Research & sensemaking

Unravelling tangled topics, connecting perspectives across disciplines, and identifying a clear direction of travel, for educators, practitioners and learners alike.In practice:
Mapping where different disciplines overlap to reveal new opportunities, or synthesising research and stakeholder input into a framework a teaching team can build on.Case study:
Uncovering new capacity-building opportunities in global health messaging at WHO

Programme & learning design

Developing or refreshing programmes and learning resources, grounded in interdisciplinary insight and real-world examples.In practice:
Redesigning a course around a live local challenge, or building a CPD pathway that reflects how professionals actually encounter the problem.Case study:
Building shared foundations for Doughnut Economics-inspired local policy for University of Bath

Co-design & delivery

Working alongside subject specialists and programme teams to shape the design, co-deliver, and adapt in real time - then reviewing and consolidating what's learned.In practice:
Supporting a cohort as they work through the material, developing a missing resource as the gap appears, then folding what worked into the next iteration.Case study:
Coaching six UK council and community teams through climate complexity at Design Council

About

My approach has always been to walk several steps ahead and report back.

I connect evidence with design, behaviour and communication expertise to prepare people for complex change projects - particularly when different disciplines, organisations or communities need to understand one another.Over the past five years, I've worked across public, private and social innovation contexts, from global institutions to grassroots communities - including the World Health Organization, Design Council, University of Bath, local authorities, mission-driven businesses and community initiatives.Before this, I spent over a decade founding and leading an innovation and design practice, creating products, spaces and public installations that introduced new ways of thinking, living and working.That's still how I work: scoping the wider landscape first, so others can step into it with confidence.

• View more background on LinkedIn

Independent projects

I strengthen my own practice through two ongoing projects - a kind of R&D for how strategy can be grounded in people, place and local understanding.Civic Sketchbook
An ongoing creative ethnography practice exploring what matters to people where they live, and where I test new research methods before they go into client work.Pre-Collaborative City
A developing collection of learning resources exploring what needs to be researched and understood across sectors before place-based strategy can be designed.

Case Study

Uncovering new capacity-building opportunities in global health messaging.

WHO | Global | Public Health

Context

WHO's graphic health warnings on tobacco products focus heavily on the adverse health effects of smoking - but evidence suggested audiences were becoming desensitised to this framing over time. WHO guidance under FCTC Articles 11 and 12 encourages innovative, culturally resonant messaging to help re-engage populations and support cessation. As an external consultant to the WHO Tobacco-Free Initiative, I was invited by programme leadership to explore what new learning opportunities this might present.

Challenge

Graphic health warnings are submitted to a central depository by country-level practitioners working across vastly different cultural and social contexts. Without a shared framework for understanding why a warning resonates in one context and not another, there's an inherent challenge in balancing globally consistent guidance with messaging that feels locally relevant.

What I did

As part of a six-month embedded engagement, I analysed 574 graphic health warnings from 37+ countries, applying Schwartz's Theory of Universal Human Values to understand which motivations were being activated, and which had further potential. The analysis showed a strong reliance on loss-framed, security-driven messaging, and identified further potential in values such as self-direction, achievement and tradition - pointing to additional ways to inspire behaviour change. Comparing these findings against pro-tobacco industry campaigns and anti-tobacco civil society initiatives helped confirm promising, culturally resonant directions for future messaging.I designed visual charts and narrative analyses to translate the dataset into actionable insight, and presented the findings to WHO leadership, showing how the same approach could support capacity-building and strategy across multiple regions.

Outcome

Initial findings were published in the 10th WHO Report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic, reaching health ministries and policymakers across 194 Member States. The work gave WHO leadership an additional, evidence-based method for exploring health communication through a wider set of human motivations, and a tool to support country-level practitioners with the ongoing implementation of WHO FCTC Articles 11 and 12.

Reflections

This project reinforced the value of bringing a fresh disciplinary lens to a well-established field. To find what wasn't there, I had to temporarily set aside the dominant health perspective and ask how the challenge might be interpreted by others entirely.

Case Study

Building shared foundations for Doughnut Economics-inspired local policy.

University of Bath | Local | Economic Policy

Context

Between 2023 and 2025, interest in Doughnut Economics - a framework for regenerative, distributive local economies - was growing across research, policy and civil society in Bath. But that interest was often siloed, limiting opportunities for shared learning and applied policy impact. Within the University of Bath's Living Well Now and in 2050 research project, researchers were exploring Doughnut Economics as a potential regional economic development strategy, but needed dedicated capacity to convene the multi-stakeholder engagement the framework depends on.

Challenge

Doughnut Economics only works as a shared framework - it needs democratic, participatory input from researchers, policymakers, practitioners and residents alike to meaningfully shape local economic policy. But bringing these groups into genuine dialogue, rather than parallel conversations, meant building trust and a common starting point across very different levels of prior knowledge and stake in the outcome.

What I did

I designed and led an experimental engagement project to test how Doughnut Economics tools could be introduced, adapted and used across sectors in Bath - combining creative facilitation, knowledge exchange and relationship-building.This took many forms:

I also led an Urban Photo Walk, documenting hidden "doughnut" shapes around the city, which drew international attention from the Doughnut Economics team itself, and built a LinkedIn group of around 100 local members to sustain the conversation between formal sessions.

Outcome

The combination of flexible, low-pressure formats - cafés, walks, creative spaces, online hubs - helped level the playing field across sectors, giving participants space to build confidence before engaging in more formal policy discussions.One particularly striking outcome emerged around a long-standing local tension between social and environmental priorities: working in small, mixed groups with only the thinking tools provided, participants independently concluded that Bath's environmental challenges were best approached through a social lens - reaching shared understanding on a genuinely divisive topic without external direction.Moments like this pointed to real intersections between evidence, community priorities and policy objectives, laying foundations for more actionable, co-created solutions.

Reflections

This was, at its core, an experiment - using collective learning as a platform to test what helps people from different backgrounds find common ground on divisive topics, and what doesn't.Acting as both knowledge broker and facilitator, the clearest lesson was that the most effective work is often the least visible: it's the quiet, preparatory groundwork - building trust before the formal conversation, finding shared language before the shared decision - that actually makes meaningful policy-shaping conversations possible.

Case Study

Coaching six UK council and community teams through climate complexity.

Design Council | NAtional | Climate Action

Context

Design Council's 'Design, differently' programme brought together a cohort of six project teams - spanning community organisations, local authorities and social enterprises - to explore how design could spark regenerative, local responses to the climate crisis. Each team was grounded in local policy or insight, but faced real uncertainty in translating that insight into a clear project direction, while navigating complex social and environmental systems.

Challenge

Progress depended on more than good ideas - it depended on engagement with stakeholders beyond the teams. Councils and communities often approach climate action with different expectations, roles and levels of influence, and teams needed a safe, confidential space to work through that tension directly, alongside the practical challenge of applying design thinking methods to real, place-based problems for the first time.

What I did

Over six months, I co-delivered a programme of workshops, expert site visits and structured one-to-one coaching calls, contributing specialist knowledge in systems-informed design thinking. The coaching gave each team a confidential space to test emerging ideas, question assumptions, and surface both hidden opportunities and systemic barriers - while embedding the design thinking and systems tools introduced in workshops into their own project context. In particular, this supported teams through the Discovery phase of the design process, from early research and insight-gathering through to first prototypes, ensuring lived experience and local context became central throughout.Alongside the coaching, I contributed to shaping the programme itself - helping embed systems thinking approaches across Design Council's wider delivery frameworks, and scriptwriting and presenting a Design for Planet futures narrative imagining circular communities in 2033, exploring themes from energy and mobility to food and education.

Outcome

Each team moved through the Discovery phase of climate innovation with greater clarity and confidence - better equipped to anticipate obstacles, make clearer decisions, and collaborate across organisational boundaries. Coaching strengthened the relationship between councils and community stakeholders, helping lay the groundwork for more collaborative, community-centred climate action. The approach also demonstrated how structured, replicable coaching methods can meaningfully support Design Council's wider mission of inclusive, democratic design for the planet.

Reflections

This project reinforced how much courage it takes to slow down. It's natural for teams to move quickly toward ideas and solutions - especially under pressure to show progress - but climate and community challenges rarely have simple starting points. Helping teams pause, deepen their discovery, and properly understand the people affected before reaching for solutions asked a lot of them - but is critical when the stakes were real people's lives and livelihoods. Ultimately, that patience revealed the strongest, most grounded ideas.