People
Designers, strategists, researchers, futurists, navigators
Bringing varied perspectives to problems worth solving.
There’s something about Nile
Maybe it’s the annual team trips. Maybe it’s the regular games nights, or the growing pack of office dogs we seem to have acquired over lockdown. Or maybe it’s years of shared experience, reciprocal care, and deep trust in one another.
Since 2006 we’ve cultivated a friendly, flexible, and collaborative core team with a proven ability to make a difference. Get in touch and strike up a conversation with any of us – we’re a friendly bunch.
23
All Nilers
5
Client Partners
17
Design
3
Research
2
Talent
5
Ops & Finance
3
Foresight
Head of Research
Dr Alexa Haynes
Alexa directs our insight team and partners, making sure our techniques and tools align to industry best practice whilst pushing the boundaries of what’s possible by exploring new technologies and data pools
Principal Designer
Bridgette Bell
With a breadth of experience working across product, UX, service design and innovation, Bridgette’s sweet spot is where strategy and delivery intersect. She is passionate about designing what matters most to customers and bringing teams along on the journey to embed insights and adopt new ways of working.
Senior Consultant, UX & UI
Callum Ritchie
Callum leads our UX/UI practice in Nile. He’s passionate about creating digital products and services that make a difference, is a GSA Newbery Medal nominee, and tops the Nile cycling power output leaderboard.
Senior Service Designer
Calum MacLeod
Calum leads complex, impact-focused service design projects for many of our private and public sector clients. He’s also a talented musician, and owns more guitars than the rest of Nile put together.
Chairman
Dag Lee
Dag’s held global leadership positions across Finance, Private Equity, Distributed Retail and Service Chains and Healthcare & Fitness. In many of these, he worked on service challenges, aligning proposition, culture, and operational delivery.
Finance Manager
Ellie Oliver
Ellie is Nile’s finance manager. She covers everything from the day to day transactions, through to the production of Management Accounts forecasting and budgeting as well as assisting our FD with annual accounts.
Knowledge Manager
Ellie Raeburn
Ellie leads the Nile Way, a knowledge base for all Nilers. She collaborates across the team to help us move faster and focus on what we do next.
Senior Visual Designer
George Edmonds
A visual and interaction design specialist, George supports organisations and teams to look and feel their best, wherever they are.
Product Designer
Jamie Spratt
A talented polymath with a passion for product design and user-centered solutions. Jamie’s background crafting exceptional experiences from user insight brings a unique perspective to every project.
Service Designer
Joe Parker
Joe is a service designer with Nile. Having learned his trade out in the United States, he enjoys applying service-dominant logic when solving problems, bringing positive changes to end-to-end experiences.
Principal Consultant
Jonty Fairless
Jonty directs much of our communication and creative work in Nile, and leads complex, high-impact design programmes for select clients.
Senior Service Designer
Katherine Snow
Katherine helps our private and public sector clients to navigate change and possibility with clarity. With a background in Design Anthropology, she leads future-focused projects. Katherine almost has as many guitars as Calum.
Head of Customer Success
Kirsty Bell
Kirsty steers many of Nile’s key relationships, and has consulted on topics from transformation and people & change, to operating models and their fitness for the future.
Talent Manager & Executive Assistant
Laura Sheen
Laura supports our associate teams, and assists our executive group at Nile. Having lead research and marketing for several big brands before joining Nile, she’s focused on helping high performing teams find success.
Chief Operating Officer
Lloyd Vaughan
Lloyd takes the lead on technology and process, implementing and maintaining the strategic systems and procedures that keep Nile running like clockwork.
Senior Service Designer
Louise Mushet
Louise is a senior service designer who is passionate about using her skills for good. She’s a whizz at driving design research, translating insights into opportunities, and bringing people and ideas together through skilful facilitation.
Principal Researcher
Lucy Barrett
With a background in Psychology and Sociology, Lucy focuses on multi-market cultural and ethnographic projects. That means answering big questions by investigating how desires, needs, and environments should look in the future.
Design Ops Administrator
Lucy Simpson
Lucy joined Nile to help run the operations department after making the switch from the field of science. No matter the problem, Lucy is happy to lend a helping hand.
Head of Consulting
Luke McKinney
Luke leads Nile’s strategic design practice, and shapes much of our financial services work. He’s an expert at helping teams get to grips with strategy and make better decisions for their customers and their business.
Account Executive
Méabh MacLaren
As an Account Executive, Méabh keeps the client partner team running smoothly. She uses her keen eye for detail and a people-focused approach to help refine our sales process.
Practice Director
Neil Collman
Neil is a design leader, speaker and foresight practitioner, who cares about making an impact for people and profit through insight and design.
Service Designer
Rachel Corrie
Rachel is a service designer with a passion for getting the conversation started. Using her background in user research and product design she brings the users into the design process.
Head of New Relationships
Robyn Johnston
Robyn chose a career in design after studying at some the top global design universities, majoring in Strategic Product Design. She’s lived in Italy, Finland, and the US, returning to the UK in 2018. Robyn has represented Scotland in Equine sports and Heads Up New Relationships in Nile.
CoFoundry & Innovation Lead
Sam Irving
Sam is building cool things at Nile, scaling start-ups, and matching scale-ups to corporate clients to solve problems worth solving. He knows product inside-out, and is an expert builder of innovation labs and digital marketplaces.
Founding Director
Sarah Ronald
Passionate about technology and psychology, Sarah founded Nile in 2006 to improve how everyday digital products and services are researched, designed, and communicated. Today a team of 50, Nile specialises in regulated industries and is especially focussed on the Financial sector. Nile provides teams to deliver people centred process change, teams to create new products and services, and teams to ensure any digital offering is accessible and inclusive. Sarah is a serial investor, with a portfolio of 35 early stage technology companies. She has been a special adviser to both the British and Scottish Government, and served on boards for The Design Council, Service Design Network and The British Interactive Media Association.
Head of Talent
Susie Walker
Susie leads our talent operations, and is Nile’s expert at finding outstanding, mission-focused people to match with meaningful and impactful work.
Senior UX Designer
Tiernan Haugh
Expert facilitator and UX designer, Tiernan believes in the potent power of post-it notes and a three-minute timer. Good things come to those who crazy eight.
Design Ops Manager
Victoria Johnston
Victoria is head of Design Ops at Nile. Starting out as a photographer, Victoria moved into studio management and business support, and has since built a career supporting creative people get stuff done.
Interested in joining the team?
We’re always open to conversations with people who share our values.
We also work with associates within our Nile network
We work with a hand-picked team of trusted associates, bringing specialist skills and expertise to client engagements.
Come and see us in the real world
Visit our HQ
We don’t like to boast, but we’re pretty sure we’ve got the nicest office in Scotland.
We’re based on the most instagrammed street in Edinburgh in the city’s New Town (a UNESCO World Heritage site).
Check out what the influencers have been snapping recently.