OUR TEAM
Kate Kuper
Director
Kate is an established board contributor and strategic leader with excellent judgement and impact focus. This has been honed by 25+ years of experience in international development, philanthropy, impact investment, city management and education. She worked for the World Bank Group, Bain & Company and Government of South Africa under Nelson Mandela before building a leading education foundation.
Kate currently serves on the boards of BRAC UK, the Evening Standard Dispossessed Fund and Access: The Foundation for Social Investment, where she chairs the Audit & Risk and Covid Recovery Investment Committees. Kate has achieved results and enduring client partnerships in varied contexts, languages and countries.
Stephen Harvey
Director
Stephen is an experienced results driven leader with a track record of delivering organisational growth. With over 20 years of senior leadership experience, he focuses on what is required to achieve success, delivering wide-ranging strategies which have changed the culture and direction of organisations.
He has built and led high performing teams, creating an environment where people succeed, and is an accomplished fundraiser and communicator. Stephen led teams at Oxfam, Riders For Health and Practical Action before becoming CEO of CHIVA Africa. He is now on the board of Think Equal, a UK charity a focused on social and emotional learning in early childhood development.
We work with a select group of highly skilled associates based around the world and construct teams focused on meeting client needs.
Varsha Venugopal
Varsha is an international development expert with over 15 years of experience in creating and implementing organisation and team strategy. She has set up teams and practices, and developed vision and strategy for non-profit organisations as well as bilateral and multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and CDC.
She has assisted several US local governments, foundations and UN agencies in managing, monitoring, and evaluating programmes. Her content expertise is in improving governance, creating and implementing programmes to improve women’s lives, and urban and rural development.
Matthew Kentridge
Matthew has over 20 years’ experience as a strategy adviser, working in corporate strategy consultancies and independently to design and lead projects in the private, public and non-profit sectors. He has extensive experience in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) and retail sectors in the UK, Africa, continental Europe, Russia and the Middle East.
He has worked with numerous government departments, aid agencies and foundations in South Africa, the UK and Sweden. Most recently, he has worked with DFID and Sida (the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency) mapping and evaluating the impact of challenge funds driving economic development.
Jos Kuper
Jos is a research professional with more than 40 years of experience across multiple countries. She is the founding partner of Kuper Research which specialises in media, marketing and socio-political analysis, and qualitative and quantitative primary research.
She is the lead director of futurefact, a survey that has been monitoring the significant social, political and economic attitudinal changes in South Africa since 1998. She has worked intensively on the relevance of social mobility, social dissent and cohesion, the digital society as it evolves and the mindsets of relevant cohorts within specific sectors.
Jos has given many papers internationally and has received several awards for innovative research.
Angela Biden
Chris Coghlan
Shelley-Anne Salisbury
Angela is an experienced Social Impact specialist and strategist. She holds a Masters in Economics, and has worked extensively in the development space at the strategic, as well as grass roots level.
Angela has experience in leveraging innovations to create social change, as well as in designing the frameworks to measure this.
Angela has worked for the South African National Treasury (Ministry of Finance), the USAID, AECOM and a number of smaller consultancies and think tanks. She has conducted a number of high-level process, and summative evaluations on key development projects in South Africa, and has managed a series of M&E capability building projects. Her areas of specialisation include Education, Employment, Youth, Policy and Governance and Ed Tech.
Shelley-Anne’s diverse career path, spanning over 30 years, includes her roles as a company commercial lawyer, law lecturer , in-house commercial consultant and start-up entrepreneur, all of which have stood her in good stead for her current role as a mediator and arbitrator.
With a keen eye for getting to the heart of the matter and her excellent interpersonal skills, Shelley-Anne is able to achieve attitudinal shifts in all types of disputes, overcoming inflexibility and rigid perceptions to attain a resolution enabling parties to move forwards productively.
Chris as an experienced charity finance director, investment professional, and international development expert. Chris is able to combine finance expertise with a deep understanding of the international development context, with nearly 20 years’ experience across the private sector, non-profits, and government. Chris founded Grow Movement, an NGO which pioneered remote coaching of entrepreneurs in developing countries to relieve poverty.
Chris qualified as an accountant at Deloitte before spending five years as an analyst in an emerging markets hedge fund. He is finance director of one of the UK’s leading social investment foundations. He has also served as a diplomat in the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He holds a Masters in Finance from London Business School and a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard Kennedy School.
Fiona Lewis
Fiona has worked extensively in several specialist areas within the higher education and schools sectors, mostly in Africa.
From research and analysis to policy and planning, monitoring and evaluation, and operations management within a public entity, Fiona has worked for over 20 years in areas as diverse as inclusive education and disability, school turnaround and education management, and student financial aid. She is now based in Australia but works globally.
Louise Brown
With over twenty five years of digital product management experience including work for Microsoft, UK public service broadcaster Channel 4 and the Wellcome Trust, Louise has a deep understanding of meaningful digital transformation.
Louise’s expertise is in enabling strategic visions to become operational - leading teams to create products, services and content that deliver on organisations’ visions for lasting public impact. She has hands-on product and content development experience, understanding how to deliver, measure and monitor results.