About Nesta

Nesta is an innovation foundation. For us, innovation means turning bold ideas into reality and changing lives for the better. We use our expertise, skills and funding in areas where there are big challenges facing society.

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Hugo Harper

Mission Director, healthy life mission

Hugo leads Nesta's healthy life mission.

He leads a team that identifies, tests and scales innovative solutions to obesity. This includes Nesta’s groundbreaking blueprint to halve obesity, a toolkit for policymakers to evaluate the efficacy of different obesity reduction policies.

Hugo is an expert in public health interventions and has a background in behavioural science. While obesity is his specialist area, he has worked on many aspects of public health, from antimicrobial resistance to workplace well-being. During the pandemic, Hugo spent almost all his time on the Covid-19 response and sat on the SAGE sub-group SPI-B. He has overseen projects with a wide range of partners including No10, government departments, large charities and private sector players.

Prior to Nesta, he worked at BIT (the Behavioural Insights Team) where he led their work on health and education, helping them grow from a small team in the Cabinet Office to a global organisation of more than 250 people. He has overseen projects with a wide range of partners including No10, government departments, large charities and private sector players.

Outside of the UK, he has spent time in both Singapore and Australia working on developing the adoption of a more behavioural approach to public health policy implementation.