Our approach empowers the most talented and motivated people in the world to redirect their careers and have a large-scale social impact as entrepreneurs, researchers and intrapreneurs.
Mission-Led Approach
We focus on specific ‘missions’, which we believe unite, mobilise and organise the best talent, knowledge and capital that are needed to break through at scale. Within each of our missions, we run Venture Builder and Academy programmes that help individuals to have impact.
We have 3 criteria for choosing a Zinc mission:
It must tackle one of the great unmet needs in the developed world.
The target addressable market must exceed 100m people in the developed world alone.
There must be lots of unexploited opportunities to disrupt, extend and improve existing services through new technologies; insights from research.
Since we launched in 2017, we have been developing a unique ecosystem of diverse talent across many sectors, disciplines and countries – mobilising people around a common mission and building scalable solutions to social problems.
The Team Behind Zinc
Meet members of our team and learn more about Zinc, our missions and our programmes at our weekly Meet & Greet events.
Paul Kirby
Co-founder, CEO
Paul Kirby
Co-founder, CEO
Paul is a former partner at KPMG and the global head of public services and government. In his career, he has been Head of the Number 10 Policy Unit, as well as working in the media, education, transport and urban regeneration sectors. Paul is a Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics & Political Science and was a Director of Bethnal Green Ventures and a Non-Executive Director of the Cabinet Office.
Ella Goldner
Co-founder, General Manager
Ella Goldner
Co-founder, General Manager
Ella is a former Strategy Director at IPG Mediabrands, one of the world’s largest media agencies, working with global leading brands. She is the Co-Founder of NewCo UK, which connects the most successful large corporates with the most innovative start-ups in the UK. Ella started her career as an engineer in Tel Aviv’s hi tech aerospace industry, before becoming a consultant to tech firms.
Rachel Carey
Chief Scientist
Rachel Carey
Chief Scientist
Rachel is an Associate Consultant for UCL’s Centre for Behaviour Change and a former Senior Behaviour Change Research Advisor at Bupa. Rachel has a PhD in Psychology, and has worked across a range of settings embedding social science research in tech-enabled businesses.
Julia Ross
Programme Director
Julia Ross
Programme Director
Julia joined Zinc at the very beginning. Since then, she has led the delivery of two company builder programmes. Her role builds on her previous experience in setting-up and scaling start-ups in market research and building design. In her earlier career, Julia worked in TV and international development. She has an MSc from SOAS and a passion for high-impact social innovation.
Eleanor Ford
Academy Director
Eleanor Ford
Academy Director
Eleanor joined Zinc in Oct 2019 to launch the new Zinc Academy. Most recently Eleanor was Director of the Good Lab, a radical innovation collaboration of 12 of the UK’s largest charities, looking to transform how they raise funds through venturing. Eleanor started her career as an anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, before landing in the world of start-ups in 2006, founding a technology company, LikeCube, which was acquired by Oakley Capital Private Equity and the Time Out Group, where she stayed for 5 years as Global Innovation Director.
Francesca Marsden
Senior Associate
Francesca Marsden
Senior Associate
Fran gained her BSc in Geography at the University of Bristol, whilst simultaneously testing out her appetite for social innovation on a programme geared towards improving people’s experiences of later life. She has previously worked with charities focused on supporting homeless people and ending poverty. Her interests lie in sustainability, social innovation and learning.
Lois Uduje
Senior Associate
Lois Uduje
Senior Associate
Lois has spent the last three years in the public relations sector and during lockdown she set out looking for a new role that would allow her to create tangible impact in today’s society. This path resulted in her joining Zinc to support on The Academy and future missions. Lois spent her time before working at The University of Manchester studying for a degree in Philosophy with a focus on logic and semantics. She loves to travel, having completed Rio Carnaval this February and a large chunk of Central America a few years earlier her goal is to eventually cover all of South America.
Diane Morgan
Talent & Catalyst Director
Diane Morgan
Talent & Catalyst Director
Diane loves to be at the intersection of education and business with expertise in building and scaling education & edtech and was most recently at workforce accelerator, Trilogy Education Services. She is former Associate Dean of Imperial College and London Business School. She is a Forte Board Member to advance women in business, and an Advisor & Angel Investor to startups in education, talent and tech. Diane is a systemic thinker who loves to make things happen with an ability to connect and match networks.
Tim Shakespeare
Research Acceleration Lead
Tim Shakespeare
Research Acceleration Lead
Tim is passionate about applying research and design principles to help people live healthier and happier lives. During a PhD and post-doc he bridged the gap between academics, healthcare professionals and people affected by dementia to create new solutions. Before joining Zinc, Tim gained experience in research comms, fundraising and innovation, combining research and creativity to develop new products and services at Alzheimer’s Society.
Beth Massam
Senior Associate
Beth Massam
Senior Associate
Beth joined Zinc to pursue her interest in creating positive social change. A history graduate from the University of Liverpool, Beth won British Council sponsorship to work in an environmental NGO in China and has since worked in communications and content marketing across Asia and Europe. She loves to travel, an interest she had to replace over lockdown with practicing pilates and learning French.
Rachel Middlemass
Research & Development Partnerships
Rachel Middlemass
Research & Development Partnerships
Before joining Zinc in December 2020, Rachel spent ten years working on knowledge exchange and research impact at the University of East London, University College London and, most recently, the London School of Economics. She is passionate about realising the applied benefits of academic research and loves being part of the process of making that happen. All of this feels, in some ways, like penance for doing her PhD in the almost uniquely un-impactful field of medieval masculinities.
Cara Vaitilingam
Investment Associate (Talent)
Cara Vaitilingam
Investment Associate (Talent)
Cara joined Zinc in an interim position in July 2022 and couldn’t help but come back for more! After graduating from UCL with a first in History with Spanish in 2021, Cara worked at theatre and film production company Khameleon Productions for a year, assistant producing their film and managing their four-month tour of universities all over the US. She founded and produced charity performance initiative Curtain Up In Crisis in 2020, which combined her knack for organising people with her drive to create impact. As well as her work at Zinc, Cara is a theatre director who has worked with the likes of Sir Tim Rice, a performer with venues such as the Bloomsbury Theatre and Camden People’s Theatre under her belt, and a writer. Cara is a proud Bristolian of Sri Lankan/Italian/American descent.
Rosie Webster
Venture Builder Science Lead
Rosie Webster
Venture Builder Science Lead
Rosie has a passion for applying scientific knowledge and methods to the development of digital products, to make them the best they can be. She has a PhD in Health Psychology, and many years experience as a UX researcher and applied behavioural scientist within health tech startups.
Claire McCallum
Research & Development Fellow
Claire McCallum
Research & Development Fellow
Claire is an academic Researcher interested in digital health and multidisciplinarity. After an undergraduate in psychology, her PhD (public health and human computer interaction) explored how we can increase the usefulness and efficiency of evaluations of digital health technologies – for researchers and industry professionals. In her post-doctoral research Claire developed and evaluated a self-management app for an autoimmune condition, and then completed a 1 year lectureship in Digital Health.
Kirsten Bound
Project Lead
Kirsten Bound
Project Lead
Kirsten joined Zinc in January 2022 to lead an R&D project on social science and early stage ventures. Her background is in public policy research and innovation. She has worked around the world, and after driving several years of global expansion at Innovation Foundation, Nesta, led a multidisciplinary research and policy department of over 80 as Executive Director. She has experience in organisations ranging from fast growing education ventures to the Rwandan government and the World Bank IFC. A thread throughout her career has been finding ways to empower people with new ideas and abilities to drive innovation for public good.
Diellza Ramadani
Investment Associate
Diellza Ramadani
Investment Associate
Diellza has a BSc in Psychology from the University of Warwick and a MSc in Global Public Health and Policy from Queen Mary University of London. She joined Zinc to combine her interest in startups with her passion for social science research and golden purpose of creating a positive social impact.
Hannah Abdel-Hadi
Investment Associate (Venture Builder)
Hannah Abdel-Hadi
Investment Associate (Venture Builder)
Board Member
Saul Klein
Co-founder
Saul Klein
Co-founder
Saul is a partner at LocalGlobe, a UK-based venture capital firm. His investment career includes being a partner at Index Ventures and he specialises in early-stage tech companies. Saul was co-founder of Seedcamp, the first tech accelerator in Europe.He has been closely involved in the formation of many successful businesses, including Lovefilm, MOO and Kano.
Board Member
Julia Black
Co-founder
Julia Black
Co-founder
Julia is the Pro Director for Research at the LSE, and from 2016-17 served as LSE’s Interim Director. She is on the board of UK Research and Innovation. At the LSE she is a member of the Law Department, with a primary research interest in regulation of Financial Services and Biotechnology. She holds a PhD from Oxford and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2015. She chairs the ASPECT Consortium of LSE, Oxford, Manchester, Sheffield, Sussex universities which is working with Zinc to drive entrepreneurship and commercialisation in the social sciences.
Portfolio Companies
Learn about Zinc’s Vision, Missions, Programmes
Learn about Zinc’s Vision, Missions, Programmes from our team directly at out weekly
Meet & Greet sessions
