Our people

Amanda Levete

Founder and Principal, AL_A

Amanda is a RIBA Stirling Prize-winning architect, and founder and principal of AL_A, an international award-winning design and architecture studio. For over a decade, she was a trustee at The Young Foundation and at Artangel. She is a regular broadcaster, writer, and lecturer.

Jon Huggett

Social Innovation Advisor

Jon has led five social enterprises – among them the Social Innovation Exchange, All Out, Khulisa and others. He now advises social innovators globally. Jon has written for The Guardian, and has visited half of the countries in the world.

Dr Phil Cohen

Co-Founder, Living Maps

Phil has worked to build a network of academics, artists and activists, exploring creative approaches to the social mapping of the city. His background is in ethnographic research, with particular interest in the cultures and communities of East London.

Dr Darren Sharpe

Senior Consultant, Institute of Public Care at Oxford Brookes University

Both a senior consultant at the Institute of Public Care and a senior research fellow with the NIHR CLARHC, North Thames, Darren is a trained sociologist who has worked with UK Research Councils, Central Government Departments, and NGOs and charities to assess the impact of national and locally-run public programmes.

Baroness Glenys Thornton

Senior Fellow, The Young Foundation

Glenys was chief executive of The Young Foundation, 2015 to 2017, and continues to support our work. She had a career in the voluntary, co-operative and private sectors, and then worked within the Labour Party, becoming shadow health minister in 2010 and later women and equalities shadow minister.

Shahaveer Hussain

Neighbourhood Housing Officer, London Borough of Camden

Shahaveer (Shubo) worked for The Young Foundation, 2018 to 2019, as community engagement officer on the Tower Hamlets Communities Driving Change project. He went on to co-found The Utilize Project (TUP), a not-for-profit organisation that works with developers ’utilize’ their empty properties, and is now Neighbourhood Housing Officer in Camden.

Jon Alexander

Director, The New Citizen Project

Jon wrote ‘Citizens: Why the key to fixing everything is all of us’. He is director and co-founder of the New Citizenship Project, an innovation company, generating and delivering creative projects which promote the role of the citizen, inspiring and encouraging participation in society. He has three Masters degrees and has represented Great Britain in two sports.

Paul Sng

Filmmaker and writer

Paul Sng is a filmmaker and writer of dual British and Singaporean heritage whose work focuses on people who challenge the status quo. In 2015 he founded Velvet Joy Productions to explore the lives and work of individuals who have been neglected, marginalised or misrepresented in the arts and media.

David Civil

PhD student, University of Nottingham

David’s research explores the origins and development of meritocracy in post-war Britain, exploring issues such as the welfare state, education reform and economic efficiency. He has studied the political thought of our founder, the British sociologist Michael Young.

Anne McCrossan

Founding Partner, Visceral Business

Anne is the founding partner of an independent digital business practice based in London and Cornwall. She is the Lead for the Open Data Institute in Cornwall and a ceramic artist with a studio in St Ives.

Dr Cath Sleeman

Quantitative Research Fellow, Nesta

An award-winning quantitative research fellow, Cath’s work explores new insights from big data, recently focusing on improving labour market information, and measuring diversity in the creative economy.

Deborah Newbold

Actor, director and performance storyteller

Debs is a theatre artist based in London and West Yorkshire. She is an actor, director and performance storyteller, who writes powerful one-woman shows, sometimes directs them, and tours them internationally.