FINANCE INNOVATION LAB - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Managing Director of Three Fin Consulting
Alice is Managing Director of Three Fin Consulting. She has worked with the UN, charities and financial service providers for over a decade to create a fairer and more sustainable financial sector.
She began her career at Lloyd's of London, before shifting her focus to social and environmental issues within the financial sector. As Research and Innovation Officer at the International Labour Organization's Impact Insurance Facility, Alice worked with insurers to introduce new inclusive products. She since set-up the consulting firm Three Fin Consulting, and has led campaigns for the financial sector to address climate and social issues on behalf of UN organizations and charities.
Alice is a graduate of Cambridge University and the Geneva Graduate Institute's Executive Master in Development Policy and Practice, and holds a Diploma from the Chartered Insurance Institute.
Job Titles:
- Intrapreneurship Programme Manager
Ally is Intrapreneurship Programme Manager at the Lab, working with the Head of Intrapreneurship to deliver the Lab's programme for shifting mainstream finance.
Ally holds a BSc (Hons) in Human Science from University College London, and has spent the past decade working with professionals across the sciences - as well as volunteering with various charitable organisations. For the past five years Ally worked for the Royal Society of Biology (RSB) representing them at workplaces and events across the country, and delivering new initiatives to better engage with their community.
Ally's career highlights include designing and delivering a public engagement event with 48 members of the RSB, recruiting the Medical Director of the UK's leading charity for children with brain injury, creating and running debate training programmes for several government-funded cohorts of PhD students, facilitating scientists to network as people behind the professions at conferences, and establishing the RSB's first ambassador network.
Anna is a specialist in economic systems change, a leadership coach, and an advocate for social and environmental justice.
She is Senior Advisor at the Economic Change Unit, a non-profit organisation working for a more resilient, secure and just economy and Senior Associate at Cohere Partners, a strategy & communications consultancy for organisations looking to shape the future of business, society, technology and culture. Until April 2020, Anna was CEO at the Finance Innovation Lab.
Anna is a trustee of the New Economics Foundation, an Associate of the Institute for Social Banking, and a Fellow of the RSA. She holds an MSc in Global Ethics and has written for a wide range of publications including the Guardian, Stir to Action, Pioneers Post and the New Statesman. She has also featured in the Women in Social Enterprise 100, Women in Fintech Powerlist, and Brummel Magazine's Inspirational Women in the City.
Anna has been working with the Lab since April 2022 on their Policy Forward Look and has a particular interest in reforming the mainstream financial system to meet environmental and social goals.
She previously worked as a Research and Policy Officer for Women's Budget Group, in areas as diverse as housing, healthcare, transport, employment and childcare but had a particular focus on the environment through their Feminist Green New Deal. She also has several years experience as a Researcher in health care at King's College London and an academic background in Economic Anthropology through her time at the London School of Economics.
Bertrand is CEO of ChangeSquare, a corporate finance firm for sustainable investing, aiming to enhance the lives of people and planet by creating more avenues through which capital can flow into high growth impact ventures and impact funds across Africa, Asia, and Europe, and addressing the UN SDGs.
He is an investment expert, with specific expertise in designing and implementing innovative financial products and working with the social and environmental sectors. He has 15 years' experience in the City, with Deutsche Bank in the Strategic Equity Transactions Group. He was part of a team that structured equity-related transactions for the bank's corporate, private and strategic European clients, specialising in monetisation strategies, equity financing, employee incentives, M&A derivatives, and share buy-backs.
Bertrand holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Bristol and a M.Sc. in Management Science and Operational Research.
Brett is a journalist, campaigner and the author of The Heretic's Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money.
He works on financial reform, alternative currencies, P2P economic systems, corporate transparency and economic advocacy campaigns with a wide variety of NGOs, artists and student groups. This has included ActionAid, Global Justice Now, OpenOil and the Move Your Money campaign. He has written for publications including The Guardian, New Scientist, Wired Magazine and CNN.com, and provides commentary on financial reform and crypto-currencies on media channels such as BBC, Arte and VPRO. He also helps facilitate a course on power and design at the University of the Arts London, and facilitates workshops on alternative finance with The London School of Financial Arts. He is an advisory board member of the Brixton Pound community currency.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder and Joint Managing Director of Abundance
Bruce Davis is co-founder and joint Managing Director of Abundance, the first regulated debt crowdfunding company in the UK. He is an anthropologist with a creative drive that helped create the world's first peer to peer lender Zopa in 2004, as well as products and innovations for most of the UK leading banks and building societies. Bruce is a founding director of the UK Crowdfunding Association and Visiting Research Fellow at the Bauman Institute, Leeds University.
Bruce gained an MA from the University of Cambridge and has since worked for companies large and small on branding, innovation and research. He has worked in many countries around the world, developing insights into the social life of money and its impact on everyday life.
Bruce was previously Non-Executive Director of the Move Your Money campaign and was previously a trustee of The Finance Innovation Lab.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder and Executive Director of the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance
Bryan is co-founder and Executive Director of the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School.
He has led and co-authored more than 30 high-impact industry and policy reports on the state of alternative finance both at national and international levels, covering a wide range of topics from crowdfunding, peer-to-peer lending, cryptoassets to regulatory innovations.
He has advised and collaborated with many institutions on technology-enabled financial innovation research including the UK Financial Conduct Authority, the British Business Bank, the UK Department of International Development, the Asian Development Bank Institute, the Inter-American Development Bank, the European Commission, the UNSGSA, and the World Bank.
Bryan was trained in economic geography and public policy at Cambridge and Oxford Universities.
Job Titles:
- Independent Researcher and Writer
Christine Berry is an independent researcher and writer based in Manchester, focusing on economic systems change with a particular specialism in the financial system.
Christine is co-author of People Get Ready!, a book exploring how social movements can prepare to help generate transformative change under a radical government. Her work has been covered in the Economist, the Evening Standard and the Guardian, which described her as ‘one of the central figures' in the new left economics. She is a Trustee of Rethinking Economics, a Fellow of the Next System Project and a Commissioning Editor of Renewal journal. Christine has previously worked for the New Economics Foundation and served as a founding trustee of the Lab until 2018.
Job Titles:
- Independent Strategy & Messaging Consultant, and Associate Director
- Strategic Communications Associate
Daniel Stanley is an independent Strategy & Messaging Consultant, and Associate Director of nonprofit research initiative the Future Narratives Lab, which carries out projects to understand the underlying cultural models that act as barriers to social & political change.
Over the last decade he has worked with campaigns, coalitions, foundations and political parties in the UK and globally to develop strategies for broadening the appeal of alternative social and economic propositions, including seven years leading digital mobilisation agency Small Axe. He writes and lectures on strategic communications, cultural psychology, narrative and identity.
He is Associate Director at strategic communications consultancy Cohere Partners, and member of co-operative infrastructure development body Stir to Action.
David spent his early career in strategy consulting with McKinsey & Company and subsequently in finance with Lloyds Banking Group. He left the city and, via OnPurpose, joined UnLtd (The Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs) to support mission led businesses deliver societal change. David is passionate about the role that entrepreneurs can have in driving positive impact, whether at a local, community or a systemic level.
As a Director of UnLtd, his role focuses on tackling the systemic barriers social entrepreneurs face when starting and growing their social businesses. David leads UnLtd's major strategic partnership work, including partnerships with the likes of Comic Relief and eBay, oversees how UnLtd delivers the most inclusive and impactful support to entrepreneurs they work with, and in recent years has set up managed UnLtd's social investment funds.
Job Titles:
- Advocacy Associate
- Associate at the Lab
David Fagleman is Advocacy Associate at the Lab, currently working on our Transforming Data programme, with a specific focus on Lifting the Lid on Fintech.
David has worked in financial services since 2015 when he joined Cash Services UK. He became Head of Policy and Research and was part of the transfer to UK Finance in 2019. Prior to this, he worked at the innovation foundation Nesta, the Westminster-based think tank ResPublica and for Rachel Reeves MP. He co-founded Enryo in 2020, an independent consultancy designed to support the financial services industry as it navigates times of change.
Diane has almost 20 years' experience in Community Finance and was the CEO of Moneyline, a leading not-for-profit CDFI on a mission to transform the way low-income households access fair and affordable financial products. Diane built a customer-focused brand delivering innovative products, grounded in the insight of the communities they serve. Her work and leadership raised the bar for what people expect of financial services in the UK for everyone.
Diane is an Alumni of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses programme and has also studied at Harvard Business School, completing their Strategic Perspectives in Non-profit Management programme and a US study tour of credit unions and micro-lenders.
Diane has extensive social sector lending knowledge. She has been a member of various advisory groups for research into financial inclusion and the availability of affordable credit for the financially excluded, including working with JP Morgan, the Centre for Social Justice, the Finance Innovation Lab, the End High-Cost Credit Alliance, and the Cabinet Office.
Job Titles:
- Non - Executive Director for Fair4All Finance
- Strategic Adviser
Faith is a strategic adviser to industry, government and regulators on fintech, Open Banking, Open Finance and Smart Data.
She is focused on creating products and services consumers get genuine value from and love using. Faith is a Non-Executive Director for Fair4All Finance, promoting financial inclusion through the distribution of dormant assets, the Payment Systems Regulator, and the Current Account Switch Service at Pay.UK. She also advises the Lending Standards Board on the implementation of the Authorised Push Payment Scams Code. Previously she was the Independent Consumer Representative on the Open Banking Implementation Entity Steering Group, a member of the FCA‘s Financial Services Consumer Panel, and led the Data Right Working Group for the FCA's Open Finance Advisory Group. During an earlier part of her career she established Toynbee Hall‘s financial inclusion services. She is a 2010 Clore Social Fellow.
Job Titles:
- Positive Money 's Executive Director
Fran is Positive Money's Executive Director. Positive Money is a research and campaigning organisation which aims to democratise money and banking, so that it works for society and not against it.
Fran studied Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge and went on to complete a PhD researching carbon dioxide storage. Fran became interested in economics and money creation after realising that the huge environmental and inequality crises we face could not easily be fixed without re-thinking how the current economic system works, and how to redesign it. Fran has worked at various global organisations including the United Nations, Greenpeace and BP.
Dr Gemma Bone Dodds FRSA is an innovation and systems change specialist who concentrates on economic transformation for people and planet. She is founder and director of All In Agency, a research and systems change agency dedicated to transforming the economy to serve the needs of society and the environment.
Gemma has a PhD in diverse economies, which she carried out in collaboration with the Finance Innovation Lab between 2012 and 2016. She has authored a number of high-impact papers on banking and finance including Banking for the Common Good: Laying the foundations for safe, sustainable, stakeholder banking in Scotland, A Bank for the North East and the Green Finance Certificate.
Job Titles:
- Programme and Communications Officer
Gurjinder is Programme and Communications Officer at the Lab.
Gurjinder holds a BA in International Studies with a focus on the Middle East from Leiden University. After graduating in 2021, Gurjinder spent six months working as a Content Executive for My Study Life. She has a passion for languages and is currently working to improve her proficiency in both Arabic and Spanish.
Job Titles:
- Director of People, Resources and Operations
Holly is Director of People, Resources and Operations at the Finance Innovation Lab, working with the COO to look after the internal processes which enable our team's work.
Holly previously managed operations for a science education centre at Queen Mary University of London, and prior to that was Head of Operations and Income at Child.org, a global health charity. She also volunteers managing a team of stewards at Glastonbury Festival.
Holly is part-qualified as a management accountant with CIMA, holds an MSc in Poverty and Development from the University of Manchester, and an LLB in Law from the University of Sussex.
Job Titles:
- Associate at the Lab
- Fellowship Associate
Jacqueline Lim is Fellowship Associate at the Lab working in conjunction with the Climate Safe Lending Lab on a new Fellowship programme for intrapreneurs in banking. She is an advisor, facilitator and coach working with individuals, groups and organisations to inspire and navigate the path to leading equitable and transformative change. She brings a range of systems approaches and tools, combined with a deep equity lens, to her work.
She has worked in government, business and civil society over two decades, and spent eight years at sustainability/systems change agency Volans. More recently, she has worked with She Leads Change, Liminal and Systems Innovation. Jacqueline is from Singapore where she began her career as a social worker and Government scholar. She is currently a member of the Expert Group on SDG Investments in Cities convened by the OECD.
Job Titles:
- Special Advisor to Triodos
- Strategist, Sustainable Finance Expert
James is a strategist, sustainable finance expert, speaker and systems-thinker who focuses on the intersection of sustainability and business. His principal interest is how the relationships between different stakeholder groups can lead to innovative new social business models.
James is a Special Advisor to Triodos, Europe's leading sustainable bank. This role follows over 20 years' senior management experience within Triodos including, most recently, as Director of Corporate Strategy. Previously, he was Managing Director of a leading public renewable energy investment company (now Thrive Renewables).
James is a tutor on the Postgraduate Certificate in Sustainable Business course at Cambridge Institute for Sustainable Leadership and a strategic advisor for a number of organisations and projects in the UK, Europe and internationally.
James has been involved in the Finance Innovation Lab since its inception and was the first board chair after it became an independent charity. He has served as a member of several advisory groups on sustainable finance at UK, European and international level and is author of several reports and papers on sustainable finance and impact investing. James served on the Global Steering Committee for the UNEP Finance Initiative and is one of the founding developers of the UN Principles for Responsible Banking.
Job Titles:
- CEO
- Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Jubilee Debt Campaign
Jesse is CEO at the Finance Innovation Lab, leading the Lab's work to build a financial system that serves people and planet.
Prior to joining the Lab, Jesse was Director of the Development Strategy and Finance Programme at ODI, an international think tank, where he led a research and policy team working on how to finance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Prior to that, Jesse was Director of the European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad), a network of 50 European civil society organisations (CSOs) working for transformative changes to global and European policies, institutions and structures to ensure an environmentally sustainable financial and economic system that works to eradicate poverty and ensure human rights for all. Before that he was Coordinator of the Bretton Woods Project, a watchdog of the World Bank and IMF, and worked for ActionAid UK on development finance policy. He has also worked for the Department for International Development (DFID) and various other non-governmental organisations, on both development finance and international environmental policy.
Jesse is chair of the board of trustees of Jubilee Debt Campaign, and a trustee of Tax Justice UK. He has a Masters in Finance and Economics from SOAS, a Masters in International Politics from Aberystwyth University, and a Bachelors degree in Politics and Parliamentary Studies from Leeds University.
Job Titles:
- Head of Climate - Safe Banking
Jon Dennis is the Head of Climate-safe Banking at the Finance Innovation Lab, a programme seeking to accelerate the alignment of mainstream finance with the 1.5C temperature goal of the Paris Agreement.
Prior to joining the Lab, Jon worked for WWF UK where he held several senior roles focused on sustainable finance. He led a successful campaign advocating for mandatory net zero transition plans up to COP26 and was directly involved in the UK Government's Transition Plan Taskforce. Jon also worked in close partnership with Aviva, leading the finance work for WWF and co-authoring a number of influential policy position papers.
Before WWF, Jon worked as a researcher at the climate change think tank E3G, where he focused on UK and EU sustainable finance agendas, including supporting the delivery of the UK's Green Finance Taskforce. Jon began his career at the global investment manager Schroders, building a number of foundational years experience as a corporate action specialist.
Jon has a masters in Environmental Management & Policy from Lund University (Sweden) and a Bachelors in Geography from Southampton University. His masters thesis explored the role of venture capital financing in supporting cleantech innovation in the Nordic region.
Since co-founding britishairways.com in 1994, Julia has led a series of start ups in the digital and environmental sectors, and invested a combination of her time and money in a portfolio of sustainable businesses, including Loco2, and Trillion Fund, a loan-based crowdfunding platform offering triple bottom line returns of people, planet and profit.
Julia co-founded the UK Crowdfunding Association in 2012, and has successfully campaigned to make finance more democratic and accessible to regular investors, under the banner #wealthisnotaskillset. She is a member of Innovate 50 in the UK, CF 50 in the States, and previously served a two-year Non-Executive Director role on the Move Your Money campaign.
Job Titles:
- Executive Director and Co - Founder of EngagedX
Karl is Executive Director and Co-Founder of EngagedX. He specialises in social impact investing and provides bespoke consultancy, thought leadership, advocacy and policy work. He has worked internationally across private, public and social sectors. He is an experienced entrepreneur and has held leadership, management and executive positions.
He is appointed as Senior Research Adviser to the UN's Social Impact Fund (UNSIF), for whom he leads a global research consortium to improve the analytical framework for social impact investing; a member of Groupe d'Experts de la Commission sur l'Entrepreneuriat Social (GECES), which is appointed by the European Commission to advise on its Social Business Initiative; sits on the OECD expert group on social impact investing; Senior Fellow of the Finance Innovation Lab; Adviser to the Global Value Exchange. In 2011, he co-authored Making Good in Social Impact Investment: Opportunities in an Emerging Asset Class. Karl is an UnLtd Award Winner for social entrepreneurship and holds an MBA specialising in entrepreneurship and project management.
Katie is Associate Director (Understanding Change) at NPC, supporting charities and funders to understand the change they want to see and how to get there. This includes using approaches such as theory of change, strategy, user involvement and systems change to maximise their impact. Katie has authored reports covering a range of social causes-including health, homelessness and poverty-as well as issues affecting the charity sector such as funder collaboration, charity mergers, and power dynamics in grant-making.
Before joining NPC, Katie gained ten years' experience in charities, grant-making, research and consultancy. At One World Children's Fund, she managed a programme that partnered with community-based organisations in over twenty countries to improve children's lives. She has worked and studied in the UK, USA and India.
Katie holds a BA in History from the University of Cambridge and an MSc in Development Management from the Open University. She is a Fellow of the RSA and has served as a Global Shaper at the World Economic Forum. Outside work, she helps to run her local community garden in East London.
Job Titles:
- Movement Building and Campaigns Lead
Kay is Movement Building and Campaigns lead with Sam. Prior to joining the Lab, Kay was leading the work of TCC (Trefnu Cymunedol Cymru / Together Creating Communities) in North Wales, the UK's oldest community organising charity. Kay was at TCC for ten years, and after returning from maternity leave, started a job-share of co-leadership with Sam. At TCC Kay supported a range of diverse communities in running successful campaigns, ranging from the local to the national.
Kay graduated from the University of Warwick with a BA (Hons) in Theatre and Performance Studies, also studying Politics and British Sign Language. After graduating, Kay worked with Oxfam and then the British Red Cross. More recently, Kay completed ILM (leadership and management) level 5. For six years Kay was a non-executive director at Friends of the Earth, and is now the Chair of RECLAIM, a charity based in Manchester which powers working-class young people. Kay also works as a freelance consultant, and is currently working with funder The Fore.
Kit qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Price Waterhouse in London, and has since spent most of his career in financial services. This includes ten years in consumer finance at Chartered Trust, four years at Zurich Financial Services, and two years as Finance Director of Stroud and Swindon Building Society.
From 2008 to 2019 he worked at Triodos Bank, one of the world's leading sustainable banks, an organisation closely aligned with his personal values of fairness, inclusion and transparency. For most of his time at Triodos he was UK Head of Finance and Risk, and during 2018-19 he was Head of Brexit Implementation. He now has a portfolio of roles centred on working to make the financial system fairer, more inclusive and more sustainable, including consultancy work, and, from 2020 to 2021, a period as a Trustee NED of Avon Mutual Ltd, a community banking start-up. He is also a trustee of the Nationwide Foundation, the Nationwide Building Society's charitable foundation, whose vision is for everyone in the UK to have access to a decent home that they can afford.
Kit's senior and board level roles in financial services have included finance, strategy, risk management, governance structures, and capital and treasury management. He has a deep understanding of how the financial system works, and a commitment to helping to change it to enable a fairer, more sustainable society.
Malcolm is a social banker and disruptive thinker with a background in international wholesale banking, including export, trade and Islamic finance, the third sector and values based banking.
Malcolm developed the concept of a bank for charity and piloted a loan fund, Investors in Society, in the mid 1990s, before becoming founding Chief Executive of The Charity Bank in 2002, then the world's only registered general charity and authorised bank. Malcolm took the bank to profitability before standing down in 2012. He joined the Institute for Social Banking to deliver the international summer schools in 2013 and 2014, where he co-developed the first citizens' response to the UNEP Inquiry into the Design of a Sustainable Financial System.
Job Titles:
- Associate at the Lab
- Media Associate
Mark Hemingway is Media Associate at the Lab, working to amplify the voice for social and environmental justice in financial reform debates.
Mark has over 35 years' PR experience, including as Head of Communications for multi-national banks such as HSBC and HBOS. He has advised extensively on reputation and crisis management, media relations and corporate campaigning throughout his career.
He has also been heavily involved in third sector work, including a period as chair of the campaigning charity, Empty Homes.
Job Titles:
- Head of Policy and Advocacy
- Lab 's Head of Policy
Marloes Nicholls is the Lab's Head of Policy and Advocacy, leading our work to build the power of civil society organisations to influence finance-related regulation, law and policy, to ensure that the rules of the game are reoriented around social and environmental purpose. She ran Lab Fellowship - a unique incubator for financial innovations that put social and environmental purpose at their heart - from 2016-2019.
In recognition of her contribution to policymaking and regulation, she was included on the Women in Fintech Powerlist 2020. She regularly speaks about rapid technological change underway in finance, and what that means for people and planet. Recent examples include the ABCUL annual conference, The ODI Summit, The Alan Turing Institute's AI Ethics in Finance conference, and teaching the data ethics module of Cranfield University's new MSc in Retail and Digital Banking. Marloes is also a member of the Friends Provident Foundation Programme Advisory Group.
Before joining the Lab, Marloes was Programme Manager and Researcher at the think tank Meteos, and co-founder and director of the campaign Move Your Money UK. She also worked at Oxfam on global campaigns and policy. As Vice-Chair of the Tenants and Residents Association of a large estate in East London, she helped to establish a community garden, cooking scheme, and regular street parties. An economist by training, Marloes graduated from Nuffield College, University of Oxford, with a Masters of Philosophy in 2011 and received a first class bachelors in Philosophy and Economics from the University of Bristol in 2008.
Martin is one of the UK's leading media advisers to the retail financial services industry. As a founding member of the Virgin Direct (now Virgin Money) management team, he was the product designer for the ground-breaking firm before managing its highly successful PR function, winning the MORI annual journalist poll for best press office for three years running.
After 7 years at Virgin, he left to become a freelance PR and lobbying adviser to other brands competing by offering a genuinely better customer proposition. Martin was pivotal in getting the now legendary Zopa taken seriously and embraced by the press and broadcast media, before handing over to others after 6 years as the pioneering P2P lender's adviser. His recent and current clients include leading names in the alternative finance movement - including Abundance, Seedrs, SyndicateRoom and Landbay - along with influential bodies including the Pensions Policy Institute, The Fairbanking Foundation and Positive Money.
Job Titles:
- Fellow at the Forward Institute
- Head of EMEA Sustainable Solutions at Morgan Stanley
Mikael is Head of EMEA Sustainable Solutions at Morgan Stanley, where he partners with the Firm's Institutional Securities and Investment Management businesses to scale sustainable finance across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.
Mikael started his career as an economist at HM Treasury before taking up a diplomatic posting to the EU in Brussels. On return to the Treasury in 2009, he led post-crisis reforms on bank resolution, before being appointed Deputy Director for financial sanctions, anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing and Head of the UK Delegation to the Financial Action Task Force. In 2013, Mikael joined the Financial Conduct Authority where he was responsible for leading a major programme of conduct and governance reforms in banking. Mikael left the FCA in 2015 to help establish the Banking Standards Board where he was Executive Director and member of the Board. At the BSB, Mikael conducted annual culture assessments of the major UK banks, working with boards and executive teams to identify where change was most needed, and partnered with firms, leading academics, and expert organisations to design and roll out interventions.
Mikael is Fellow at the Forward Institute, and was an Advisor to the City of London Corporation's Social Mobility Taskforce and an Honorary Lecturer at Queen Mary University London. He has an MA in Economics from the University of Cambridge and is studying for a PhD in Artificial Intelligence and Ethics at the University of Leeds.
Job Titles:
- Vice - Chair
- CEO of Opportunity International UK
Nana Francois is CEO of Opportunity International UK, a charity which works to advance microfinance and sustainable enterprise, education and agriculture - a hand up not a hand out - and to build Impact investing opportunities in Africa and the Global South.
Nana was formerly Director of Investment Solutions at FaithInvest, a UK non profit which works globally with faith-based asset owning institutions of all faith and sizes, she working with groups at all stages of the investment journey, to support them to align their assets (financial investments, land, real estate) to their own faith consistent investment principles.
Nana comes with a wealth of professional banking and investments experience from alternative investments to developed and emerging markets to corporate strategy - 20 years across strategy and execution, cash and payments, and investments in London and Johannesburg (including Gartmore Investment Management, J.P. Morgan Chase and Barclays Africa/Absa).
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Associate of the Lab
- MOE Certified Coach
Natalie is an Associate of the Lab, managing the 2021/22 Climate Safe Lending Fellowship - an initiative which brings together intrapreneurs in finance and equips them to drive climate positive action. Alongside her work with the Lab, Natalie runs Fledge Consultancy, helping purpose-driven founders to embed social and environmental impact at the heart of their start-ups, so that as they grow, so too does the difference they make to society.
Natalie brings expertise in impact management, in particular from her work with the Social Tech Trust, for whom she develops and delivers support to tech-for-good initiatives as part of programmes such as Microsoft AI for Social Impact. Previously, Natalie co-designed and led programmes aimed at enabling people working within corporates to create social impact whilst developing their leadership, and at building philanthropists' understanding of social change and strategic giving.
Natalie is a MOE certified coach who mentors and coaches diverse purpose-driven professionals through partners including the School for Social Entrepreneurs, and the University of Westminster.
Job Titles:
- Director of Programmes and Campaigns
Nick is Director of Programmes and Campaigns at the Finance Innovation Lab, overseeing our work to grow alternative finance, shift mainstream finance and influence financial regulation, with a particular focus on community-building, strategy and communications.
Before joining the Lab in 2023, Nick worked at 350.org, leading campaigns on fossil fuel finance and supporting the growth of the climate justice movement in Europe. Prior to that, he worked at Oxfam, first in fundraising and then in Campaigns & Policy, where he campaigned on issues ranging from tax justice and economic inequality, to climate change, aid, and the war in Syria.
Nonhlanhla is an educator, creative and new economics organiser. They are a co-founder of Decolonising Economics, a grassroots collective working to build a new economy movement that is rooted in racial justice principles and decolonial struggle. Their work involves investing in communities of colour who are working to build an economic democracy, enabling shared strategising, resource distribution and providing expertise.
Nonhlanhla's work also explores the "felt" and "lived" experiences of the economy, through organising with environmental and land justice grassroot groups such as Wretched of the Earth and Land In Our Names, delivering experiential workshops and archiving the wonder that is the Black and Brown solidarity economics movements in the UK through film and writing.
Rebecca is COO at the Finance Innovation Lab, looking after the people, processes and resources which enable our work.
Rebecca has experience across private, public and social sector organisations. Prior to joining the Lab, Rebecca was Grants Lead at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), where she also founded and co-chaired the DCMS Green Network, championing green issues and supporting colleagues to make more sustainable choices in work and at home. She spent several years living and working in Germany, latterly as Senior International Tax Specialist at the Deutsche Bahn Group in Berlin.
Rebecca holds an MSc in Voluntary Sector Management from the Centre for Charity Effectiveness at Bayes Business School's, with a research focus on culture and leadership in UK social sector organisations working for systems change. She is a chartered accountant (FCA), and also holds an MA in Middle East Studies from the University of Exeter, and a BA in Theology from the University of Oxford.
Reema Patel is Head of Engagement and a founding team member of the Ada Lovelace Institute, an independent research body with a mission to ensure data and AI work for people and society.
She is an experienced policy professional who has led various citizen engagement initiatives on complex and controversial policy areas in the UK, including the RSA's Economic Council, which successfully worked with and influenced the Bank of England's public engagement strategy.
Reema has also consulted for a variety of international organisations, including the Danish Board of Technology Foundation and Nextdoor.com, a San Francisco based technology social media start-up. She serves on the advisory board to Scope's Big Hack programme, as well as on NESTA's Participatory Futures programme. She is a Fellow of the RSA, founding trustee of a community run library, and a local councillor.
Job Titles:
- Movement Building and Campaigns Lead
Sam is Movement Building and Campaigns Lead with Kay, developing our campaign to rapidly scale up the ecosystem of organisations that put social and environmental purpose at the centre of their mission.
Sam has most recently been the Lead Organiser, with Kay, at TCC (Trefnu Cymunedol Cymru / Together Creating Communities). They collectively secured funding which enabled the expansion of the staff team, grew the membership, led the campaign that committed the Welsh Government to pilot adding an extra £1 to the free school meal allowance for secondary school pupils so they could also buy breakfast, and trained people from diverse backgrounds in community organising. For six years prior to that Sam coordinated projects with North Wales Women's Centre, particularly focused on supporting women into education and employment, and the centre's counselling service. She spent two and a half years supporting policy development for the Liverpool City Region, with a focus on housing. This followed almost three years as a Community Organiser with TCC, where she led co-led campaigns on the living wage, Fairtrade and waste.
An active member of her local Friends of the Earth group, Sam has most recently been involved in saving a community garden from development and organising people to respond to the Local Development Plan.
Sam holds an MA in Sociology from the University of Glasgow, a PGDip in Environmental Policy from The Open University and an MSc in Voluntary Sector Management, with PGDip in Marketing and Fundraising from The Centre for Charity Effectiveness at Bayes Business School.
Sarah is an experienced charity finance professional, having trained in the commercial sector and moved to the third sector in 2013. She has worked for many small charities in paid and voluntary roles. She is a qualified accountant, tax adviser and has a Masters in charity accounting and financial management.
Simon Deane-Johns is a consultant solicitor in the UK and Ireland, specialising in fintech regulatory and commercial work, including payment services, P2P lending, consumer credit and data services, as well as e-commerce marketplaces and IT.
He has advised on the launch of many innovative start-ups, including Zopa, Prodigy Finance, Abundance, Crowdbnk (now Code Investing), Proplend, Fitzrovia Finance, and the Rooster Card, and advises on cryptocurrencies and other applications of distributed ledger technology.
Simon previously consulted at Amazon and WorldPay, led legal teams at GE Capital and Earthport, advised on the creation of the P2P Finance Association and in 2012 co-organised the P2P Finance Policy Summit for UK and EU officials and crowdfunding industry representatives with the Finance Innovation Lab.
Simon also chairs the Advisory Board of the Society for Computers and Law and blogs regularly on fintech developments.
Job Titles:
- Treasurer
- Certified Chartered Accountant
Thobeka Ngcobo, a certified chartered accountant, holds a position as a senior consultant in CFO advisory at Deloitte UK. Presently, her responsibilities involve offering assistance to finance teams in various areas such as reporting, controls, performance improvement, strategy, and transformation.
With more than five years experience as an auditor, she has previously worked at the Auditor General South Africa and EY UK. Her expertise encompasses extensive knowledge of international accounting and auditing standards. Thobeka exhibits a strong dedication to promoting diversity and inclusion within the workplace and she has championed initiatives in her previous roles.
Job Titles:
- Policy and Public Affairs Manager at the Lab
Tom is Policy and Public Affairs Manager at the Lab. He works with the Head of Policy and Advocacy to build the power of civil society organisations to influence finance-related regulation, law and policy.
Prior to joining the Lab, Tom was at HM Treasury where he spent most of his time working in financial services policy, with a short stint working in international taxation policy. Tom holds a master's degree in Comparative Political Economy from the London School of Economics and a bachelor's degree in Modern History and Politics from the University of Liverpool.
An advocate for human-powered transportation, outside of the Lab Tom is a keen cyclist, an enthusiastic walker, and a reluctant runner.
Tony has progressed from a conventional finance career in investment banking and accountancy to championing financial system reform, before turning back to practice as founder of a mission-led regional mutual bank.
He is the Executive Director of South West Mutual, which is aiming to apply for a banking licence to serve business and residents of Cornwall, Devon, Somerset and Dorset with ethical high street banking services.
Previously, he worked in policy research as Director of Economics at the RSA (Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) leading a programme on evolving a more creative, inclusive and sustainable economy, and as Head of Finance and Business at the New Economics Foundation. He is co-author of many books and reports including Where Does Money Come From?, Strategic Quantitative Easing and Reforming RBS: Local banking for the public good. He has contributed to programmes including BBC Newsnight and Today, and written for the Guardian, Sunday Times and others. Tony is a Fellow of the ICAEW and started his career with PwC before moving into equity capital markets at Barclays and Credit Suisse.
Tony holds a number of non-executive posts, including advisory committees for leading ESG fund manager Lion Trust Asset Management, and for the Banking on a Just Transition programme at the LSE Grantham Institute. He was voted one of the Future Finance 50 in the Innovative Thinkers category by Economia magazine.
Job Titles:
- Operations and Events Manager
Yvonne is Operations and Events Manager at the Finance Innovation Lab, providing administrative, operational and organisational support to the Lab's team, events and programmes.
Yvonne started her career in education, teaching English, Drama and Classics, with a particular interest in pastoral care. Primarily working in schools undergoing significant change, she focused on how school systems and structures could be developed to give the best outcomes for all students. After five years as Deputy Head with responsibility for operations and compliance, Yvonne decided to explore a more creative career. She worked in floristry for seven years, and was responsible for planning and delivering events alongside flower design and arrangement.
Yvonne graduated from the University of Durham with a degree in Combined Arts (Classics and English) and holds a PGCE in secondary education. She is passionate about sport and has been a referee, captain and coach for her local rugby club, where she is now Honorary Secretary. In addition, Yvonne regularly volunteers at running and cycling events.