Adrian is the Finance Manager in the Operations Team at The Young Foundation. Adrian began his accounting career with the Public Relations agency Porter Novelli Canada and then at an asset manager, Dundee Wealth Inc in Toronto, Canada. Following 18 months of independent travel in South America and Eastern Africa, Adrian returned to the UK... Find out more

Aldas is Personal Assistant to our Chief Executive, communications and office assistant. Working across a portfolio of interesting projects and initiatives including as Board and Committee liaison, he also supports our research, communities and comms teams. He has led activities for our events including New Perspectives on Housing and Thriving Together as well as producing... Find out more

Alex is the Interim Director of Finance and Corporate Services.  His role covers finance, HR and office management. Alex is a Chartered Accountant with over 20 years’ experience working in senior finance roles across a variety of industries, including telecoms, recruitment, advertising and electric vehicles. For the past eight years, he has specialised in the... Find out more

Amanda is a Senior Researcher at the Young Foundation. Her role involves developing and delivering high-quality research which strengthens communities, often exploring and facilitating social innovation to do so. Amanda has a background in developing research to improve, change or disrupt practice and policy. Amanda was the Academics and Researchers Manager at Project Oracle (now... Find out more

Emily is the Head of the Institute of Community Studies, powered by The Young Foundation. Emily joined us from the British Council where she developed the global research portfolio, spanning internationally comparative research into youth voice and policy, education, civil society, and culture. Emily has led and conducted research in the Western Balkans, the Middle... Find out more

Eve is a Senior Researcher at the Young Foundation. She works across multiple projects to deliver high quality research aimed at strengthening communities and overcoming inequalities. With a background in anthropology, urbanism and architecture, Eve is committed to maintaining an interdisciplinary research perspective in all her work, drawing from methods and theories of various disciplines. She... Find out more

Felicia is the Finance Officer in the Operations Team at The Young Foundation. Felicia began her career in finance with Price Waterhouse Coopers and has worked in accounts for numerous other organisations including the Competition Commission, a strategy consultant and a confectionery manufacturer. Outside of work Felicia enjoys travelling, music, reading and likes to keep fit.... Find out more

Franca joined the Young Foundation as a Research Assistant in March 2019 and has since been working on evaluations commissioned by Hackney Council and End Youth Homelessness where she engaged residents of two estates in Hackney and adolescents in different parts in the UK, respectively. Furthermore, she has conducted ethnographic research for the Royal Borough... Find out more

Gitanjali spends half of her time working as part of the research team at the Young Foundation and the other half running Shadow Heroes, an organisation which runs series of creative workshops using translation as a means of teaching critical thinking skills to secondary school students. She graduated in Spanish and Portuguese from Oxford University... Find out more

Helen is Chief Executive Officer of The Young Foundation. Prior to joining us in October 2017, Helen was Executive Director at Nesta, responsible for leading their Innovation Lab supporting and scaling innovation in the arts, civil society, government and education sectors. Previous roles have included work within the private sector developing digital strategies and solutions... Find out more

Holly is a project learning researcher at the Young Foundation, working on the evaluation of the Sport England Local Delivery Pilot in Hackney. The project’s aim is to improve the health and well-being of residents in the King’s Park ward of Hackney, through the agency of physical activity.  Holly is an experienced urban planner, who... Find out more

Iqra recently joined The Young Foundation and is part of the HR team, her role involves providing support to the Head of HR. Prior to joining The Young Foundation, Iqra worked as HR Coordinator at AEG Europe at the O2, where she supported 1,200 employees. Iqra has an MA in Human Resources Management is fully... Find out more

Isabel joined The Young Foundation in August 2017 as Programme Manager for Communities and Places. She is currently leading our work as part of the Tower Hamlets Communities Driving Change programme – a pioneering approach to community-led health creation. Projects she has worked on to date include; asset-based approaches to tackling social isolation and loneliness in Essex, the Co-op Community Wellbeing... Find out more

Jana is a Research Officer at the Young Foundation, interested in understanding inequality and the role of social identities in challenging it. Before joining us, she was awarded a travel scholarship by the R&A in St Andrews in order to visit, volunteer with and record a podcast on local charities and projects that are using... Find out more

Michael joins the Young Foundation as Head of Programmes NI.  He started volunteering locally at 16 and believes that if it wasn’t for the community spirit in his estate; his path would be very different.  Growing up in West Belfast, once a hot bed of the troubles, Michael witnessed the importance of community and belonging.... Find out more

Monica is the Receptionist for The Young Foundation, and the other organisations based at our offices in Bethnal Green. Monica is the first point of contact for all callers and visitors and is responsible for the daily running of reception and managing external and internal meetings for our meeting rooms. No two days are ever... Find out more

Before joining the Young Foundation Mónica worked for the City of York Council as Innovation manager. This two years were an enriching experience for her. They led “Genius Open” a transnational project to transfer our open innovation model to involve citizens in the design of the solutions for their city challenges to the cities of... Find out more

Sarah is Head of Ventures at The Young Foundation. Her role involves managing the Young Academy investment fund; a portfolio of 14 early stage ventures which aim to reduce inequality in education and which received investment from the Young Academy between 2014 and 2018. Sarah monitors the portfolio and provides necessary support or connections to... Find out more

Tigran is a Programme Officer with the Innovation & Investment team at The Young Foundation. He previously worked as a research assistant on the Brexit and Big Social Data project with the University of Reading, analysing the online discourse surrounding the 2016 EU Referendum and the identity-systems forged by the two opposing camps in the Brexit... Find out more

Victoria heads up the research team, making sure that our work is original, exciting, robust and compelling. She oversees The Young Foundation’s diverse range of projects. She previously worked at The Young Foundation and was Principal Investigator on our ESRC funded project on high cost credit in Wales, as well as leading our work on... Find out more

Zoe is tasked with strengthening our research approaches and building on The Young Foundation’s rich experience of working with peer researchers. She oversees a portfolio of projects that integrate ethnographic, participatory and digital research approaches. Zoe has an interest in digital research, evaluation methods, experience of designing and implementing SMS and data-based real time monitoring... Find out more

Zoë is a Programme Officer at the Young Foundation. She is interested in understanding the social fabric that binds communities together, and how to strengthen it through local community-level action. She currently works on Communities Driving Change, Amplify Barking and Dagenham, and Amplify Youth – each of which takes a unique approach to community research,... Find out more