About us
Our mission
To drive collaboration and innovation between the policy and
social sectors to solve society's greatest challenges.
Our promise
We deliver thought-provoking, interactive and practical learning experiences to
give people the tools and insights to tackle society's wicked problems.
Our ethos
We believe empathy can power meaningful change, and we want to ensure
everyone has the power and opportunity to improve society together.
Our advisory board
Amina Abba
Amina is an experienced medical consultant physician with 14 years’ experience working in the NHS. Amina is actively involved in providing coaching & mentoring to medical and nursing staff/students & is a passionate advocate for promoting staff health and wellbeing as part of ensuring patient safety and high quality care.
Rob Trimble
Rob Trimble is Chief Executive of the Bromley by Bow Centre in East London as well as a non-clinical Partner in the Bromley by Bow Health Partnership, which delivers primary care services to over 30,000 patients in East London. He is the Chair of Settle, a charity that supports young people moving out of care and into their first homes. He is also Patron of Year Here, which support young graduates to become social innovators.
Cathy Wang
A passionate entrepreneurial leader, Cathy has spent 15 years working globally to uncover opportunities, including large e-government initiatives and Fortune 500 company transformation. She most recently founded a Mutual Aid group for COVID response and recovery. Cathy works with start-ups that shape a better world and create positive social impact.
Zain Zulfiqar
Zain Zulfiqar is a service designer by profession with a background in advertising, and has led projects in healthcare, social inclusion, finance and agriculture sectors. He brings systems-level thinking in the design process to make a holistic social impact, as well as contributing his recent valuable experience in the homelessness sector.
Kit Collingwood
Kit is Chief Digital Officer at Royal Borough of Greenwich Council. Before this, Kit was a civil servant for over 9 years. She’s a keen advocate of diversity and inclusion, with a focus on gender equality and LGBT+ rights. Kit co-founded the One Team Government movement in 2017, which is a network of public servants around the world who meet to share ways to make government more effective.
Sarah Edwards
Sarah is a former probation officer who worked for Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service for 10 years, supporting hundreds of offenders. A mum of 2, Sarah is also the founder of Edwards Tutoring, an online tutoring company. Being involved in projects that align with her values and missions is central to Sarah’s ethos.
Meet the team
Telescope's co-founders are from different professional backgrounds - scientific research, policy analysis, and finance - and have a shared commitment to positive social change that was deepened through their Year Here social innovation fellowship.
Hebe Foster
Co-founder - business development lead
Hebe has worked at the National Alliance of Women’s Organisations and more recently as an innovation consultant for the Greater London Authority, and Make Shift. Her background is in finance, working as an analyst with Morgan Stanley. She recently completed an MA in International Development at Sciences Po, Paris, and is fluent in French and Russian.
Dr Sarah Holliday
Co-founder - programme design lead
Sarah is a research scientist by professional background, bringing an evidence based and scientific rigour to programme design. She also studied in participatory design and facilitation at UAL and has worked with frontline organisations, including the Bromley-by-Bow Centre in East London, to adopt more collaborative and innovative practices.
Dr Ruth Martin
Co-founder - strategy and impact evaluation lead
Ruth's background as a policy analyst includes having worked for the UK Parliament and the Equality and Human Rights Commission. She has a PhD in political history from the University of Cambridge, focusing on modern civil, liberties. She is a trained facilitator, completing courses with Dare to LeadTM and REFRAMR. and leads human-centred design and strategy research projects.
Our partners
We are grateful to have worked with several brilliant organisations in our first year of operation, and are building supportive contacts with government departments, councils, social enterprises and charities across the UK:
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Our networks
We're a certified member of Social Enterprise UK, the national membership body for social enterprises and their supporters. All SEUK members have a social or environmental mission and must embed this purpose into their governing documents & all activities.
We are developing best practice in our impact measurement as members of the Impact Measurement Project's practitioner community. The Impact Management Project is a forum for building global consensus on how to measure and manage impact.
We are members of the London branch of Zebras Unite, a community of entrepreneurs, investors and allies dedicated to developing companies that balance both profit and purpose, and building a new model of ethical entrepreneurship.
We were proud to be nominated and recognised as 'Ones to watch' on the NatWest WISE100 2019. The Women in Social Enterprise 100 is a platform connecting women in the space, enabling them to learn from and inspire each other, discover collaboration opportunities and ultimately increase their social impact.
The team at Allia's Impact Accelerator supported us through the early 2021 period as we work to scale up our activities, streamline our messaging and prove our impact across a variety of sectors.
