People

Lauren Xie is Co-Founder & Executive Director of Lively Worlds. She has over 10 years of academic and work experience in sustainability and systems change. She holds a Master of Business Administration and MSc in Nature, Society and Environmental Governance from the University of Oxford, where she was a Pershing Square Scholar. She also holds a BA in Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard University and was a postgraduate Michael C. Rockefeller Fellow. She has experience in the international development sector in Indonesia, specifically in agricultural innovation systems, impact measurement, multi-stakeholder collaboration, and deforestation and indigenous issues.

Simone Askew is Co-Founder & Operations Director of Lively Worlds, and President of Oxford Praxis Lab. She is a Rhodes Scholar and Masters in Public Policy student at the University of Oxford, where she also completed a MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies. She is the first African American female to serve as the Brigade Commander of the U.S. Corps of Cadets at the U.S. Military Academy (West Point). She co-founded the Joint Service Academy Mass Atrocity Prevention Symposium and was President of the Cultural Affairs Seminar at West Point. She holds a BS in International History with a minor in Environmental Engineering.

Shanley McConnell is Head Editor of Lively Worlds. She is studying towards an MSt in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford, having previously completed an MA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Dundee. Her research interests lie in examining the relationships between humility, creativity, humanity and language, and she hopes to pursue a greater understanding of literature and its musicology—the ways its finds something new in the familiar. She often finds inspiration for her poetry in this beautiful tension of belonging to more than one country. Beyond her studies, Shanley enjoys the violin and travelling.

Calder Tsuyuki Tomlinson is currently reading for an MSc in Nature, Society and Environmental Governance. Dedicated to the value of working between multiple disciplinary practices, he is committed to helping bridge the gap between society and nature, science and policy, theory and praxis. Drawing from his independent reading into philosophy, training in classical Japanese arts, and Bachelor’s studies in International Relations, these interests have been developed through his artistic, institutional, and academic work. He is currently focused on the politics of international climate negotiations, in thinking through possibilities for innovative approaches to global climate governance that engage and account for multiple scales of action – politically as well as epistemologically.

Stephanie Wolff is Communications Manager at Lively Worlds. She holds an MSc in Nature, Society and Environmental Governance from the University of Oxford and a BSc (Hons) in Politics and International Relations from the University of Bath. Stephanie has experience in international and European environmental topics, gained most recently as a Blue Book Trainee in DG Environment at the European Commission in Brussels where she worked on deforestation and the global trade in ivory. She previously worked as a Junior Consultant for Browning Environmental where she supported international environmental NGOs with their communication strategies on topics like natural climate solutions.

Felicity Tan is a collaboration strategist passionate about building organizations that capacitate changeshapers to maximize their impact. She is currently Head of Strategy for WeSolve, a first-of-its kind coalition incubator addressing systemic change in the Philippines. Previously, she was Asia director at The Rockefeller Foundation, where she built networked partnerships in innovative finance, data for development and policy innovation for the SDGs. Felicity has a decade of experience in global advocacy while based in New York, Bangkok, Shanghai and The Hague. Felicity holds a masters in Politics & Communication from the London School of Economics and is currently an EMBA Candidate and director’s scholar at Oxford’s Saïd Business School.

Steve Waddell has been tackling global challenges through community organizing, consultations, education, and research. This has included leadership with the world’s largest community-based credit union and the Global Finance Initiative. He is currently Lead Staff of the SDG Transformation Forum, which is growing systems of people, organizations, locales, who are developing transformations systems as key infrastructure to accelerate deep change. He is also leading Bounce Beyond, a project in support of initiatives developing a new, emerging economic paradigm. Dozens of publications including the book Change for the Audacious: a doers’ guide to large systems change for a flourishing future (2016). Steve has a Ph.D. in sociology and an MBA, and is a Canadian-American living in Boston with his husband.

Brooke D. Lavelle, Ph.D. (she/her) is the Co-Founder and President of the Courage of Care Coalition (www.courageofcare.org), a nonprofit dedicated to facilitating the co-creation of a more just, compassionate world. Courage’s diverse, interdisciplinary, multi-generational team provides training and consultation in relational compassion practices, anti-oppressive pedagogies, restorative healing methods and systems tools to social service and caring professionals, as well as to educational, spiritual and human rights organisations.

Gavin Jack is an academic researcher and teacher based at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. He is currently Professor of Management and Associate Dean Research Impact in Monash Business School, responsible for leading and supporting scholars to make a positive difference in the world through their research. His own research interests include workplace diversity and inclusion, employee thriving, and sustainable agricultural development in the context of South-east Asia.

Professor Marc Ventresca is an economic sociologist in the Strategy, Innovation and Marketing Faculty at Saïd Business School and a Governing Body Fellow of Wolfson College. Marc's areas of expertise include market and network formation, entrepreneurship, governance, and innovation and technology strategy. His research and teaching focus on the formation of markets and networks in business and social settings. Specifically, he researches how markets are built and the actors who build them. He is also an expert in the areas of governance, innovation and technology and how they interact with markets and networks.

Dr. Ariell Ahearn is the Course Director of Oxford’s MSc in Nature, Society and Environmental Governance. Since 2004, Ariell has worked extensively in rural Mongolia with mobile pastoralist communities around land use and rural development issues. She engages with a broad range of individuals and groups, from government officials to business owners and NGOs to rural households. Ariell's current research aims to understand the relationship between social systems, resource distribution and governance frameworks in regions undergoing economic transformation. She specializes in qualitative research, using methods such as ethnographic participant observation, interviewing, mapping and immersive field work to document and analyze the conditions that inform human decision-making and organization.

Dr. Samuel Hampton works for the Local Enterprise Partnership in Oxfordshire (OxLEP), where he supports low carbon businesses across the region. In addition to this work, he is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford’s School of Geography and the Environment, having completed his DPhil there in 2018. His academic research examines the ways in which environmental impact relates to everyday life. It begins with the idea that energy and resource consumption are bound up in social practices such as travelling to work, cooking and eating, and achieving comfort. This perspective tells us that policies designed to reduce environmental impact require an understanding of how and why social norms and behaviours become established.

Charmian Love is the Co-Founder and Chair of B Lab UK, where she supports the growth of B Corps across the UK (and beyond). She is Co-Chair of B Lab’s Global Climate Taskforce and deeply engaged in helping accelerate the transition to a more regenerative, circular and inclusive economy. She is also Entrepreneur in Residence at the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School and sits on the Investment Committee of the London Waste and Recycling Board (LWARB). Charmian is actively engaged in how we might mobilise a ‘Movement of Movements’ – connecting people and organisations who share a goal relating to the need for deep and systemic levels of change in our economy.

Chris Winchester is Chief Executive Officer of Oxford PharmaGenesis, an independent HealthScience communications consultancy and a two-time winner of the Queen’s Award for Enterprise. Oxford PharmaGenesis employs over 250 communications professionals in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. Chris is Chair of ISMPP, a founder of Open Pharma, and has been involved in collaborative research on the value of professional medical writing support. He has a doctorate in Biochemistry, has co-authored articles in the fields of cardiology, gastroenterology and respiratory medicine, and is an Associate Member of Green Templeton College at the University of Oxford.