The Converger is owned & created by Beinghuman® an award-winning art & technology company that creates cool, clever, considerate work.
Over 20+ years, we have built an amazing team & network of creatives, companies & venues across disciplines & across the globe.
The team work with broadcasters, orgs & brands & venues including the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Canal+, NESTA, Mall Galleries, British Council, UNESCO, Sadler’s Wells, Rolls Royce, LVMH & the RSC & human beings include Björk, Stomp, New Order, PJ Harvey, Wayne McGregor & the Dalai Lama.
Beinghuman Ltd. have also been selected for the prestigious Royal College of Art Innovation Hub. The RCA is the #1 school in the world for art and design for 10 years running & Innovation RCA’s amazing team are also supporting Beinghuman Ltd.
Beinghuman Team
Gaynor O’Flynn
Cultural industry professional, 30 years + global experience working across music, moving image, performance art & technology working with BBC, C4, National Geographic, ITV, Canal Plus, CBS, Sony, UNESCO & The British Council… Gaynor has an M.A., Distinction, from R.A.D.A. & is studying for PhD at Royal College of Art.
Chris Lovell
Co founder of Beinghuman, Chris has a background in programming and fintech consultancy for banks including JP Morgan and Handelsbanken an ethical, sustainable, local bank. He is also an experienced creative programmer & documentary filmmaker. Responsible for lead programming & finance, reporting, archive, data, comms, post-production & operations.
Dr. Nick Rothwell
Nick is an interaction designer of media artworks. An experienced software engineer, technical lead & developer, he has worked globally with artists & venues including Wayne McGregor, Ballet Frankfurt & ICA. He is responsible for programming The Converger.
Professor Carlo Harvey
Director of Future Games & Graphics at BCU. Professor Harvey's specialities include computer graphics, interactive audio simulation for virtual environments, architectural acoustics, sound synthesis, efficient audio-visual & olfactory-visual rendering & of course game tech.
Yosra Letiaeff
Strategy consultant with 10+ years’ experience advising private equity funds & corporates across the Tech, Media & Telecom sectors. Extensive experience in due diligence, value creation & go-to-market strategy for companies including Dot Vector & Scale Up Capital.
Rob Bozas
30+ years music industry experience working in project management, contract negotiation & intellectual property. Current clients include Peter Gabriel, LVMH, Cartier Foundation, Arba Development Studios & Reactional Music.
Alex Jukes
Oxford University educated fractional CTO Alex is former head of engineering at Intropic, a technical decision maker who ensures engineering investment has the maximum impact for the business.
Simon Bennison
RADA & YALE trained Lighting Designer for stage and performance works. Extensive Technical Management experience in the field of opera, ballet and theatre including fifteen years at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
Paul Casbon
European Patent Attorney & Chartered UK Patent Attorney, degree in Physics + Astrophysics. Director at Greaves Brewster. Extensive experience in monetisation of software & tech patents. Contributor to CIPA Guide to the Patents Act published the foremost guide to patent law used by UK patent attorneys.
Greg Sherwin
An engineering superstar for Silicon Valley start-ups and businesses including CBS Interactive, NBC Internet, and Singularity University. He co-founded the national website for the American Red Cross and is now a senior engineer at Farfetch.
Advisors
Well-connected across creative sectors & continents, our advisors have included Zillah Watson - Former Head BBC VR Hub, Professor Kenny Mitchell - Former Head Research Disney, Anna Lowe -Smartify-40M+ users, Marsha Meredith - Former Director Saatchi & Saatchi, Erica Wolfe Murray IP expert, Founder Lola Media & lead at BFI Female Founders…
Tatiana Collet-Apraxine
Award winning VR creator and real time artist living in London. MA in Immersive storytelling from Royal Holloway. Skills include Unreal Engine (Worldbuilding, filming, optimising, animating, materials, virtual production) , 3d Modelling, Blender, 360film & Adobe.
Crysta Dela Cuesta
Graphic Designer and proud alumna of Snap Design Academy and the Royal College of Art Graduate Diploma program, Crysta was awarded a full-ride scholarship through the partnership of Snap Inc. to pursue her Master’s Degree in Visual Communication at the RCA.
Barney Worfolk Smith
CGO at DAIVID, leading a team of creative specialists who help global brands and agencies understand why their advertising works or not, affordably and at scale. Powered by AI, DAIVID decodes the impact of attention, emotions, memory, and brand uplift on sales outcomes.
Sian Bussy
Sian is a brand & trade mark expert with a focus on brand development & “clearance” work; plus trade mark protection (including trade mark prosecution), enforcement/infringement advice & portfolio management, she joined Temple Bright in Bristol in 2012.
RCA Team
Dr Nadia Danhash
After a twenty-year commercial career in the biotechnology sector, Nadia has a cross sectoral focus on innovation. She invests in and supports the creation and growth of new design-led ventures and she trains and mentors more mature non-design businesses internationally to help them to innovate and grow. She leads the Royal College of Art's entrepreneurship centre, InnovationRCA and is responsible for the direction of its start-up accelerators.
Dr Albert Demargne
As Head of Commercialisation, Albert is responsible for the commercialisation of Royal College of Art Intellectual Property and of InnovationRCA’s external entrepreneurship, innovation and incubation programmes helping individuals and organisations turn their ideas into successful businesses.
Albert is a chartered aerospace engineer and PhD, who combines broad technical knowledge with significant commercial and operational experience of growing start-ups and SMEs, including as a founder and investor.
Thomas Pedrick
As InnovationRCA's Investment Manager, Thomas plays a key role in growing and managing the portfolio of successful ventures that generate both returns and impact. He works closely with the InnovationRCA incubator team, company founders, and venture capital partners to assess potential investments by the RCA's Design and Impact Fund, and provides ongoing portfolio and investor management.
Chrysi Kalfa
Chrysi joined the RCA from the University of Oxford where she managed a diverse IP portfolio of projects that included due diligence searches, rights clearance and negotiation of confidentiality and profit share agreements to facilitate exploitation by means of patent filing, licensing and spinout formation of intellectual property arising from research.
Ahmed Saadi
Ahmed is a Chartered Engineer with an PhD, MBA and more than ten years of experience in transforming research into commercially viable products.
Ahmed leads incubator and accelerator programmes, providing start-up companies with strategic guidance, business and financial expertise, and a nurturing environment. He identifies high-potential ventures, mentors founders and facilitates growth.
Augusta Critchley
As Entrepreneurship Manager, Augusta works with founders to develop their entrepreneurship skills and business proposals.
With a wealth of experience most recently she has overseen the day-to-day management and operations of a £5m UK Research & Innovation funded MedTech focussed accelerator programme at Imperial College London.
RCA Mentors and Coaches include…
For a full list see https://www.rca.ac.uk/business/innovationrca/innovationrca-visiting-business-fellows-coaches/
Annetta Snider
Annetta is an entrepreneur and creative marketing strategist. She founded, run, and sold several businesses over the last 35 years with her most recent being a full-service marketing agency. The agency environment provided a vast knowledge of many industry sectors and allowed her to support companies of varying size. She has a wealth of experience in all areas of marketing, business management, account management, marketing strategy & implementation, HR and business financials, and has a passion for people development
Jan Miller
Jan Miller brings to InnovationRCA a wealth of creative and cultural industries business experience. With a foot-hold firmly in fashion where she has over 30 years experience in management roles, Jan now also ventures into strategic business development and finance advice for interiors, product design, artists, and cultural & tourism businesses, organisations, sole traders and charities.
Jan is part-time Finance Director at London Fashion Week
Judah Armani
Social entrepreneur Judah Armani, is a InnovationRCA Designer in Residence. In his role he helps the founders of InnovationRCA start-ups, spinouts and creative brands with specialist advice on developing, delivering and capturing impact through their enterprises. A multi-award winning social impact designer, Judah is also founder of InHouse Records, a multi-award winning, rehabilitative service, operating a record label in multiple UK prisons.
Jan Casey
With over 25 years’ experience in the creative industries, Jan Casey has substantial expertise from both a business and consultancy perspective. Previously a board director of branding agency Lambie-Nairn, Jan now works independently combining her experience as a brand consultant, project director, business adviser, coach and psychotherapist to build brands, implement projects and facilitate organisational change.
Steve Everhard
Steve has been working with InnovationRCA for a number of years, providing expert mentoring and coaching to our incubated start-ups. With extensive experience in a wide range of technology and media industries, especially within engineering, sales and marketing, Steve provides broad advisory support. His knowledge and support extend to board governance, organisational design and succession management, remuneration, strategic planning, marketing and sales focus, fund raising and exit.
Elizabeth Galton
In 2012, Elizabeth joined the board of Aurum Holdings Ltd, the largest prestige and luxury jewellers in the UK, as Director of Mappin & Webb.
Elizabeth comes from a highly creative family, her grandfather was a photographer for Time Magazine with work in the National Portrait Gallery and her mother is a graphic designer who worked with Vogue’s Grace Coddington
Nina Hampson
Nina is an entrepreneur and leading expert in customer strategy, data insight and innovation having worked predominantly in this field for over 20 years. She has co-founded, built and sold two companies: one in fashion; and one in customer insight consultancy, so understands first-hand the challenges involved in running and growing a start-up.
Professor Andy Penaluna
Following what he describes as a career swerve from his design background, Andy discovered that his research and design thinking skills enabled him to challenge established thinking on enterprise and entrepreneurship education. He subsequently formed the Higher Education Academy's Entrepreneurial Learning Special Interest Group and was elected to chair Enterprise Educators UK, a network of over 70 Universities, for 2010–11.
Trudi Ballard
Trudi is an executive consultant to designers, charities, and brands. As Director of PR & Branding at Colefax and Fowler she developed an historic name in British luxury into a leading global brand over thirty years. She gained her early career experience at The Observer and British Vogue. Today she advises organisations and individuals looking to expand their reach and impact. She has helped start-ups spanning textiles, antiques, lighting, fashion, jewellery, and helping people in need.
Nick Hedley
Nick Hedley was partner at top-tier patent and trade mark firm Kilburn & Strode LLP until retirement in 2013 and continues to provide consultancy services for the firm.
He has a Master's in Chemistry from Oxford University, is a qualified solicitor, a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys and a European Patent Attorney. Nick is also a certified Patent Agent Litigator. Nick has provided patent attorney services to the RCA for over ten years.
Jonas Altman
Jonas is a creative entrepreneur and design strategist. As Managing Partner at Social Fabric, for 20 years he has helped organisations adopt new technologies and launch commercial ventures. Jonas has over 20 years’ experience in the creative sector as a design strategist. He has worked with clients including Google, Sony Music and The BBC. Jonas is also an adjunct professor in entrepreneurship and innovation, conference speaker and author.
Russell Buckley
Russell has been described as the 'Grandfather of mobile marketing'. Russell has been Global Chairman of the Board of The Mobile Marketing Association, a founder of Mobile Monday in Germany, is a regular speaker on mobiles at conferences throughout the world and has published many articles. In 2006, he was the first employee of mobile ad network, AdMob, which was sold to Google for $750m and Russell became VP of Global Alliances at Google focussed on mobile advertising. Russell has overseen thousands of campaigns since 2000.
Bradley Hardiman
Bradley Hardiman started his career as a life scientist working for the world's largest pharmaceutical companies and from there moved into technology transfer and business incubation. His previous roles include that of Head of Business Incubation at Design London, the RCA's joint venture partnership with Imperial College. Bradley has a BSc in Medical Biochemistry from Brunel University, a Research Master's degree in Molecular Biochemistry from the University of Cambridge and an Executive MBA from Cass Business School.
Pauline Watkins
Pauline Watkins is an Intellectual Property (IP) specialist with a strong understanding of the legal challenges and opportunities for academics, students and the creative industry.
Pauline holds an honours degree in Business Organisation from Herriott-Watt University, Edinburgh. Her early career was spent in information technology at 'magic circle' city law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, progressing from software developer to Project manager and IP Operations Manager.
John Barber
John has a broad based business background. Having managed Dow Jones Telerate a leading global market data provider and the Information division for ICAP the world's largest inter dealer broker he has a deep understanding of FinTech. Latterly through his consultancy company John has management experience ranging from food delivery businesses, property development, online retail and banking services. His expertise extends to sales, finance, business development, fundraising and exit strategies.