UKCOD - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- Trustee
- Data Strategist
Alex is a senior researcher at mySociety, working across the full range of mySociety's climate, transparency, community, and democracy programmes.
His skillset runs from the deep theory of democracy (his academic background is an MSc in Democracy and Democratization) to the technical, leading on mySociety's data science work.
His work has included looking at the state of FOI regulation across Europe, investigating we can improve FOI legislation in the UK, creating new datasets of deprivation in the UK, discovering how local councillors feel about citizens' assemblies, and digging through the history of people being annoyed by dog poo. He leads on mySociety's response to consultations, and plays a role in shaping our future programme of work.
He has published peer-reviewed articles in Parliamentary Affairs and Local Government Studies, and contributed articles to the New Statesman's CityMetric.
In the past he's worked on renting campaigns, such as the campaign to end letting fees.
His nemesis is the white squirrel in the nearby park, who is really hard to take a photo of.
Alex is fluent in: Python, pandas (the statistics package), pandas (the animal), and the joys of democracy.
Alexander joined mySociety in 2022 to give us much-needed development support, across both our Climate and Transparency practices.
He came to us fresh from a year working for an environmental health company, where he says he was mainly "playing with their data".
mySociety is all about using development, data and research for good, so we're a natural home for Alexander, who says "I want to apply my interest and skills in software to projects that are having a positive impact on the world around me."
Located on the Welsh coast, Alex has a lot of hobbies. "I collect them as if they were Pokémon! I spend a lot of time with yarn - sewing, knitting, crocheting, and sometimes weaving - and I like to play board games with my friends."
Alexander is fluent in: Python, and is aiming to get brave enough to speak Welsh out loud
Alice brings something essential to mySociety - the income we need to fund every aspect of our work. "As a charity, we are reliant on donations and grants", she says. "My goal is to not only secure enough support to keep us going, but hopefully to enable our work to grow".
Alice, who originally trained in Youth & Community work, went on to run a social enterprise supporting women experiencing disadvantage. In recognition of this, she was awarded an MBE for services to women and charity.
Alongside her job, Alice is also studying for a Masters in Voluntary Sector Management. When asked what she does in her time off, she says, "I love music and am in a little folk band with some friends. Plus I have a healthy obsession with my two cats".
Alice is fluent in: the world of charity, social enterprise and baked goods.
Job Titles:
- Head of Client Partnerships
Amelia joined mySociety in February 2022 as Head of Client Partnerships for SocietyWorks, helping us to grow the use of our services by local councils throughout the UK.
Prior to this position, Amelia ran her own academic publishing services company, offering consultancy, training and editorial services to researchers and academic publishers; but she also has experience working in the public sector, having spent time selling tailormade livestreaming software to local government clients.
"I live in Brighton on the edge of the South Downs Way, with my husband, two children, a noisy dog and five chickens." And, because life is all about finding balance, "I love going to the gym almost as much as I love food and cooking. I have a secret passion for boxing even though I have very little skill."
Amelia is fluent in: "Excitedly talking just that little bit too much!"
Job Titles:
- Managing Director, SocietyWorks
Angela joined us in 2021 to oversee financial budgeting, forecasting, modelling, compliance, risk management and so on for both the charity and for our commercial division.
When Mark Cridge stepped down as Chief Executive in March 2022, Angela stepped up into her current role as Managing Director of SocietyWorks - an extremely skilled and steady pair of hands to steer the ship, alongside the equally skilled and capable Louise Crow, who leads on the mySociety side of the organisation.
Having trained as a Chartered Accountant, well versed in Lean process implementation and experienced in project management, Angela started her career as an auditor before moving to various senior finance roles in industry and the charity sector.
But life's not all about the spreadsheets. Angela describes her leisure pursuits as "Hiking, building Lego creations with my son, and feeling guilty about the cost of the gym membership I don't use."
She also has two degrees (one in English, one in Theology), a PGCE (she's fitted in a few years as a secondary school English teacher), an Advanced PADI in scuba diving, and she's summitted Mont Blanc. Phew! Who needs that gym membership?
Angela is fluent in: Spreadsheet functions and Financial Reporting Standards.
Job Titles:
- Head of Product
- SocietyWorks As a Service Designer
Bekki originally joined SocietyWorks as a service designer in November 2021, before quickly moving into the role of Head of Product.
With her multi-skilled background spanning design research, service design and even front-end design and development, Bekki is the perfect person to front the development of our Product Strategy, whilst at the same time leading on our user and client focused service design and consultancy services.
As if that wasn't enough, Bekki also works closely with Angela to deliver cross functional efficient and effective processes and working practices.
Outside of work, Bekki is a collector of hobbies and always has some project or other on the go. She's previously made a Raspberry Pi arcade machine, She's a pretty good seamstress, making a lot of her own clothes and has all the kitchen gadgets to help veganise omni favourites.
Bekki is fluent in: Mapping experiences: user flows, experience maps, service blueprints… if it's distilling interactions and the transfer of information between people or systems, it's entirely Bekki's bag.
Job Titles:
- Business Development / Account Manager
Chris is a member of our SocietyWorks team. He joined us in May 2023 as Business Development/Account Manager, focusing specifically on extending SocietyWorks' impact in the north of the UK.
Having previously worked within the logistics industry, Chris brings a wealth of account management experience to the organisation, which he says he's glad to be using "for the betterment of society, rather than for the benefit of the shareholders of large corporations".
Day-to-day, Chris supports our council clients with their use of our digital solutions, while also working closely with Amelia to drive new business for SocietyWorks, the profits of which are all donated back into mySociety.
Chris is located in Hucknall, just outside of Nottingham: "It's a great place to nip into town, but also to head into the Peak District with Enola". (Enola is Chris' dog - she's a very beautiful saluki!)
When he's not working or out walking with Enola, he can usually be found playing frisbee golf, climbing, kayaking or playing video games.
We asked Chris if there's anything unusual we should know about him, to which he replied: "There are 5 people named Chris in my family, which makes things very confusing at family occasions!"
If you ever need a conversation starter with Chris, ask him about the time he saw a live Space Shuttle launch!
Chris is fluent in: lazy Sundays
Chris joined mySociety as a developer in April 2013. He's contributed to the Pombola and FixMyStreet projects, and is currently part of the SocietyWorks team.
Before joining mySociety, Chris worked as a freelancer and for various web development agencies.
Chris is currently based in Cheltenham, where he can often be found foraging, brewing wine, making jams and chutneys and occasionally trying to play badminton.
Chris is fluent in: Ruby, JavaScript and UNIX.
Dave's been a mySociety developer since July 2013, and has become an expert in our travel-time mapping tool, Mapumental, adding features for public use, and modifying it for some innovative commercial purposes.
He's also worked on building data presentation tools for our commercial clients.
Before coming to mySociety, Dave built academic software for Swansea University, and also spent a year in Helsinki creating mobile web apps before they were cool.
Dave lives on the edge of the Brecon Beacons, which provides a perfect backdrop for staring out the window whilst thinking about why his code's not working.
In his spare time, he likes to wobble up and down the Welsh countryside on a mountain bike, play drums, and use his computer to make sounds that are almost, but not quite, entirely unlike music.
Dave is fluent in: Python, Django and JavaScript, with a soupçon of C and Java. He can also mumble enough Finnish to order a round of beers.
Devin O'Shaughnessy has worked for more than 25 years in democracy and governance, civil society and parliamentary strengthening, political party and electoral assistance, organisational development, gender equality and inclusive politics, program management/development, conflict mitigation, and community development.
In a varied and international career, Devin has had roles within the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and the National Democratic Institute, variously forwarding political party development, civil society strengthening, legislative strengthening (national and sub-national), and women's political empowerment.
Emily joined mySociety as the Delivery Manager for our Climate programme in 2021.
She says, "My role is to ensure the Climate programme really delivers. Now is such a critical time for climate and people, and there's huge potential for this area of work to make a difference. mySociety can create solutions to problems society didn't even realise it had."
Emily's held a range of roles across the voluntary sector, all with a focus on achieving societal change with environmental and community action - including leading the development and management of a large capacity building programme at the Refugee Council with a team of 20, and more recently project managing Friends of the Earth's Clean Air Campaign.
She's currently studying for an MSc in Voluntary Sector Management and holds an MSc in Organisational Change and Development, gained at the University of Manchester's International Development Institute. "This gave me a good insight into delivering change across a range of cultures," says Emily, who's also been a VSO volunteer.
Emily enjoys connecting to the natural world. "I run (slowly). I love it. And I'm rather proud to have stroked a boat to victory at Henley Women's Regatta in 2010… that was a terrific boat!"
Emily is fluent in: strategy, planning and making good things happen.
Job Titles:
- Trustee and Non - Executive Director of SocietyWorks
Francis Mainoo acted as a mySociety Trustee and Non-Executive Director of SocietyWorks from July 2022 until his unexpected death in October 2023.
His death is a huge loss, not just to us, but to the many other people and organisations he worked with to help them grow and succeed in making the world a better place. We miss his good humour, his valued input and his strong leadership. We are grateful for the time we were able to work with Francis, and we will keep him in our thoughts as we strive to achieve the goals he believed in so passionately.
Job Titles:
- MySociety As a Developer
- Senior Developer, Transparency Programme Lead
Gareth joined mySociety as a developer in March 2014, whereupon he got straight to work on Alaveteli and WhatDoTheyKnow.
Before that, Gareth worked at Box UK; most recently as the Systems Engineering team lead and formerly a developer on World Vision Micro. He lives and works in Cardiff.
Gareth runs the local Ruby group and attends most other tech and startup meetups in the area. He also works on opening up Welsh politics by jointly running Your Senedd.
Gareth is fluent in: Ruby, Rails, Ansible, and a smattering of Elixir
Job Titles:
- Events and Engagement Manager
Gemma joined mySociety in February 2014, amidst much jubilation from colleagues who had been trying to fit mySociety's ever-expanding events organisation into their own working days.
Gemma now organises everything from our public meet-ups to conferences (the ones we attend and the ones we organise or speak at). She books plane tickets for those venturing abroad, and makes sure they have a comfortable bed waiting for them at the other end - not to mention the all-important wifi.
She also helps out the Research team with project logistics, fieldwork and report writing.
Before coming to mySociety, Gemma worked for an international human rights organisation and in her spare time, she enjoys playing tennis, hanging out with her cat, and being out in the countryside.
Gemma is fluent in: French and Spanish (well, nearly! She does have a degree in it after all)
If you send us a question about one of our services, the chances are that the reply will come from Georgia, who joined the mySociety team in May 2023.
It's her job to read, then respond to or forward on the emails that come in from our users every day.
"I love to solve problems," says Georgia, "so I'm also always looking for ways to improve processes to make the user experience more seamless".
She brings useful experience, having previously provided customer support for an online education company.
Like everyone working at mySociety, Georgia's interests and activities bring extra insights to our work. She has an LLB in Law with European Law from University of Nottingham.
Graeme joined mySociety as part of the FOI team in October 2017, working on our Alaveteli and Alaveteli Pro platforms to help develop features and offer support.
His career as a developer began back in 2006, building websites and inhouse services for a Students' Union, including an online voting system for internal elections. Since those early days, he's racked up time with a digital start-up agency, put in a couple of years' freelancing, and in between times, backpacked round South America.
More recently he's been getting into running and is currently training for an ultra-marathon, adding to the long list of extra-curricular activities he enjoys: spending time with his family, electronics and 3D printing, watching Formula 1, attending gigs and - mySociety colleagues never fail to surprise us - dancing the Argentine tango.
Graeme is fluent in: Ruby, JavaScript and has good experience with Perl and PHP.
Job Titles:
- WhatDoTheyKnow Service Manager
Job Titles:
- Project Manager
- Delivery Manager
Jacqueline joined mySociety's commercial team SocietyWorks in December 2021. As Project Manager, Jacqueline plays the all important role of managing the work orders and projects requested by SocietyWorks' public sector client base, helping to ensure that the team knows what they're doing and the work can be delivered smoothly and on time.
You'd never be able to tell, but a career in project management is actually relatively new to Jacqueline: "In 2020, when everyone was baking banana bread, I decided to study project management courses and thought it was a great way to pass the time." Clearly, she enjoyed it as much as she excelled at it, because just a year later she had completed her AgilePM, Change Management and PRINCE2 qualifications - and now she's here with us!
Based in North West London, Jacqueline's hobbies include playing badminton at her local badminton club every week and going to see live music. In between studying for a career change into project management this year, she also found the time to pick up a new hobby - and it's a cute one: "This year I have signed up to BorrowMyDoggy and have started walking people's dogs."
Jacqueline is fluent in: Cantonese. "I was born in Hong Kong and moved to NW London at a young age!"
Job Titles:
- Projects and Partnerships Manager
Jen works on both the delivery and management of projects for the Transparency team.
With a background as a working on media development and broadcasting reform projects in the Middle East and North Africa for BBC Media Action, she's used to pitching in wherever needed for all sorts of projects.
Jen has travelled widely to meet our partners on their home ground: it's always helpful to see our projects in the places where they'll be deployed, and meet the people who will be using them. She's passionate about ensuring that projects meet needs and spending time with groups helps her start to understand their motivations.
Jen is fluent in: French and Spanish, and could probably understand you in basic Italian. She's dabbled in German and Arabic as well, but only a tiny amount!
Jen Thornton has over a decade of experience working in campaigns and communications - in the arts, third sector, trade union movement and Parliament.
In her day job, Jen works for a trade union in communications and policy. Prior positions saw her working in the charity sector, and running an MP's office.
Jen describes herself as a ‘campaigner, communicator, and activist'. She is a strong advocate for workers' rights, an LGBT+ campaigner and a big believer in equality.
Job Titles:
- Finance and Admin Manager
Jill joined us in 2022 to oversee all things money-related at mySociety and SocietyWorks.
"It's a very varied role", says Jill, "which includes processing bills for payment, raising invoices, running payroll, preparing the monthly management accounts, providing financial reports for funders, VAT and GiftAid returns, supporting the annual audit and such like."
Jill began working life as a Chartered Marketer, with roles in marketing and communications. She then retrained as an accountant and worked as a Finance Officer within Beat, the UK's eating disorder charity, before coming to mySociety.
She takes full advantage of her Norfolk location, exploring the beautiful countryside - "that's when I'm not running round after two small children, reading wildlife books and tidying!".
Job Titles:
- Policy and Advocacy Manager
Lizetta joined us in 2021 as a Delivery Manager Manager for the SocietyWorks side of the organisation, with a mission to help us ensure that every client gets a good, streamlined project delivery experience.
She brought with her more than a decade's experience improving operational efficiency, primarily within central government.
Situated in the south east of the capital, Lizetta says, "When I'm not out and about exploring (aka getting lost in) the streets of London with my camera, I'm at home cross stitching." And, because at the time of writing, lockdown is still preventing many public events, she adds, "I'm currently really missing getting to see live music."
It sounds like music has long been a dominant theme in Lizetta's life, as she also reveals that the topic of her university dissertation was the Spice Girls!
Lizetta is one of mySociety's qualified Mental Health First Aiders, helping to support, reassure and signpost fellow colleagues to professional support.
Lizetta is fluent in: embroidery stitches
Louise is a longstanding and integral member of the mySociety team who has helped shape the organisation with her practical and strategic skills. She started volunteering for mySociety in 2006 and since 2007 has worked in a number of different roles across the organisation, taking on the role of Chief Executive in 2022.
With an academic background in psychology, a PhD in artificial intelligence, and over 20 years of experience in software development in a variety of environments - including startups, academia, biotechnology and Parliament - Louise brings a very hands-on understanding of the challenges faced in every part of the organisation.
In her previous roles at mySociety, she has overseen our developers across four practice areas, and led a range of work including the expansion of our international programme, the development of WhatDoTheyKnow Pro, our Freedom of Information package for journalists, and the creation of our Climate programme.
Mandy is a partner at Top 20 accountants Kingston Smith. She has extensive experience, spanning over 30 years, in offering clients strategic financial advice and commercial support.
Mandy specialises in corporate finance and advises on a range of commercial and technical issues affecting entrepreneurial and growing businesses, from the development of a business plan to employee incentives, succession planning and selling and preparing businesses for sale. Mandy served on the board of the Direct Marketing Association for ten years, is a director of the Telephone Preference Service and regularly speaks at and chairs industry events.
Job Titles:
- Head of Development, SocietyWorks
Matthew is mySociety's most long-standing developer. In fact, you could say he was a mySociety developer even before mySociety was founded, because he played a large part in the building of TheyWorkForYou, which was later adopted as a mySociety project.
Working from Birmingham, Matthew has been a key player in the development and maintenance of FixMyStreet, MapIt, SayIt, and WriteToThem, to name but a few.
Outside work but still in computers, Matthew maintains an editable archive of theatre productions, helps people plan their train journeys and catch their train, and monitors the London Underground in real time.
He does actually get away from his computer sometimes, whereupon he can be heard either singing, or playing. Or watching Frozen.
Matthew is fluent in: Python, Javascript
Moray joined the SocietyWorks team in 2021, a very welcome pair of hands to help us meet increasing demand for our commercial services.
Job Titles:
- Marketing & Communications Manager
Myf creates and oversees all external communications for mySociety, from snappy social media updates to long form reports.
As well as composing pithy updates in 140 characters or less, her duties include chatting to the press, crafting our website copy, condensing sometimes complex subjects into readable bites for the blog, and sending out our newsletters.
She may well be the person who replies when you send in that really tricky question about one of our sites, too.
Myf lives and works in Brighton. She loves working from home because it means she can go for a run at lunchtime, gaze down across the South Downs to the glittering sea, hear the birds sing, and still be back to answer some emails in the afternoon.
Nicolle joined the SocietyWorks team in June 2022 to help us look after our growing public sector client base, ensuring that the councils and other organisations with which we work are happy and getting the best out of our products and services.
Rachel is a consultant, advising organisations on data, insights and governance projects. Previously she was the founding Chief Executive of 360Giving, and Deputy Director of Publish What You Fund, leading the organisation's research and monitoring work including the development of an annual transparency index.
Rachel has previously held positions with the Commonwealth Secretariat, DFID, DAI, Transparency International and the Overseas Development Institute. She has researched and written several publications on transparency, good governance and accountability.
Job Titles:
- Account Manager, SocietyWorks
Job Titles:
- Site Reliability Engineer
Job Titles:
- Outreach & Networks Coordinator
Job Titles:
- Trustee
- Director of Strategy and Innovation at the Government of Jersey
Steve is currently the Director of Strategy and Innovation at the Government of Jersey, working to turn the emerging theory of open policy making, participatory design and digital government into practice.
He is developing a new Jersey foresight capability, and leads on a range on long-term strategic challenges including the islands' response to the climate emergency, sustainable development and impacts of technology.
Previously, Steve led on public service reform and policy for Stockport Council, where he created the award winning Digital by Design programme. He also worked as a Mayoral digital advisor and Chair of the GM Connect programme for the Greater Manchester Combined Authority.
Tony founded Civic Voice - the national charity for the civic movement; he is Vice Chair of the Big Lottery Fund (chairing its Audit and Risk Committee), Vice Chair of Friends of the Earth, Executive Chair of Sustainable Homes, Vice Chair of HS2's Independent Design Panel and a trustee of TCV (The Conservation Volunteers).
With 25 years' executive experience on the boards of national charities working with communities on environment, heritage and land use, he has a strong track record in strategy, campaigning, volunteer development and external affairs for conservation, community, regeneration, planning and the environment.
Job Titles:
- Head of HR & Support Services