Meet the team

Matthew Somerville

Head of Development

Matthew is mySociety’s and SocietyWorks’ most long-standing developer. He has been a key player in the development and maintenance of FixMyStreet, MapIt, SayIt, and WriteToThem. Outside of work, Matthew has launched multiple acclaimed technical projects, including an editable archive of theatre productions, an accessible train journey planner and a real time London Underground map. He most recently created a COVID-19 restriction tracker covering the whole of the UK.

Dave Arter

Senior Developer

Dave’s been a mySociety developer since July 2013. As part of the SocietyWorks team he has worked with many clients, helping to roll out FixMyStreet and integrate with their back office systems to create cost and time savings within various teams, and to prototype new features. Dave is fluent in Perl, JavaScript, Python and HTML.

Before coming to mySociety, Dave built academic software for Swansea University, and also spent a year in Helsinki creating mobile web apps.

Sally Bracegirdle

Marketing and PR Manager

Sally joined SocietyWorks in December 2020, coming to us with a background in B2B and B2C marketing within the early careers recruitment sector, where she helped to boost the profile of graduate employers and close the gap between them and the young talent they want to hire, through content marketing, social media and community engagement.

Here at SocietyWorks, Sally’s our biggest cheerleader – sharing our stories with the press, engaging with our network on social media and making sure we’re celebrating all of the work we do with our clients through blog posts, case studies and various other marketing activities.

Chris Mytton

Senior Developer

Chris joined mySociety as a developer in April 2013. He’s contributed to the Pombola and FixMyStreet projects, and is currently part of the SocietyWorks team.

Before joining mySociety, Chris worked as a freelancer and for various web development agencies.

Chris is currently based in Cheltenham, where he can often be found foraging, brewing wine, making jams and chutneys and occasionally trying to play badminton.

Moray Jones

Developer

Moray joined the SocietyWorks team in 2021, a very welcome pair of hands to help us meet increasing demand for our commercial services.

FixMyStreet is under a continuous process of development, so there’s always plenty to do: making refinements, adding new features and keeping everything running smoothly to help citizens report local street issues as quickly and simply as possible.

In a previous job, Moray was also working for the general good: “At Citizens Advice, I was involved in collecting stories around the ill effects of payday loans, which were then passed on to the ombudsman. This work helped bring about far better regulation of the sector.”

Located in Wales, Moray enjoys the outdoors — “I’ve walked the complete Ridgeway in parts over weekends” — films and theatre, and is “a lapsed Amateur dramatics member and lapsed aikidoka”.

Lizetta Lyster

Delivery Manager

Lizetta joined us in 2021 as a Delivery Manager, with a mission to help us ensure that every client gets a good, streamlined project delivery experience.

She brought with her more than a decade’s experience improving operational efficiency, primarily within central government.

Situated in the south east of the capital, Lizetta says, “When I’m not out and about exploring (aka getting lost in) the streets of London with my camera, I’m at home cross stitching.” And, because at the time of writing, lockdown is still preventing many public events, she adds, “I’m currently really missing getting to see live music.”

It sounds like music has long been a dominant theme in Lizetta’s life, as she also reveals that the topic of her university dissertation was the Spice Girls!

Angela Dixon

Managing Director

Angela joined us in 2021 to oversee financial budgeting, forecasting, modelling, compliance, risk management and so on for both SocietyWorks and for mySociety.

When Mark Cridge stepped down as Chief Executive in March 2022, Angela stepped up into her current role as Managing Director of SocietyWorks – an extremely skilled and steady pair of hands to steer the ship, alongside the equally skilled and capable Louise Crow, who leads on the mySociety side of the organisation.

Having trained as a Chartered Accountant, well versed in Lean process implementation and experienced in project management, Angela started her career as an auditor before moving to various senior finance roles in industry and the charity sector.

But life’s not all about the spreadsheets. Angela describes her leisure pursuits as “Hiking, building Lego creations with my son, and feeling guilty about the cost of the gym membership I don’t use.”

She also has two degrees (one in English, one in Theology), a PGCE (she’s fitted in a few years as a secondary school English teacher), an Advanced PADI in scuba diving, and she’s summitted Mont Blanc. Phew! Who needs that gym membership?

Bekki Leaver

Head of Product

Bekki originally joined SocietyWorks as a service designer in November 2021, before quickly moving into the role of Head of Product.

With her multi-skilled background spanning design research, service design and even front-end design and development, Bekki is the perfect person to front the development of our Product Strategy, whilst at the same time leading on our user and client focused service design and consultancy services.

As if that wasn’t enough, Bekki also works closely with Angela to deliver cross functional efficient and effective processes and working practices.

Outside of work, Bekki is a collector of hobbies and always has some project or other on the go. She’s previously made a Raspberry Pi arcade machine, She’s a pretty good seamstress, making a lot of her own clothes and has all the kitchen gadgets to help veganise omni favourites.

Jacqueline Lau

Project Manager

Jacqueline joined SocietyWorks in December 2021 to take on the all important role of managing the work orders and projects requested by our public sector client base. Jacqueline keeps everything running smoothly, ensuring that the team knows what they’re doing and the work can be delivered on time and to the highest standard.

You’d never be able to tell, but a career in project management is actually relatively new to Jacqueline: “In 2020, when everyone was baking banana bread, I decided to study project management courses and thought it was a great way to pass the time.” Clearly, she enjoyed it as much as she excelled at it, because just a year later she had completed her AgilePM, Change Management and PRINCE2 qualifications – and now she’s here with us!

Based in North West London, Jacqueline’s hobbies include playing badminton at her local badminton club every week and going to see live music. In between studying for a career change into project management this year, she also found the time to pick up a new hobby – and it’s a cute one: “This year I have signed up to BorrowMyDoggy and have started walking people’s dogs.”

Victoria Mihell-Hale

Junior Developer

Located in Hampshire, Victoria is our junior developer. She helps to keep our digital services in excellent condition, making changes and implementing fixes as and when needed.

After completing an MSc in Computer Science, she worked as a Perl developer at a jobs board for six years before coming to us. The role appealed, Victoria explains, because “It should help me expand my knowledge of Perl, and hopefully learn other programming languages such as Python. But speaking less technically, I’d like to feel I am making at least a small contribution to improving people’s lives.” Fortunately, that’s always one of the outcomes when working at SocietyWorks, with all of our profits donated back to our parent charity mySociety!

Amelia Nicholas

Head of Client Partnerships

Joining us in February 2022, Amelia is our Head of Client Partnerships, tasked with helping us to grow the use of our services by local councils throughout the UK.

Prior to this position, Amelia ran her own academic publishing services company, offering consultancy, training and editorial services to researchers and academic publishers; but she also has experience working in the public sector, having spent time selling tailormade livestreaming software to local government clients.

Amelia is based in Brighton. “I live on the edge of the South Downs Way, with my husband, two children, a noisy dog and five chickens.” And, because life is all about finding balance, “I love going to the gym almost as much as I love food and cooking. I have a secret passion for boxing even though I have very little skill.”

Nicolle Whitehead

Account Manager

Nicolle joined the SocietyWorks team in June 2022 to help us look after our growing public sector client base, ensuring that the councils and other organisations with which we work are happy and getting the best out of our products and services.

Beyond responding to day-to-day queries, Nicolle takes on the pivotal task of keeping on the pulse of our clients’ needs, translating those needs back to the design and development team and helping to scope out opportunities for further ways that we can help them to achieve their digital transformation goals.

Nicolle honed her account management skills in the retail technology industry with a clear focus on implementation, customer service and client growth, but she’s no stranger to local government: “Most recently I worked for a local authority as a Business Advisor focused on helping SMEs set business growth targets backed by clear strategies and support to achieve those targets.”

Based in North Lincolnshire, Nicolle works on a part-time basis. When she’s not looking after our clients she’s taking care of her family: “I am a wife and mum to a toddler who is the biggest ball of energy.”

Nik Gupta

Developer

Nik joined us in September 2022, getting stuck right in to developing and maintaining our smart tech solutions for local government and the public sector, such as FixMyStreet Pro and WasteWorks.

With several years of experience working as a software engineer for a gaming start-up under his belt, as well as some experience working as a product engineer, Nik was a very welcome addition to the team. As a Python developer, Nik’s main focus is on our newer, Python-based products, about which he says: “I’m looking forward to developing software that actually helps people.”

Career development and learning on the job is always encouraged here at SocietyWorks, so we’re happy to be supporting Nik as he learns to code in Perl as well as Python, so that he can add another language to his portfolio and work on some of our more longstanding services.

Based in Derby, when Nik’s not coding he can usually be found reading (mostly fiction), playing electric guitar (jazz, in particular) or PC gaming (especially competitive first person shooters).

Sally Reader

Account Manager

Sally joined the team in January 2023, taking on the role of Account Manager.

Having previously worked for Transport for London – a role in which she helped to manage the implementation of our FixMyStreet Pro solution – no one understands better than Sally how to support the local government and public sector organisations that use our products.

While Sally is new to the SocietyWorks team, she’s not new to mySociety; she originally joined the charity as Service Manager of WhatDoTheyKnow, overseeing operation and improvement of the services we provide around Freedom of Information.

Based in Chelmsford, Sally’s had a varied career, working in everything from radio broadcasting to accountancy to even helping to make early versions of what we now call ‘podcasts’!

Chris Edwards

Business Development/Account Manager

Chris is our Business Development/Account Manager. He joined us in May 2023, focusing specifically on extending SocietyWorks’ impact in the north of the UK.

Having previously worked within the logistics industry, Chris brings a wealth of account management experience to the organisation, which he says he’s glad to be using “for the betterment of society, rather than for the benefit of the shareholders of large corporations”.

Day-to-day, Chris supports our council clients with their use of our digital solutions, while also working closely with Amelia to drive new business for SocietyWorks, the profits of which are all donated back into our parent charity mySociety.

Chris is located in Hucknall, just outside of Nottingham: “It’s a great place to nip into town, but also to head into the Peak District with Enola”. (Enola is Chris’ dog – she’s a very beautiful saluki!)