Behavioural Science Summit 2025

Kate Ainsworth, Head of Communications Standards, Nationwide Building Society

Kate heads up Comms Standards at Nationwide Building Society, helping the organisation develop clear, trustworthy customer communications that help people make confident financial decisions. The team do this through standards steeped in Behavioural science principles, brought to life for Comms colleagues using training, tooling, governance and performance monitoring.

Ounal Bailey, Co-Founder, London Essence Company

Ounal co-created Wisehead Productions, a Britvic brand incubator dedicated to crafting premium drinks for discerning adults. Within this venture, The London Essence Company was born—a luxury mixer brand built from the ground up, combining heritage with modernity to elevate drinking experiences.

As Brand Director, Ounal led the journey from concept to global launch, shaping every aspect of the brand—from purpose and positioning to innovation, design, and go-to-market strategy. It’s been an incredible ride, building a brand with real substance across multiple markets, always with the UK as our lead market.

Ounal is now Carlsberg Group Soft Drinks Director.

Tris Baker, Co-Founder, Runaway Entertainment

Tristan Baker is the Co-Founder of Runaway Entertainment, the award-winning production company behind The Hunger Games: On Stage, 2:22 A Ghost Story, Girl from the North Country, and Newsies among others. Known for championing bold work, Tristan brings a rare openness to using behavioural insights in a creative industry that often relies on gut feel. His collaboration on Hunger Games is a case in point, blending data with instinct to create work that connects with audiences on a deeper level, driving awareness, impact, and ultimately, ticket sales.

Anita Bhogaita, Head of Commercial Effectiveness, Digital & Tech, Haleon 

Jake Bowser, CTO, Sine Digital

Benjamin Buckby, Behavioural Design Lead, Digital & Tech, Haleon

Award-winning behavioural designer with 15+ years’ experience applying behavioural science to design behaviour-changing experiences, products and services. In this time, Benjamin has partnered with GSK, HSBC, Hitachi, Telefonica, Nestle, and many others to uplift their behavioural design maturity to improve product adoption and change behaviour. He has won a Nudge Award (the world’s first behaviour change awards), been voted Most Inspiring Speaker at the AURAs, and shortlisted for the AQR Qualitative Excellence Award. 

Having started and scaled behavioural science teams for several global consultancies, Benjamin founded his own startup where he collaborated with Haleon before recently joining them as Behavioural Design Lead to transform the end-to-end delivery of data & AI products to optimise commercial spend across the business. He’s a passionate cyclist – both on the road and Zwift – and dreams of opening his own cycling café. 

Jodi Burt, Deputy Director – Strategy & Propositions, The Open University

Jodi is a highly experience marketer and strategist, with expertise in pricing strategy. She joined The Open University in 2016 from Tesco where she led the price and promotion team for seven years. In the OU she leads strategy and proposition development including OU’s product and pricing propositions that meet the immediate and future needs of learners and employers. 

The Open University is a global leader in higher education able to reach every adult in the United Kingdom - and many others across the world - with the opportunity to learn and achieve, using the power of technology and our worldclass expertise in supported distance learning. From our inception we have been a movement and not just a university, in a class of our own. Our model has inspired other universities across the world and changed millions of lives. We are uniquely a university of four nations, based and funded in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. We are passionately open to people, places, methods and ideas, with a huge range of free resources that enable thousands of people every year to take their first – or further - steps into higher education. Non-selective in most of our undergraduate admissions, we enable students from many different backgrounds to achieve the highest standards of academic and professional excellence.

Eoin Campbell, Associate Director - Behavioural Insight and Advisory Team, Thinks Insight & Strategy

Eoin is an Associate Director and Behavioural Scientist on the Thinks Behavioural Team. He has expertise in designing and running large-scale experiments for clients across a broad range of industries, including financial services, energy and retail.

Eoin develops and applies inventive solutions grounded in behavioural science literature (often using models and frameworks) to enhance user experience. He is particularly passionate about designing effective behavioural strategies for potentially vulnerable people in society, aiding understanding, and helping people make decisions, including about their finances. His previous experience also included working for the Scottish Government.

Dr Benny Cheung, Director, Dectech

Benny is a seasoned leader in research, analytics, and insights consulting, with 20+ years of commercial experience in applied behavioural science. He joined Dectech in its infancy in 2005 after completing a PhD and a two-year postdoctoral research fellowship in behavioural science at the University of Cambridge.

Dectech strives to provide the most accurate and best value forecasts available on how people will behave in new situations. Founded in 2002, we have conducted more than 400 studies involving over three million participants. Commercially orientated, but driven by our academic heritage, we have become long-term strategic partners for a wide variety of clients across sectors including finance, ecommerce, retail, telecoms, utilities, NPO and policy.

Dan Clay, Managing Partner, The Social Agency

Dan Clay is Managing Partner of The Social Agency (formerly Basis Social) which he co-founded in 2021. Over the past 20+ years’ working in public policy and communications research he has supported a wide range of government departments, regulators and non-departmental bodies to develop and evaluate effective internal and external communications. This has included everything from voter registration forms to the 'Britain is GREAT' campaign. Dan set up the UK research function of strategic communications firm SEC Newgate, and prior to this held senior insight roles at Kantar Public and the education specialists EVERFI. He is a member of the MRS Social Equity Group and a former trustee of the Social Research Association.

Susan Coburn – Head of Communications Projects, Nationwide Building Society

Susan heads up a Project team within the Marketing Transformation function at Nationwide. She’s a huge believer in applying the power of behavioural science to all customer communications, to help people make better choices. Susan has won several Data, Nudge and FS Forum Awards along the way and has led many of the most complex £mutlimillion communications programmes in the FS sector.

Sam Connor, Director, The Big Picture Agency

Sam is a longstanding member of The Big Picture team — a specialist insight consultancy that brings brand design and experience to life through a powerful mix of design thinking and behavioural science.

With a passion for helping brands make a real impact, Sam works closely with clients and creative agencies to shape design strategies that are deeply rooted in human insight.

Sam is a qualitative expert yet often works on integrated quantitative projects, combining the power of both disciplines in complementary behavioural approaches. Challenges span refining visual identity, shaping product design, and driving innovation. Bridging the gap between creativity and real-world consumer experiences — with a close eye on what truly resonates.

Catriona Ferris, Consumer Insight Director for Homecare, Unilever

Kate Freed, Group Manager - Global Research and Insights team, Snapchat

Kate Freed is a Group Manager in the Global Research and Insights team at Snapchat. Based in London but operating globally, she now spearheads various thought leadership initiatives for the company. Kate joined the company 8 years ago where she was part of the Marketing Science team executing measurement campaigns across clients.

Natalia Gomez, Lead Behavioural Researcher, Cowry

Natalia Gómez is a behavioural scientist and researcher with over eight years of experience spanning academia, the public sector, and industry. Her work centres on understanding both conscious and unconscious drivers of human behaviour, with a focus on providing insights for the design of interventions that enable meaningful and equitable change. Currently, Natalia is the Behavioural Research Lead at Cowry Consulting, where she manages all research activity. She leads the design and delivery of mixed-methods research to explore System 1 and System 2 processes and their role in consumer and employee behaviour. Her work informs behavioural interventions across finance, retail, utilities, and transport, supporting organisations such as Coca-Cola, easyJet, Phoenix Group, Reward Gateway, LHH, and Northern Rail.

Claire Hovey – Behavioural Research Designer, Signal

Claire Hovey is a Senior Behavioural Science Consultant working with Signal, a leading Customer Experience Management consultancy. She has been designing Financial Services research for more than 15 years, exploring and evidencing the impact of applying behavioural science to communications. She works with Nationwide to turn evidence into actionable strategies that improve decision-making and outcomes for their customers.

Ben Jones, Director, AI Product Innovation Lead, The Behavioural Architects

Ben is a Behavioural Science expert and strategic insight consultant with over 12 years of experience helping organisations understand and influence human behaviour. As Director at The Behavioural Architects, he specialises in designing impactful behaviour change strategies, with particular expertise in the consumer healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors, among others. Ben also serves as Global AI Product Innovation Lead, where he is responsible for embedding the company’s behavioural science IP - built up over 15 years of applied work - into custom-built AI and instantly available intelligence, rigorously developed, securely deployed, and purpose-built to deliver smart BeSci thinking at scale.

Shyma Jundi, Behavioural Science Lead, NHS England

Shyma Jundi is a Senior Behavioural Science Manager at NHS England, focussed on transforming how we recruit people into clinical trials—using behavioural insights to catalyse health breakthroughs that stick. With a career spanning government, innovation, and consultancy, Shyma brings scientific thinking to real-world challenges, from tackling health inequalities to reimagining digital engagement.

She has led groundbreaking projects across sectors, including transport, sustainability, and public health—delivering behavioural change strategies for organisations like Connected Places Catapult and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Whether informing AI-driven health tools or designing an app for seamless train travel throughout Europe, her work aims to blend rigour with creativity to deliver meaningful impact.

Shyma holds a PhD in Behavioural Psychology and is a published researcher, mentor, and advisor across academia and government. She believes that when applying behavioural science to uncover invisible barriers to action, we can build life-enhancing (and even life-saving) solutions that meet people where they are.

Alya Kubati, Data and Insights Director, Sine Digital

Max Mawby, Managing Director, Applied Behavioural Science, Thinks Insight & Strategy

Max is the founder of the Thinks Behavioural Team. He is a leading practitioner in applying insights from behavioural science to drive positive change.

Over an applied behavioural science career spanning the private and public sectors, his research has influenced major regulation (for example the FCA Consumer Duty) whilst his intervention design has influenced products live in the market (including Monzo, Lloyds and Plum Fintech).

Max has pioneered the use of online experiments at the Behavioural Insights Team, Verian/Kantar Public and now Thinks to help clients make confident investment and rollout decisions. Max is passionate about applied behavioural science and how this can improve our lives. In particular, he is interested in driving positive financial behaviours, sustainable decisions, and using behavioural insight to make design inclusive for all.

Richard Milner, Lead Behavioural Designer, Cowry

Rich Milner is a Lead Behavioural Consultant with over 15 years of experience in customer experience design and behavioural communications. He specialises in using behavioural science to solve complex challenges at the intersection of UX, regulation, service, and human interaction. Rich has worked with some of the UK’s most recognisable brands including HSBC, easyJet, Trainline, Northern Rail, Amazon and Tesco bringing deep expertise in designing psychologically informed strategies that improve customer outcomes and drive measurable impact. At Cowry Consulting, Rich leads a multidisciplinary team of behavioural scientists that apply psychological insight to transform customer experiences.

Dr. Nicki Morely, Global Innovation Lead, Kantar

Nicki has a wealth of experience in Innovation and leads the Innovation solution area globally for Kantar (the world’s leading marketing data and analytics business). She has worked for Kantar for 8 years and is our key Innovation expert and thought leader in all things Innovation and Behavioural science.

Nicki ensures that Kantar’s innovation teams are indispensable brand partners to their clients and oversees the development of the innovation solution strategy and expertise development across the insights business.

Nicki has previously worked at Unilever in Consumer Insights teams in both R&D and Marketing for over 13 years working brands like Persil and Cif,. Nicki also set up their ‘Innovation Garage’ which looked an entrepreneurial approaches to innovating differently across the Innovation funnel.

With a PhD in behavioural science and post docs in Design thinking Nicki brings a unique academic background to her innovation role and focusses this on helping brands drive innovation and behaviour change through people and context centred design.

Nicki’s mission is to ensure that our clients can develop and launch innovations in new meaningfully different spaces and is a sparring partner in Innovation to our top global

Gill O'Hanlon, Managing Partner, The Behavioural Architects

Gill is a highly experienced strategic marketing consultant and Behavioural Science expert. Gill's passion lies in helping businesses truly understand their customers in order to develop impactful strategies that drive real results. With a rich background spanning marketing, brand, communication and innovation research, she's partnered with a wide array of clients, including extensive work in the consumer healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors. She has extensive experience in tackling diverse marketing challenges, expertly applying Behavioural Science to craft effective behaviour change strategies. Within the field of communications, Gill is experienced in applying Behavioural Science principles to shape effective client communication strategies and ensure optimal execution. This includes working with The Behavioural Architects’s creative studio Do Not Behave which uses behavioural science fuelled strategy and insight to produce outstanding creative work that drives change.

Chris Paddon, Customer Experience Service Design Manager, Northern Rail

Chris Paddon over 20 years experience in Customer Experience and service design across retail banking, telco and transport sectors. Current role is as CX Service Design Manager for Northern Trains, capturing and listening to both quantitative and qualitative customer insight from multiple listening posts to understand customer needs, translate this, through service design tools and approaches, including behavioural science to inform products, services and propositions to meet and where possible exceed customer needs that we can pilot and assess to improve customer experience for Northern customers and influence change across the transport sector.

Clare Parsons, Senior CMI Manger, Unilever

Alice Pearce, Senior Associate, Dectech

Alice has several years’ experience applying behavioural insights in commercial settings, underpinned by an MSc on the subject. She is skilled across the full project lifecycle - from research design, to coding of experiments or surveys, advanced analysis, and delivery of actionable insights to senior stakeholders. As a Senior Associate at Dectech, Alice has led bespoke research projects, leveraging her Behavioural Science expertise to drive strategic decision-making and real-world impact.

John Portsmouth, Senior Innovation Director, Kantar

John is the UK Innovation Expertise Lead and has over 10 years of experience partnering with some of the world’s biggest brands, working with stakeholders across marketing, insights, and R&D functions. He plays a key role in driving strategic innovation initiatives with his clients and is a passionate advocate for embedding behavioural science within the innovation process.

John works closely with client teams to co-create bespoke innovation protocols that unlock growth opportunities and bring structure and creativity to early-stage idea development. His expertise lies in blending commercial understanding with behavioural insight to design innovation approaches that are both strategic and human-centred. Throughout his career, John has led cross-functional innovation projects across a range of sectors, helping brands navigate complexity and develop breakthrough propositions grounded in real consumer behaviour.

John’s mission is to help clients innovate with confidence—creating products, services and experiences that resonate deeply with consumers and deliver meaningful, lasting impact.

Jessica Rees, Policy Manager – Online Safety, Ofcom

Devora Rogers, Chief Strategy Officer, Alter Agents

Devora Rogers is Chief Strategy Officer at Alter Agents, a full-service, strategic market research consultancy reimagining research in an era of shifting decision making. As an author, speaker and human behavior researcher, she is committed to changing the way people think about consumer decision-making in today’s complex landscape. In her role at Alter Agents, she helps clients uncover what drives shoppers and consumers, designing thoughtful insights studies to solve some of the toughest brand challenges. 

Pinelopi Skotida, Behavioural Insights Advisor, Ofcom

Laura Street, Expert Marketing Director, Haleon

Laura is a strategic marketer with over 15 years of experience in building leading brands within the health and wellness sectors. Her extensive background in communications and commercial management equips her to develop impactful solutions that drive meaningful changes in consumer and professional behaviour.

Max Wiggins, Behavioural Science Lead, Kantar

Max is a Client Director and Behavioural Science Lead at Kantar. He has over seven years experience in innovation, insights, and consumer behaviour change with clients such as PepsiCo, Reckitt, Mars, Unilever, Burger King, and J.P. Morgan. Max has also been lucky enough to develop new, in-house research approaches: from applying behaviour change models to digital conversational data, to building a government-backed Proof-of-Concept to protect vulnerable people in real-time across online financial journeys. He has a MSc in Brain Imaging and Cognitive Neuroscience.