Ambassadors

Dr Andrew Clark is Executive Director, Product at the Royal Academy of Engineering, the UK’s National Academy for engineering and technology. He oversees their activities to support talented engineers, including research, education, enterprise, and diversity and inclusion programmes. He is the lead on the new £150m endowment from government to the Academy for Green Future Fellowships, a new funding mechanism to support researchers and inventors to develop useful, scalable technologies to help reach net zero and adapt to our changing climate.

Prior to joining the Academy in 2016, he had worked in various roles at UCL, the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council, the Open University, and University of Oxford.

James is a senior partner at Counterculture where he leads their work in higher education. He is also the associate editor for research and innovation at Wonkhe where he writes about research policy and the future of the innovation economy. He is an author of  a book about universities and their places, and the former head of sustainability, policy, and civic engagement, at the University of Liverpool.

Alex is Director of Development at the Latymer Foundation at Hammersmith, where he leads Latymer Upper School’s philanthropy, partnerships and community engagement strategy to expand bursary provision and advance Latymer’s mission of widening access and opportunity.

He has worked in the education and NGO sectors for 15 years, with a career-long focus on empowering young people. Before joining Latymer, Alex was Head of Corporate Partnerships at UNICEF UK, where he led strategic partnerships with global companies. He has also held senior roles at The King’s Trust and Future First, following six years as a secondary school teacher.

Alex holds an MA in Education & Leadership from UCL and a PGCE from the University of Oxford. He is Vice-Chair of Governors at Harris Academy Bermondsey and lives in South-East London with his wife and two daughters.

Michael is retired and has over 30 years’ experience in finance, operations and business development at Board level in the life sciences sector.  His most recent roles were CEO at an oncology-focused biotech company, and co-founder & non-executive director at a young agri-tech business.  He is currently a Visiting Fellow for a London-based seed fund, advising start-ups in the healthcare and agri-tech sectors.  He has been active on various life science-focused trade bodies and Government industry committees during his career.

Michael attended state school, after which he studied Economics at UCL.  He is a qualified chartered accountant.

Kate is a Senior Partner and co-Head of the Higher Education practice at Executive Search firm Perrett Laver. She has worked across the UK university and research landscape, supporting appointments at governance, executive leadership (including Vice-Chancellor) and professional service leadership level. She has a strong interest in social mobility and access to higher education, having supported the Sutton Trust, Into University as well as the Martingale Foundation on senior appointments. Prior to Perrett Laver Kate was Executive Director of CASE (Council for Advancement and Support of Education) Europe, and she started her career in communications, working at Queen Mary, University of London and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Kate has a BA Hons in French with Spanish from Goldsmiths, University of London.

Upon graduation, Rebecca completed the TeachFirst programme and taught science for four years at a school in East London. She then completed a Masters and PhD in neuroscience at UCL and, inspired by her students, she founded the social mobility charity In2scienceUK where she worked for 10 years to expand the program’s reach. She now works at Google DeepMind as Education Partnerships Lead where she develops programs that broaden participation in AI postgraduate research. She is passionate about STEM education and the power of opportunity. 

Hannah is a scientist by training, and a startup fan. She is currently Co-Founder at Prima Mente, a frontier biology AI lab, who generate their own data, build general purpose biological foundation models, and translate discoveries into research and clinical outcomes. Their first goal is to tackle the brain: to deeply understand it, protect it from neurological disease, and enhance it in health. Their team of AI researchers, experimentalists, clinicians, and operators is based in London, San Francisco and Dubai.

Hannah gets stuff done across people, product, partnerships, and operations. The teams she creates build products that serve humans, by understanding and monitoring biology, and enable precision medicine and clinical trials. At Prima Mente, her driving impact is that the team reach the top 0.1-1% of their field faster than they ever dreamed through reflection, belief and aligning growth opportunities.