recovery Challenge and Canada Marine Plastics Project.

Previously, Lauren worked as a Policy Analyst with the Government of Canada’s IT department, Shared Services Canada. Her main role included conducting research and generating analyses related to various IT policies and programs. Lauren is passionate about innovation and improving public services and enjoys participating in various discussions and activities through OneTeamGov, a public sector reform community.

In her spare time, she enjoys running, travelling around the UK, and going out to gigs.

Liliana is a Programme Coordinator and previously worked in Nesta’s communications team, managing some of Nesta’s larger flagship events

Prior to Nesta, Liliana was designing and coordinating events at the European Parliament in Brussels, where she helped citizens to understand what future looking policy-making will be like from Artificial Intelligence to human enhancement or e-health. Previously, Liliana also worked for the New Statesman and think tanks.

Outside of work, she loves strolling around London furthering her interest in architecture and how arts bring diversity together. Liliana has an MA in Sociology from the University of Coimbra in Portugal.

Maddy is a Programme Manager, working across a range of UK and international projects, including the Amazon Longitude Explorer Prize. She also works on the business development side of Nesta Challenges.

Before joining Nesta Challenges, Maddy worked at The Prince’s Trust, starting in Monitoring and Evaluation before working in Programme Development for four years. Here, Maddy developed a range of employability programmes to support young people and NEETs across the UK into employment. During a secondment in Adelaide, Maddy was responsible for the implementation of Prince’s Trust programme in Australia, working with local employers and partners in Adelaide to develop a programme for unemployed and underemployed young people to be rolled out across Australia.

Outside of work Maddy can usually be found exploring London’s food markets, attending gigs or trying out the latest fitness fad.

Nassin is an Assistant Programme Manager with Nesta Challenges, working on the Mayor’s Resilience Fund and the Canada Marine Plastics Project.

Nassin joins Nesta from a social enterprise in Bhutan, which works to build a hazelnut industry and bring new sources of income to rural communities. Previously, she worked with diverse teams in the UN helping to coordinate and implement various rural development and humanitarian projects in Somalia and Kenya. She enjoys working with teams to achieve impactful positive outcomes, and finding creative solutions to problems.

Nassin studied Geography and Environment and has trained in Socio-Economic and Gender Analysis. In her spare time, she enjoys learning things, including languages, and getting out in nature.

At Nesta Challenges, Nicola is a Senior Programme Manager, currently managing delivery of Ofwat’s £200m Innovation Fund to grow the water sector’s capacity to innovate, enabling it to better meet the evolving needs of customers, society and the environment. She previously led the Legal Access Challenge, which sought digital technology solutions to help people to better understand and resolve their legal problems. 

Before joining Nesta, Nicola was a Director at global advisory company Willis Towers Watson, where as a qualified actuary she provided technical and strategic consultancy support to general insurance companies. Nicola is a Fellow of the On Purpose Associate Programme, a one year leadership programme for experienced professionals facilitating transition into careers within purpose driven businesses. 

Outside of work, Nicola loves to travel and to spend time outdoors hiking, running and rock climbing. She volunteers with Measuring the Good, which supports small charities and social enterprises to develop their impact practice.

Oli leads Nesta Challenges’ research team. He helps to identify promising areas for innovation and choose the most impactful focus for new prizes.

He has played a role in the development of much of our portfolio of prizes including the Mobility Unlimited Challenge and Open Up. He has also overseen research projects into potential prizes that haven’t (yet) seen the light of day ranging from aquaculture in India to whale conservation in the Atlantic: watch this space.

Alongside work on Nesta Challenges programmes, he has advised governments in Europe, North America and the Middle East, as well as the European Commission, on how to maximise the impact of their challenge prize programmes.

Prior to joining Nesta, he worked in science public relations, including a period as Public Information Officer for an ESA centre in Munich, where he coordinated European media relations for the Hubble Space Telescope.

Outside of work, he enjoys baking sourdough bread, drinking Belgian beer and learning Italian.

Piotrek is passionate about using foresight as a tool for achieving social impact; exploring possible visions for the future, anticipating obstacles and enabling the desirable opportunities to happen. He has over ten years’ experience in research within academia, private and non-profit sectors.

At Nesta Challenges, he is responsible for researching social and environmental problems and identifying opportunities to tackle them. He turns insight into practice by developing challenge-driven, open-innovation competitions that support communities of solvers and incentivise solutions to these problems. Since 2017, Piotrek has worked on topics ranging from emerging innovations in whale conservation or legal services to scaling up access to surgical procedures in low resource settings.

Prior to joining Nesta, Piotrek had worked at a boutique science commercialisation consultancy as a technology scout and at the University of Cambridge as a life scientist specialising in epigenetics and molecular biology. He also co-lead a few grassroots networks focused on translation of ‘deep’ and/or ‘bench’ science into commercial opportunities and acceleration of their market entry.

Piotrek is a fire performer specialising in ‘poi’ spinning and fire breathing (though less so since he grew a beard), loves nature and spending time outdoors.

Rhys is a Programme Manager at Nesta Challenges, and is currently leading the delivery of the CareerTech Challenge Prize with the Department for Education, a £1.2m programme to better equip adults to navigate a rapidly changing world of work..

Prior to joining Nesta, Rhys worked in the Queensland Government’s Innovation in Government team, where he oversaw the delivery of programs which connected startups, SMEs and researchers with complex government challenges. He holds a Bachelor of Business Management and Commerce, majoring in marketing and accounting, from the University of Queensland, Australia.

In his free time, Rhys enjoys reading, cooking and photography, and also serves on the board of a youth not-for-profit which supports young people to create social change in their communities, with a focus on projects which support access to education.

Ruth is a Programme Manager, working on the Longitude Prize and other Global Health projects.

Prior to Nesta Challenges, Ruth worked for an open-access antibiotic drug discovery initiative funded by the Wellcome Trust in Australia and led the global outreach programme and international partnerships. It has become a benchmark network for academics around the world to join the antimicrobial resistance (AMR) field. In the UK, Ruth worked for the Royal Society of Chemistry and ran life science and health programmes including the AMR campaign.

She brings to Nesta Challenges more than seven years of experience in antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and global health from project management roles, as well as experience in science communication, media and policy. Ruth was president for the Australian Science Communicators Queensland branch in 2016.

Ruth enjoys running the parks of London and travelling across the globe.

Sarah is currently on maternity leave. If you have any questions, please forward them to olivier.usher@nesta.org.uk.

As a researcher at Nesta Challenges, Sarah works to discover and define new opportunities for innovation where challenge prize methodology can be used to accelerate progress, empower innovators and unlock systemic change.

Sarah has a background in chemistry research, where she developed next generation solar energy technologies for widening energy access globally. After leaving academia to pursue a career in social innovation, Sarah worked with charities and local government across London to tackle a number of social and environmental challenges including digital inclusion, air pollution, community energy and youth-led projects. As a fellow with Year Here, Sarah developed a strong toolkit in service design methods and community engagement, and she is passionate about empowering people across society with the knowledge and skills to become changemakers.

In her spare time, Sarah runs a social enterprise that brings together policymakers and people working in frontline service delivery to share insights and develop their own innovation toolkit. She also runs a community garden in Peckham, London, and is co-host of a podcast called Utopia Dispatch where she gets to talk to lots of clever people who are radically reshaping society.

Seoana works across Nesta Challenges, helping to inspire more people to enter our prizes by facilitating the growth of an engaged community of solvers via our digital channels. She also supports the development of Nesta Challenges digital presence via social media strategies.

Her background is in publishing and digital marketing and she has extensive social media, content strategy and editorial experience. She has worked in a variety of industries, including roles at Grand Designs magazine, an Australian fashion company and within the communications team at Barking and Dagenham council.

Outside of work, Seoana runs an online community supporting and empowering women-owned small businesses and sharing mental health advice and experiences. She is also a self-confessed bookaholic who is trying to beat her 2020 reading target of 89 books.

As Communications Manager for Nesta Challenges, Shae works across all themes centre-wide. Shae aims to encourage more people to enter our prizes through digital engagement.

Shae’s background is in digital content, marketing and campaign management for several science charities and health publications, including SciDev.Net and the Wellcome Trust, focusing on developing user-friendly content and design for website and social media.

Shae has extensive social media, product management, design and editorial skills and a proven track record of tailoring content to different platforms, delivering complex strategies and projects.

In their spare time, they have also been involved in organising events for the local LGBTQI+ community for the past seven years, and in 2016 founded a campaign fighting for the rights of non-EU immigrant workers.

Teodora has a background in political science, which led her to develop a passion for complex, wicked problems that allow her to learn something new every day.

Prior to joining Nesta Challenges, she worked at a Budapest-based consultancy focusing on EU grant competitions, where she helped develop projects on topics ranging from air pollution mitigation and green infrastructure to art as a tool for innovating public service delivery. She also has experience working in international organizations, having interned for the European Commission Representation in Bucharest and at the NATO HQ in Brussels.

Outside of work, Teodora volunteers for a reforestation and rewilding initiative targeting the Carpathian forests of her native country, Romania. She also enjoys drawing fantasy maps and starting (but rarely finishing) creative writing projects. 

Tris has led Nesta Challenges from its origins as a Nesta experiment to being a global hub for expertise and insight on challenge prizes. His aim is to deliver challenge prizes that inspire and enable the development of high impact innovations

Before joining Nesta, Tris co-founded and led the social enterprise Tempo and was included in the first cohort of the Observer’s New Radicals. Tris has also run a Welsh university think tank, founded a social sector consultancy and was a Teach First Geography teacher complete with corduroy jacket.

In 2012 Tris was included on the Independent on Sunday’s ‘Happy List’ the alternative to the Sunday Times Rich List. Tris would rather be on the other list.

At Nesta Challenges, Veronika is an Assistant Programme Manager in the Global Health team currently focusing on the delivery of the Global Surgical Training Challenge. 

Prior to this, Veronika was working as the Content and Stakeholder Relations Officer supporting Nesta’s Chief’s Executive’s Office with both external and internal stakeholder engagement, project management and research.

Before joining Nesta, Veronika lived in Spain where she worked for a production services company.

Outside of work, she plays piano, enjoys getting out in nature or explores interesting talks, gigs and art exhibitions.