About Us
We’re a growing team of researchers, innovators, and community builders dedicated to increasing social connection and fostering stronger, more inclusive communities. Whether we’re diving into research, developing creative strategies, or simply connecting over coffee – our team collaborates, shares ideas, and continually challenges one another to think bigger and better!
Our Values
We honour five important values in how we approach this work:
1: We are curious
Constantly exploring, innovating and expanding what’s possible
2: We are inclusive
Championing diverse experiences and opinions through our mission, our team and the communities we work with
3: We challenge the status quo
Pushing our partners to think differently about working with and for communities
4: We are mission driven
Focusing energies on empowering and connecting communities through everything we do
5: We are generous
With our insights, ideas and time
Our Team
We started as a team of two and have been so lucky to find a talented, ambitious, funny and friendly team, who love working together and making a difference in what they do.
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Harry HobsonCo founder & Director
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Harry HobsonCo founder & Director
Focus Area: Social Infrastructure
Harry co-founded Neighbourly Lab in 2019 to address the question of: how can we reimagine our communities to help people foster meaningful connections?
With a background in strategy consulting, innovation, and entrepreneurship, Harry’s role at Neighbourly Lab focuses on maximising our organisation’s impact whilst building meaningful partnerships with clients and funders to accelerate our mission. Harry is also dedicated to fostering collaboration among funders, charities, businesses, and government to invest in long-term social infrastructure and is deeply involved in supporting local government leaders as they work to build more connected and resilient communities.Additionally, Harry is exploring the development of tools and technology that can help specific population groups that face challenges in building or maintaining social capital, such as; newcomers to an area or individuals with social anxiety brought on by ASD or other cognitive traits. Harry is also committed to finding strategies that increase social opportunities for those most susceptible to chronic loneliness, ensuring that their individual needs and challenges are met with innovative and inclusive solutions.
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Marnie FreemanCo founder & Director
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Marnie FreemanCo founder & Director
Focus Area: Inclusive Services Provision
As co-founder of Neighbourly Lab, Marnie brings both optimism about building better social connections and the wisdom that meaningful innovation requires collaboration with those most impacted. She is an expert of participatory methods and specialises in ensuring that lesser heard voices have a core role to play in decision making. She leads our work on Inclusive Public Services with a firm belief that equitable access to services and information leads to better outcomes for all.
Marnie continually strengthens Neighbourly Lab by challenging and developing the team’s skills and experience across all projects and programmes, linking learning to policy and driving change.
Her diverse, local community development and international cohesion work with NGOs and the UN, has focused on working with young people, and other vulnerable groups.
Marnie also brings creativity and passion into the organisation, evident in the innovative work that Neighbourly Lab undertakes , the team’s growth, and the high-quality insights and support provided to clients. She has led Neighbourly Lab into its unique position of understanding how to bring together the worlds of residents and community with the policy and decision makers . -
Beth Worku-DixDirector
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Beth Worku-DixDirector
Focus Area: Accelerating Welcome
Beth Joined Neighbourly lab with the vision to use both her lived experience and expertise to help solve the pressing challenges of migration, marginalisation and exclusion. Particularly, how exclusion leads to disconnect, loneliness deficit in social capital and wellbeing.
Beth is a seasoned leader with over fifteen years of experience managing international development projects for U.N agencies as well as leading projects for government bodies and commercial organisations. Beth’s research expertise centres on ethnographic studies in Asia and Africa, focusing on equitable partnerships, democratic participation, and organisational culture, particularly within the context of relationships and power.
At Neighbourly Lab, Beth leads the Accelerating Welcome program, working to foster collaborative and effective partnerships across the migration sector as part of the Welcome Coalition. This initiative, in partnership with Good Faith Network, Pickwell Foundation and a large network of academics and practitioners, brings together diverse stakeholders to enhance support for migrants and refugees.
She holds a BA in Finance Information Systems and an MRes in Anthropological Research Methods from SOAS, University of London, where she continues to lead research programs.
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Rob ChapmanNon exec Director
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Rob ChapmanNon exec Director
Rob ensures that Neighbourly Lab’s daily efforts align with its long-term mission.By helping the Neighbourly Lab executive team to make the best possible decisions on strategy, operations and finances to deliver our mission
As Chair of the board, he guides discussions and serves as an independent advisor to executive directors. Rob co-founded and scaled Founders Intelligence, an innovation strategy firm, which he sold in 2021, bringing valuable insights into building people-led service organizations. He also sits on the board of Founders Pledge and chairs ITV PLC’s Digital Advisory Council.He chairs our board discussions and acts as an independent sounding board to each of the executive Directors.
Rob co-founded Founders Intelligence, an innovation strategy consulting company, which he sold in 2021. Rob brings first-hand experience of the scaling a people-led service organisation. He also sits on the board of Founders Pledge and Chairs ITV PLC’s Digital Advisory Council. Rob helps us to stay focused on how all of our day-to-day work and decisions add up to the long-term mission of Neighbourly Lab.
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Tony ClementsNon exec Director
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Tony ClementsNon exec Director
to the cause that at the core of any happy, healthy life is our connection to family, friends, neighbours and our community. He is interested in how public services can be a catalyst for generating new relationships and more connections. Tony is a public sector leader, specialising in housing, regeneration and economic development, though he has been responsible for services as diverse as school lunches, libraries, collecting bins, parks and pest control. He has also been an advisor to housing and local government ministers in central government and a management consultant. He holds an MA in Anthropology from Cambridge. He is dad to two awesome boys and an open water swimmer.
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Grainne O’ Dwyer Head of Growth and Partnerships
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Grainne O’ Dwyer Head of Growth and Partnerships
Focus Area: Social Infrastructure
Grainne leads our Growth & Partnerships division, overseeing our development of new partnerships, projects, products and tools. She also oversees the amplification of our work online, at conferences and roundtables, and in media.
Grainne leverages her background in behavioural science to help Neighbourly Lab shape behaviourally impactful innovation and research programmes that help to shape communities. Whilst she is adept at working with cross sector stakeholders and funders, her 10 years experience conducting research in communities (within Neighbourly Lab and elsewhere) means that she has a deep understanding of and passion to support those most marginalised in our communities. She is passionate about nurturing skills in deep listening and community collaboration amongst our team and partners, co-leading our training initiatives alongside our co-founder Marnie.
She is passionate about ensuring Neighbourly Lab’s growth and partnerships are grounded in community need, and thus she continues to support some of our research work to ensure she stays close to the insight.
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Dr Helen MacIntyreResearch & Development Manager
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Dr Helen MacIntyreResearch & Development Manager
Focus Area: Social Infrastructure, Inclusive Services Provision
Helen is an experienced social researcher with expertise on loneliness and social connection who has worked within and beyond academia. Her academic work has focused on children and young people’s social experience and peer relationships at school.
Helen was Head of Evidence at the Campaign to End Loneliness from 2022-24 and worked on addressing loneliness through the built environment and an evaluation of tackling loneliness interventions. Prior to that, Helen worked as Research and Learning Lead for Ageing Better in Camden, researching and writing about very practical solutions to tackling social isolation and loneliness among older people.
Recently, Helen has been involved in developing approaches for tackling loneliness in community settings, universities and schools and has also written ‘A brief guide to loneliness among young people and children at school’ with colleagues at Queen Mary University of London.
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Nick LancasterProgramme Manager
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Nick LancasterProgramme Manager
Focus Area: Social Infrastructure
Nick works across research and innovation within our focus areas ‘Accelerating Welcome’ and ‘Social Infrastructure and the built environment’. With a research background in migration and urban studies, Nick has managed several key projects at Neighbourly Lab for clients such as Tower Hamlets Council and London Councils, as well as providing research support on our strategic innovation work with the British Red Cross.
Specialising in understanding and improving community engagement practices with local government clients, Nick’s particularly passionate about implementing and scaling participatory research techniques that empower communities to actively influence local policy and placemaking.
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Aba AmihyiaCommunications Manager & Growth Strategist
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Aba AmihyiaCommunications Manager & Growth Strategist
Focus Area: Social Infrastructure, Inclusive Services Provision, Accelerating Welcome
With a distinguished career across high-profile brands in the creative industries, Aba leads Neighbourly Lab’s communications, shaping our narrative with impactful content that amplifies Neighbourly Lab’s voice.
Driven by a strong desire to use her skills for the betterment of society, Aba has led the visual rebrand of the organisation, development of the new website, and is the Community Manager for the Department for Culture, Media & Sport’s Tackling Loneliness Hub.
Through her work in the Growth, Partnerships & Communications team, Aba enjoys forging meaningful partnerships and initiatives with other organisations that align with our vision of building stronger, more connected communities.
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Alex QuattroneResearch and Development Manager
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Alex QuattroneResearch and Development Manager
Focus Area: Social Infrastructure
Alex is a participation and social innovation specialist with a background in movement building, social action and community research.
In recent years Alex has led a wide range of participation programmes and initiatives, including a UK wide plan to restore nature, the We’re Right Here campaign for community power, and a co-creation programme to bring stakeholders together to restore nature in West London.
He has also worked with national charities and local authorities to embed participatory strategy, practices and cultures to work more meaningfully with people, including the RSPB, National Trust and London Borough of Camden.
Alex is passionate about connecting communities and using participatory methods to empower people with lived experience to shape the services and projects that matter to them. At Neighbourly Lab, his focus is delivering projects across our Social Infrastructure in the Built Environment and Co-Production service areas. -
Rebecca NicholsResearcher
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Rebecca NicholsResearcher
Focus Area: Social Infrastructure, Inclusive Services Provision, Accelerating Welcome
Rebecca joined Neighbourly Lab as an intern, after graduating from the Institute of the Americas at UCL. Her time at university saw her develop key methods of qualitative and quantitative research, skills which she continues to advance as a Junior Researcher.
With a particular interest in researching and implementing community-led and sustainable solutions, especially within the field of national/ international development, Rebecca works collaboratively across various projects playing an integral role in advancing Neighbourly Lab’s research opportunities, through active community engagement and business development efforts.
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Raakhi Patel Chief Financial Officer
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Raakhi Patel Chief Financial Officer
Focus Area: Social Infrastructure
Raakhi brings a wealth of experience and a deep-seated passion for supporting charities and not-for-profit organisations. Raakhi ensures that the financial operations of Neighbourly lab are sound so can pursue its mission. She advises the Executive team on financial and commercial matters.
As a qualified Accountant, Raakhi now specialises in working with SME, charities and not for profits having spent the majority of her career with large multi national companies. She applies the relevant learnings from ‘big business’ to smaller organisations so that they too can operate efficiently.
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Sooraj Seshan Graphic Design Consultant
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Sooraj Seshan Graphic Design Consultant
Focus Area: Social Infrastructure
Sooraj’s time spreads across illustrations, information design across all our projects and maintaining our website. Sooraj collaborates closely with both the researchers and the project managers to package our learning outcomes into useful resources for client delivery.
Sooraj has worked alongside the core team to deliver projects like Whatsapp, TfL, Mayor of London, Big Help Out, Surrey county council, LB Hammersmith and Fulham council.
Our team has:
DIVERSE SKILLS with backgrounds in qualitative and quantitative research, anthropology, management consulting, behavioural science, community development, public policy, local and central government, comms and marketing
DIVERSE BACKGROUNDS with majority female leadership, diverse ethnic heritage including migrants and people previously seeking asylum, neurodiversity, parents/single parents, mixed socioeconomic status
WORKING FLEXIBLY so if you don’t find us at the office brainstorming together, you’ll find us out in the community doing research, attending events, working from home to get the laundry done between meetings or even working from some sunny country for some much needed balance.
We want to continue to grow our diverse perspectives and have our thinking challenged, so please get in touch if you’re interested in bringing your unique perspective to our team