Glen Mehn

Head of Development Innovation, Innovation Skills

Glen is Head of Development Innovation in the Innovation Skills team at Nesta. His role is to work with organisations around the world at the sharp end of social problems, and help them approach those problems in an innovative fashion.

Glen has worked for over a fifteen years supporting early stage innovation practice. He has sat on steering committees and advisory boards for a range of for-profit and non-profit organisations including UNDP, DFID, Nike Foundation and Oxfam, as well as a range of Tech for Good startups.

From 2010-2016, Glen was a founder at Bethnal Green Ventures, Europe’s first accelerator programme supporting ventures using technology to solve social and environmental problems, working with Tech for Good organisations including Fairphone, DrDoctor, Open Utility, and HearToday. During that time, he also led on BGV’s work with international organisations and delivered programmes in 25 countries on four continents.

Before that, Glen worked with a range of social startups in Uganda and Zambia, after a decade building IT systems for Silicon Valley startups. His first career was as a designer from the days when the internet was only used by people on green-and-black screens.

In his copious spare time, Glen runs The Kitschies – the prize for progressive, intelligent, and entertaining speculative fiction – and he has been known to write speculative fiction himself. He serves on a range of boards, including as a school governor for St. John’s Angell Town primary school in Brixton, the advisory board for Konnektis and PlaqueChecker, and others. Glen holds a BA in English, Sociology and Design from the University of New Orleans and an MBA from Oxford University.