Meet the team
Esther Foreman
C.E.O.
Esther has spent over 15 years working in the not for profit, social enterprise and business sectors, running award winning campaigns, supporting enterprise and building teams. She founded the Social Change Agency in 2013 with a desire to combine organising, technology, comms and social enterprise to create a leading non sector-specific agency to improve movement building across the world.
Esther is a 2011 Clore Social Fellow, 2012 Winston Churchill Fellow and 2013 SSE Fellow and was recently placed in the top Women in Social Enterprise. She is a Trustee of the National MS Society and the House of St Barnabas.
Betsy Dillner
Principal Director
Betsy has over 10 years of campaigning, fundraising and social change experience. She specialises in developing community leadership and understanding, developing, and ultimately challenging systems of power for social change.
She has directed successful user-led campaigns from small charities across the Atlantic that have resulted in bans on letting fees for tenants, the preservation of affordable housing and remuneration for victims of the foreclosure crisis. She won 2017 Campaigner of the Year from the Sheila McKechnie Foundation. She is an avid podcast listener and hiking and is a trustee of Generation Rent.
Lisa Ball
Social Media Associate
Lisa is a social media and communications expert with 20 years experience working in the media and charity communications sector.
An award winning creative and former Senior Journalist at Comic Relief, Lisa has worked with hundreds of different charities on many campaigns including Make Poverty History. Lisa also worked closely with major brands including Sainsbury and British Airways to help them achieve their multi-million pound fundraising goals for Comic Relief. She’s an avid swimmer and failed surfer.
Helen Fisher
Research & Evaluation Associate
Helen has worked in the field of public and stakeholder engagement for more than a decade, primarily as a communicator, evaluator and researcher.
She has a background in natural sciences and a penchant for colourful spreadsheets; she loves analysing and reporting on complex or multi-source data to make it intelligible. Her engagement and evaluation experience ranges from one-off community workshops to large multiyear projects, covering diverse topics including climate change, community business, food security, nuclear waste and volunteering. She has a passion for music and is also working on a spy novel.
Jim Coe
Campaigning Associate
Jim specialises in providing strategy and evaluation support to organisations engaged in campaigning, advocacy and social change.
Prior to becoming an SCA Associate, Jim worked in Oxfam’s campaigning programme, and was responsible for devising and applying a coherent and effective strategic approach across Oxfam’s campaigns programme.
You can listen to Jim’s podcast The Advocacy Iceberg
Abi May
Graphic Designer
Abi is a graphic designer, who graduated from Falmouth University, and uses the discipline to create positive social change. She loves solving any design challenges; from branding a new initiative, creating infographics to developing complex workshops.
Abi has worked for the MS Society as an in house designer as well as a freelance graphic designer producing work for a number of social and charitable organisations. Her ‘Multiple Scribbles’ children’s resource was shortlisted for a Creative Conscience award. Abi is the creative force behind our movement building canvas as well as multiple other SCA projects.
Martha Hannan
Public Engagement Lead
Martha offers a wealth of experience in developing and managing public engagement strategies in not-for- profits, much of it in international development, as well as on women’s rights, homelessness and more. She has worked in senior roles in house, as well as a consultant both within agencies – including the highly-regarded charity specialist Eden Stanley Group – and as a solo consultant. She has worked in or with Bond, Disasters Emergency Committee, Plan UK, United Purpose, Sheila McKechnie Foundation and Shelter, among others.
Simran Bola
Senior Communications & Project Officer
As a recent graduate in economics and social studies from the University of Manchester, Simran is interested in working with progressive organisations to make a positive influence on society. With his freelance experience and prior work for an international think tank, he aims to use the skills he has gained in digital communications to carry out some of SCA’s major project work.
Sara Bloch
Senior Programme Officer
Sara has 5 years’ experience in community organising, event management, and informal education. She has worked on community projects aimed at young people for Noam Masorti Youth, Citizens UK, and The Skip Garden. She has also worked as a facilitator for Diversity Role Models teaching about homophobia in schools, and for The Anne Frank Trust educating communities about all forms of prejudice and discrimination. She strongly believes in the power of community to make the change they want to see. She enjoys bringing people together with her love of cooking and food, and has a business selling homemade pickled vegetables.
Sara has a BA in Social Sciences and Religious Studies and Comparative Religion from The University of Manchester.
Sapna Patel
Head of Operations
Sapna has 7 years’ experience in operations and managing projects. She has recently managed a research project looking at the Freedom of Religion or Belief and how Parliamentarians can be better resourced to advocate for this right across the Commonwealth. She has previously managed project activity in Human Resources and Organisational Development. She has supported the delivery of leadership programmes, with a focus on supporting early career academics, senior leaders and programmes supporting the career development for women in science and leadership development for BAME staff. She holds an undergraduate degree in Biochemistry, and has an MSc and a PhD in the field of Microbiology.
Karen Lam
Senior Project Assistant
Karen is interested in innovative and people-centred approaches to addressing complex social issues, which has brought her to projects in Namibia, South Africa, India, and Romania. She holds a BA in Economics and Political Science from McGill University as well as a MSc in Social Policy and Development from the LSE. She is passionate about youth development, diversity, and inclusion. Karen joins SCA from HACT, a housing innovation organisation.
Claire Barber
Finance Officer
Claire is the Social Change Agency’s bookkeeper and financial planner. She has 15 years experience in finance and business improvement consultancy in the public, private and charities sectors, in the UK and overseas. Claire loves to travel and can’t wait until her young children are old enough to experience the world with her.
Bob Thust
Governance Associate
Bob is the co-founder of Practical Governance providing hands-on governance support to organisations with a social purpose. He is a former Responsible Business Director at Deloitte UK and former Director of Programmes at the Power to Change Trust. Above all he believes in the power of people and communities to find and determine their own solutions to the challenges that face them. He is a trustee of Local Trust and Treasurer of the Bevy community-owned pub in Brighton, where he spends far too much of his time.
Hannah Fox
Communications Lead
Hannah’s career spans 20 years in communications roles at some of the UK’s most high-profile charities. Her extensive experience includes PR and communications strategies covering advocacy and hard news, issue-building campaigns, fundraising and mass event participation. Seven years as head of media and public affairs at Comic Relief meant responsibility for its entire media output, including promotion of strategic partnerships across government, nonprofit, and corporate sectors.
Andrew Murphy
Web Developer
Murph specialises in website development, helping business and individuals to build and maintain their wordpress websites.
After working in social care for most of 20 years in homelessness, mental health and learning disabilities, he decided it was time to satisfy his inner geek and became a self-taught web developer, building sites for artists, therapists and small businesses.
He supports the SCA team by taking some of the stress out of managing a variety of technical tasks online.