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Government innovation

We back new ideas to help governments reform public services and improve citizen engagement through smarter use of people, data and technology.

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States of Change

We're orchestrating the world’s best people to strengthen innovation capacity across governments and develop the next generation of public innovation learning.
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Team

Jesper Christiansen

Jesper Christiansen

Head of Strategy and Development

Jesper is the Head of Strategy and Development in Nesta’s Innovation Skills team, contributing to Nesta's work to help people and organisations get better at innovating for the public good. In this role, he will particularly be exploring new avenues in the fields of social, public and government innovation.

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Brenton Caffin

Brenton Caffin

Executive Director, Global Innovation Partnerships

Brenton is Nesta’s Executive Director, Global Innovation Partnerships, leading Nesta's work globally to help people and organisations get better at innovating for the common good. He joined Nesta in May 2013 as Director of Innovation Skills.

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Bas Leurs

Bas Leurs

Head of Learning Experience Design

Bas is Head of Learning Experience Design in the Innovation Skills team. His role is to ensure that Nesta’s learning experiences – whether online or face-to-face – are high quality, impactful, and fun!

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Sonja Dahl

Sonja Dahl

Head of Innovation Learning Programmes

As Head of Innovation Learning Programmes, Sonja is responsible for designing and delivering Nesta’s Innovation Skills programmes for the public and community sectors.

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Kelly Duggan

Kelly Duggan

Learning Experience Designer

Kelly is a Learning Experience Designer in the Innovation Skills team.

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Isobel Roberts

Isobel Roberts

Content and Communications Manager, Innovation Skills

Isobel works in the Innovation Skills team as Content and Communications Manager, helping to build Nesta's learning and development offering.

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Nicole Barling-Luke

Nicole Barling-Luke

Learning Services Manager, Innovation Skills

Nicole works in the Innovation Skills team as a Learning Services Manager. She supports the practical implementation of Nesta’s public sector learning programme.

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Elena Oyon

Elena Oyon

Learning Services Manager

Elena's role involves managing the delivery of evidence masterclasses and working with the Skills team to help build its learning and development.

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Diana Hidalgo

Diana Hidalgo

Design and Production Assistant

Diana is the Design and Production Assistant for the Innovation Skills team.

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Centre for Social Action Innovation Fund

The Centre for Social Action Innovation Fund was a £14 million fund to support the growth of innovations that mobilise people’s energy and talents to help each other, working alongside public services.
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Team

Vicki Sellick

Vicki Sellick

Executive Director of Programmes

Vicki is an Executive Director at Nesta, responsible for the foundation's grant making function.   She leads the Programmes Team who aim to support and scale innovation for the public good. Much of this is achieved through grant making to support innovators directly, both those protoyping new ideas and those scaling evidenced interventions. Our portfolio of live funds currently totals £20m+, using resources from Nesta's endowment and working closely with co-funding partners like DCMS, Cardiff University, Big Lottery Fund, Heritage Lottery Fund, EU, Welsh Givernment and others. We're not limited to grant making though. The Programmes Team also incubate new ideas ourselves, run experiments and trials and convene gatherings to surface the best innovations.

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Mandeep Hothi

Mandeep Hothi

Senior Programme Manager, Innovation Lab

Manny worked on the Centre for Social Action Innovation Fund. His focus was on scaling digital ventures that get people involved in social action. He also led our work on Digital Public Services, looking at how we might accelerate progress of digital transformation across government.

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Carrie Deacon

Carrie Deacon

Head of Social Action Innovation

Carrie is Head of Social Action Innovation at Nesta.  Carrie leads Nesta's work on social action and people powered public services - that is the need to move from a paternalistic model of public services where services are 'done to' people, to a more collaborative approach where people are involved in the design and delivery of our public services.   Carrie's  current portfolio of work supports a range of people powered innovation projects including funds that are testing new models of intensive volunteering, testing models harnessing the time and talents of people aged 50+ in new ways, as well as innovations exploring the role of citizens in emergency response.

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Lynette Lucas

Lynette Lucas

Programme Coordinator

Lynette worked in the business support team, providing practical support across a number of programmes. This includes organising events, managing processes and making sure that programmes are well organised and delivered.

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Halima Khan

Halima Khan

Executive Director, Health Lab

Halima is Executive Director of the Health Lab, which aims to create a people powered health system. Health Lab brings together Nesta's practical work on health and ageing to achieve more impact. The aim of Health Lab is to create real change to improve people's health, through working towards a health and care system that is for people, by people and with people. Halima works with innovators across public services, civil society and business to develop and scale new responses to ageing and health. Current areas of focus include making the case for person and community centred care, rapid system change, mobilising communities, digital health and the Coalition for Collaborative Care.  Halima advises on health and ageing innovation and has published Five hours a day: systemic innovation for an ageing population and People Powered Health: Health for people, by people and with people.

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Catherine Russell

Catherine Russell

Senior Programme Manager

Catherine is a Senior Programme Manager in the Health Lab at Nesta. Her work focuses on People Powered Results - a partnership approach to complex service transformation in health and care settings - working with leaders to empower front-line health and care practitioners to achieve meaningful change in 100 days. She has also been actively involved in the Centre for Social Action Innovation Fund, managing a portfolio of grants working with volunteers in innovative ways to improve outcomes for older people and those with long-term health conditions.

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Katy Rutherford

Katy Rutherford

Senior Programme Manager, Health Lab

Katy is a Senior Programme Manager in Health Lab. She currently manages Accelerating Ideas, a five year partnership between Nesta and Big Lottery Fund to support eight highly promising ageing innovation to scale their reach and impact to many more people across the UK.

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Jullie Tran Graham

Jullie Tran Graham

Programme Manager

Jullie worked with a number of health and ageing projects funded through the Accelerating Ideas programme, focusing on social innovations that make it possible for people to be more involved in their health. She has a particular interest in knowledge, learning and impact management - encouraging projects to understand all the information and practices they may need to support their improvement and growth.   ​Jullie joined Nesta in February 2015 and has worked on a number of major people powered health programmes. Previous work includes the Centre for Social Action Innovation Fund and Helping in Hospitals. ​

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Annie Finnis

Annie Finnis

Director, Health Lab

Annie is Director of the Health Lab at Nesta.

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Dan Jones

Dan Jones

Director, Innovation Lab

Dan was a Director in the Innovation Lab where he oversaw practical programme work on public and social innovation, with a particular focus on inclusion and mobilising citizen engagement. This involved partnerships across the public, private and social sector to foster community-led solutions to key social and economic challenges. He was responsible for the £14.5m Centre for Social Action Innovation Fund, which focused on scaling innovations that mobilise volunteers, service users and professionals to deliver public services in new, more impactful ways.  Other projects included Innovation in Childcare, Innovation in Jobs and Rethinking Parks (a partnership with Nesta, Big Lottery Fund and Heritage Lottery Fund).

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DECODE

DECODE provides tools that put individuals in control of whether they keep their personal data private or share it for the public good.
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Team

Tom Symons

Tom Symons

Principal Researcher

Tom is a Principal Researcher in the Policy and Research team at Nesta. His research focuses on government innovation and he is currently undertaking research into the ways data can help governments to improve decision making and support innovation.

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Theo Bass

Theo Bass

Researcher, Government Innovation

Theo is a Researcher in the Policy and Research team

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Eddie Copeland

Eddie Copeland

Director of Government Innovation

Eddie Copeland is Nesta's Director of Government Innovation, responsible for leading projects concerning city data analytics, behavioural insights, digital government, collaborative platforms and digital democracy. He is an advocate of government and public sector organisations making smarter use of people, data and technology to deliver more and better with less.

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