We’re very grateful to our board members, who give their time and expertise on a voluntary basis. Find out more about each board member below.
Mandy became our chair in January 2022, taking over from Jonathan Flowers. She is a consultant at Top 20 accountants Moore Kingston Smith, and has extensive experience, spanning over 30 years, in offering clients strategic advice and commercial support.
Mandy advises on a range of commercial and technical issues affecting entrepreneurial and growing businesses. She serves on the board of the Direct Marketing Association and is a director of the Telephone Preference Service. Mandy also holds other non-executive roles at other commercial and not for profit organisations.
As well as being our chair, Mandy also sits on the board of our parent charity mySociety as treasurer.
Ade Adewunmi is a data strategist at Cloudera Fast Forward Labs.
She spends her days advising clients on integrating machine learning into their business operations, including developing and executing on use cases through the application of machine learning.
Before joining Cloudera Fast Forward Labs, Ade worked as a senior consultant at Teradata, advising organisations on the development and delivery of their data strategies. Prior to that, she led the Government Digital Service’s Data Infrastructure programme.
Outside of work, Ade’s interests in the application and impact of data are broader – beyond the boundaries of corporate organisations; she volunteers with charities such as Datakind UK.
She blogs about the ways in which data can be made useful for organisations and wider society as well as the leadership and organisational cultures that make this possible. When she’s not advising, blogging or speaking about these things, she’s almost certainly watching too much TV and justifying (as if justification were needed!) it on the grounds of cultural engagement. The
truth is, she just likes it.
Steve is a public sector strategist, political advisor and experienced senior manager. He is co-founder and director of strategy and innovation agency Question Factory.
Previously, Steve held the position of Director of Strategy and Innovation at the Government of Jersey, where he worked to turn the emerging theory of open policy making, participatory design and digital government into practice.
Steve also led on public service reform and policy for Stockport Council, where he created the award winning Digital by Design programme. He also worked as a Mayoral digital advisor and Chair of the GM Connect programme for the Greater Manchester Combined Authority.
Onyeka Onyekwelu was appointed to the SocietyWorks board in November 2022 as a non-executive director.
Onyeka specialises in strategy and stakeholder engagement. She currently holds the position of Principal Consultant at Public Digital, where she supports global governments and development organisations with decision-making around digital, data and innovation.
Prior to this, Onyeka was one of seven inaugural No.10 Innovation Fellows, where she was appointed as a Deputy Director into the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to improve their use of geospatial data and emerging technologies to address humanitarian crises.
Onyeka also trained as a Barrister and specialised in public policy, before switching industries to tech and digital. She has worked with the London Office of Technology and Innovation (LOTI), Greater London Authority (GLA), Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and Bar Associations nationally and internationally. She uses user-centred design to develop projects exploring intelligent use of data, digitisation of public services.
A passionate diversity and inclusion advocate, as well as sitting on our board, Onyeka is an Ambassador for Code First Girls, Big Sister for The Step Up Sorority and a Bursary Recipient from the Chartered Institute of IT and Coding Black Females.
Onyeka is also passionate about all things arts and culture. In her down time, she sits on product testers’ panels for brands such as Lancome, Garnier, La Roche Posay and many others. Sharing her views on the diversity of their products, as well as what more can be done to cater to Black female consumers. She also loves books, and sits on a network of book-lovers who read and review advance copies for publishers. Her love for the arts doesn’t stop there – she also loves films. She spends an evening, every fortnight or so, attending pre-screenings and providing feedback before its release.
Anna is a content, brand and User Centred Design specialist with a background in data and human rights. She directed content and brand strategy at Open Data Institute, 360Giving and clients across data ethics and civic tech, and cut her teeth as a Guardian journalist.
Anna currently designs digital public services as a Senior Content Designer at Defra. She has a Masters in Human Rights from UCL. Outside work, Anna spends time chasing her toddler around and working on an electronic music project.
Anna joined our board in June 2024, and also serves as Trustee on the board of our parent charity mySociety.
Alastair is a journalist and digital audience specialist with decades of experience in digital media and developing new models for public interest news.
Alastair currently works at The Conversation, and has previously worked with broadcaster STV, along with a number of other non-profit news projects. He is a founding co-director of Scottish investigative journalism co-operative, The Ferret. He also provides training and mentoring to journalists and campaigners on how to make the most of their information rights.
Like Anna, Alastair is also a Trustee on mySociety’s board of directors.
As well as the active members listed above, we’d also like to thank those who have generously given up time to serve on our boards previously: Jonathan Flowers, Cam Ross, Francis Mainoo, Anno Mitchell, Amandeep Rehlon, James Cronin, Owen Blacker, Mike Bracken, Tim Hunt, Etienne Pollard, Mark Cridge and Tom Steinberg.
Francis Mainoo
Non-Executive Director, SocietyWorks
We would like to acknowledge the contribution to SocietyWorks of Francis Mainoo, who sat on our board of directors as Non-Executive Director from July 2022 until his unexpected death in October 2023.
Francis was a kind, generous and immensely valued member of the board. He was a big believer that we can be a more productive, happier and connected society if we engage – provided we have the right tools to engage with. For Francis, technology such as that built by SocietyWorks and our parent charity mySociety is essential, benefitting citizens by making them better connected and fulfilled, as the issues directly affecting them are addressed.
Francis’ death is a huge loss, not just to us, but to the many other people and organisations he worked with to help them grow and succeed in making the world a better place. We miss his good humour, his valued input and his strong leadership. We are grateful for the time we were able to work with Francis, and we will keep him in our thoughts as we strive to achieve the goals he believed in so passionately.