Nathan joined Nesta in 2015 as Chief Investment Officer with overall responsibility for the organisation's investment activities.  

Biography

Nathan has been involved in venture capital and private equity investment in high growth businesses for almost 20 years and has successfully backed companies in a wide range of sectors and from start-up stage through to buy-outs.  Originally an engineer, Nathan is a Chartered Accountant and previously worked at Arthur Andersen, Barclays Private Equity and Social Finance.  

Nathan is also an advisory board member and founder mentor of Emerge Education, a leading ed-tech accelerator, on the investment committee of the Shared Lives impact investment fund, an active business angel and non-executive director of a number of businesses.  

Manish joined Nesta in 2015 as an Investment Director and works on the fund's investments across sectors.

Biography

Manish has been involved in venture capital and private equity since 2005, both as an investor and a consultant, and has worked at Sovereign Capital, Terra Firma Capital Partners and Aureos Capital (now part of Abraaj). At Sovereign Capital, his main focus was on Education and Healthcare. He's been involved in Astrum , GSM, Creare and Lifetime investment as well as bolt-on investments for Eden Futures and World Class Learning. Prior to that, Manish was a strategy consultant at Accenture and a marketing manager at Colgate Palmolive.

Manish holds an MBA from London Business School, a Masters in Management from the Indian Institute of Management and a BSc Honours in Electronics from the University of Delhi.

Isabel joined Nesta in October 2013 and is an Impact Investment manager in the Nesta Impact Investments team.

She supports all stages of the investment process from initial appraisal through to deal execution and portfolio management, with a specific focus on the fund’s Children and Young People theme.

Biography

Isabel has a background in social investment and international grant making, having previously worked at CAF Venturesome and Comic Relief.

She holds a BA in Geography from Newcastle University and an MSc in Globalisation and Development from SOAS.

Isabel is also a Trustee of The Midi Music Company, a south London based charity that inspires children and young people to get into the music and creative industries.

Helen joined Nesta Impact Investments in January 2016 as Investment Director, and works across the fund’s investment themes making investments and managing the portfolio.

Helen started her career in venture capital in 2002, when she helped manage a new fund investing in small businesses in east London.  She subsequently joined The Capital Fund, a £50 million venture capital fund backing fast-growing SMEs in Greater London. She has successfully backed companies in retail, technology, marketing and support services. She later sat on the board of Octopus Apollo and Protected VCT vehicles and has advised Finance South East on investing its Enterprise M3 Growth Fund.

She studied Chemistry at Bristol University and started her career working for Nomura and HSBC working on share offerings and flotations of companies from Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Lucy has over ten years of experience of measuring social impact in both the UK and internationally. As Evidence, Measurement and Evaluation Manager at the Children's Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) she has designed and managed a variety of evaluations of public and private sector initiatives working with partners including the World Bank, Government of Kenya and Sesame Workshop. Before moving to CIFF Lucy was the Senior Economist at Building Markets where she measured job creation and private sector growth in Afghanistan, Haiti and Liberia. Prior to this she was Head of Measurement at NPC, working with charities to measure their impact in a variety of sectors from crime prevention to violence against women.

She holds an MSc in Economics from Birkbeck College and a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Cambridge.