Our staff
Sarah Gillinson
Acting Managing Partner
Sarah currently co-leads Innovation Unit. She leads our work on local government, supporting innovation in local authorities. She also leads our Radical Efficiency work, delivering different, better, lower cost public services.
David Jackson
Partner
David is one of our partners. He is one of our experts on education and leadership, and is involved in supporting the iZone New York and in a range of projects: the Global Education Leadership Program (GELP), Creative Councils, Engaging Schools and the partnership with Human Scale Education.
Matthew Horne
Managing Partner
There isn’t much about using innovation to improve public services that Matthew doesn’t know. He is currently our resident expert on co-operatives and mutuals, localism and the big society agenda, as well as being a key player in our work on Radical Efficiency and Innovation Labs.
Julie Temperley
Programme Manager for Global Education Leaders Program
Julie is an experienced researcher working close to policy and practice in education. She is currently managing the exciting work we are doing transforming education systems at a global level.
John Craig
Managing Partner
John leads on business development as well as supporting projects in social care and health. John developed and now leads our Innovation Exchange work, which connects people and ideas around shared social challenges.
Valerie Hannon
Director
Valerie Hannon was a founding director of the Innovation Unit when it was initially established within government, and subsequently became its first Managing Partner when IU became an independent not-for-profit. She serves now as a Board Director and consultant.
Tony Mackay
Chair
Tony chairs our Board of Directors. His work specialises in the areas of school and system leadership, improvement and innovation and he is currently working on a number of ‘Next Practice Projects' on school leadership and school improvement and reform around the world.
David Albury
Director
David is a Director on our Board. He is working on the Global Educational Leadership Program (GELP) which is supporting system change in education globally to help empower learners to thrive in the 21st Century.
Louise Thomas
Programme Lead: Education
Louise leads the Innovation Unit’s education programme in the UK, including work on Project Based Learning in the UK, and the expansion of our Engaging Schools programme.
Joseph Harrington
Partner, co-head of Service Design
Joseph has experience working as a service design consultant across the public sector; leading projects from social research with vulnerable groups to transformation work at the service delivery, strategic, organisational and policy levels.
Aviv Katz
Partner, co-head of Service Design
Aviv leads our team of designers, specialising in service design, research and creative production. He is our resident expert in service design and is a trained designer and social researcher.
Paul Roberts
Director
Paul Roberts is a Director on our board. He lends his extensive experience and understanding of local government to our work with local authorities.He was Director of Strategy and subsequently Managing Director of the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) for local government.
Raj Cheema
Project Manager
Raj is one of our Project Managers. She is currently managing our South London Nursing Networks project and the Global Education Leaders Program (GELP), an international programme led by Innovation Unit in partnership with Cisco, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Promethean and the Ellen Koshland Family Fund.
Adam Preis
Senior Project Manager
Adam is our project management champion and leads development and prototyping of the Project Management for Innovation (PM4I) framework. Adam is also involved in our internal capability building activities and provides high-end project management functions across a number of high-profile client projects.
Martha Hampson
Researcher & Project Coordinator
Martha is a researcher and project coordinator, focusing on our health and education projects including People Powered Health and the Global Education Leaders' Program.
Jake Garber
Service Designer
Jake is an experienced service designer and researcher. He is currently leading Innovation Unit projects re-imagining early years services as well as looking long-term unemployment. In particular, he works to help organisations design new ways of providing services that unlock community networks and resources.
Jonny Mallinson
Researcher & Project Coordinator
Jonny is a researcher and project coordinator with social innovation experience across both the private and public sectors. He divides his time at the Innovation Unit between our work with Guys and St Thomas’ Hospital Charity and our work with Local Authorities on the Creative Councils programme.
Kathryn Tyler
Head of Communications
Kathryn leads on all our communications, including designing and producing materials, managing our website and social media spaces and handling our public relations and events.
Leonie Shanks
Researcher & Project Coordinator
Leonie currently focuses on our health projects but is also enthusiastic about our work in education. Leonie also manages our social media accounts and regularly tweets and blogs.
Kate Langford
Researcher & Project Coordinator
Kate is a Researcher & Project Coordinator at the Innovation Unit, working on health-related projects. Before coming to the Innovation Unit Kate studied and worked in public health research.