Meet the Team

Sophie Flemig

Chief Executive

Sophie leads the team in developing innovative solutions to some of society's toughest challenges. Her experience spans executive leadership, public policy, regulation, research and innovation, giving her a rare ability to connect evidence, technology and partnerships to deliver change at scale.

Her Elevate Great journey began as Chief Executive of our predecessor charity Cattanach, and Sophie has led our evolution to focussing on system-level solutions. Previously, she held senior roles across the public and private sector. She has developed a reputation UK-wide and internationally for innovation and strategy in wide-ranging areas from data innovation to social equality, and public sector transformation to systems thinking. 

Sophie’s roles have included Director of Public Policy at the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission, and Assistant Director at the Centre for Service Excellence, University of Edinburgh Business School. She was Associate Director for Solutions at a Swiss-Canadian start-up, driving rapid growth that ultimately led to its acquisition by global strategy implementation firm BTS. Her work in various roles has included leading international programmes for clients such as Allianz, Deutsche Bank, SAP, the European Commission, and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

She is currently Chair of DataKind UK, and People Committee Chair at the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service. She has been a Non-Executive Director at Edinburgh Airport Ltd, a Member of the Accounts Commission for Scotland, and a board member at the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator. Her qualifications include a BA and MPhil from Oxford University, an LLB from the University of London, an MSc in Education from the University of Edinburgh, and a PhD in Political Science and Public Policy from the University of Toronto.

Jillian Elgin

Head of Operations

Jillian brings expertise in making organisations more effective and efficient. Her experience ranges from a national public sector regulator and FTSE Top 100 business to a primary school, and now a charity with a difference.

She worked in customer service, training and supporting senior management teams at financial services giant Standard Life, managing projects, events, teams, customer relations, and more in a fast-paced commercial environment. At independent public sector body, the Accounts Commission, part of Audit Scotland, she managed governance and delivery of various statutory functions at the highest level, working with the Chair, Commission members and handling stakeholder relations across organisations.

This broad expertise drives our HR, organisational development, process improvement and day-to-day operations. Jillian enables us to embrace and adopt new digital technology and embed efficiencies into our programmes, governance and reporting. She ensures we stay laser focussed on delivering key ventures and building partnerships, with our values and collaborative culture running through everything we do.

Lucas Arruda

Head of Development and Delivery

Lucas turns complexity into disciplined execution, ensuring our end-to-end innovation and implementation lifecycle is centred on clear, evidence-based decision-making. He has led teams, services and advised clients in multiple sectors across an entire continent - and brings this ability to deliver at scale to our wide-ranging programmes and ventures.

As one of KPMG’s youngest ever Audit Partners in Brazil, he worked across Latin America, supporting family firms, market leaders and multi-national businesses. His sector experience includes agribusiness, healthcare, retail, energy, utilities and real estate.

Lucas has led teams of 40+ consultancy professionals, and had strategic responsibilities including audit quality standards, business development and effective service delivery.

Lucas holds an MBA from the University of Edinburgh and recently completed the prestigious McKinsey Forward Programme. He was named a leading Forbes Black Innovator in 2020. Lucas continues to support Brazil’s Institute of Corporate Governance, advising leaders, businesses and non-profit institutions, driving best practice.

Paul McCambley

Finance Manager

Paul brings strong financial leadership, technical expertise and operational rigour to Elevate Great. A Chartered Accountant with experience spanning industry, higher education and accountancy practice, he helps ensure strong financial stewardship and controls underpin and support our work.

Prior to joining Elevate Great, Paul was Head of Finance at a Higher Education institution in Scotland, where he led a 28-strong team across financial accounting, tax compliance, treasury management, finance systems and research finance.

He has also held finance management roles at global tech manufacturer Micron and accountancy firm Johnston Carmichael. Paul holds a first-class degree in Accountancy from the University of Glasgow and is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS).

Paul’s expertise strengthens a wide range of our business management processes including strategic decision-making, budgeting, development planning and financial performance management, as well as our statutory compliance.

William Hopper

Senior Research Analyst

William helps organisations understand how people think, behave and make decisions - using techniques across behavioural insights and modelling, deep data analysis and varied primary and decision neuroscience to uncover insights on what causes system failure, and to inform long-term solutions.

His PhD in Computational and Cognitive Neuroscience at Université Paris Cité and the Institut du Cerveau involved developing new computational models exploring motivation, confidence and human decision-making. He applied this into societal issues including psychological impacts of COVID-19. His experience includes combined large-scale behavioural studies, advanced statistical analysis and experimental design, and large longitudinal volume programmes.

William has worked in research and marketing roles with the Motivation, Brain, Behaviour Team at the Institut du Cerveau and specialist science agency Random42 in London.

He applies neuroscience, behavioural science and evidence synthesis to our programmes, interrogating complex data and identifying practical implications. William also holds Dual MSc’s in Brain and Mind Science from the University of Sorbonne, and University College London, and a BSc in Biochemistry from UCL.

Marco Cardaci

Head of Data Science

Marco leads our work to turn complex data, research and AI into practical systems that improve decisions and outcomes. This expertise currently powers projects from a new AI-driven support app for frontline public services staff, to machine learning models, which enable us to gain rapid insights and analysis from complex qualitative and mixed model research.

Senior management roles include with Proofpoint, ZISHI and FTSE 250 developer Kainos, working on major projects for the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, Royal London Asset Management, and creating AI tools for sensitive Police data handling. At CERN, he co-ordinated a 50-strong international group of scientists, receiving the prestigious European Physical Society High Energy and Particle Physics Division Prize for his work on the breakthrough Higgs boson.

Marco’s wide-ranging skills underpin our data science capabilities, recently securing full accreditation to the ONS Safe Researcher and statistical disclosure control scheme.

He holds a PhD in High-Energy / Particle Physics from CERN and the University of Antwerp, and an MSc in Theoretical Physics from Université Paris-Sud XI and the University of Naples Federico II. He is an experienced university lecturer and researcher, with 500+ publications and 120,000+ citations.

Natalie Caulkett

Programme Lead

Natalie brings strong product development, cross-functional project management and delivery expertise from fast-paced food manufacturing and retail environments to bear on major societal change programmes.

She managed end-to-end process from concept to product launches into highly competitive markets as Process Manager and Development Account Manager at Finsbury Food Group, and has worked with major retailers M&S, Asda, Co-op and Tesco.

Her ability to coordinate involvement across multiple stakeholders, lead disciplined delivery, and support development and implementation of practical, market-informed innovation through collaboration across organisations, teams and sectors is driving our crucial Indoor Air Quality programme. She brings people together to collaborate and focus on developing practical solutions to complex system-level social challenges on this and other key projects.

Natalie holds a First Class BSc (Hons) in Food and Nutrition from Liverpool John Moores University. She has also worked in detail-oriented technical roles, such as Senior Development Technologist. Her wide-ranging experience adds a further stringent commercial, process, and product development lens to our work – ensuring we are laser focused on solutions that deliver.

Molly Dunn

Programme Lead

Molly’s expert project management skills bring together complex programmes, drawing on experience across both start-ups and established charities. She has taken programmes from product development through to full scale-up across the UK.

As Programme Manager at the Built Environment Schools Trust, she managed a project portfolio, alongside significantly expanding stakeholder engagement across education providers, professional bodies, and employers. She transformed and expanded an early-stage innovation designed to improve social mobility and diversity within the sector into a flagship programme delivered across hundreds of schools nationwide. For social enterprise Building People, she led the development of an innovative online platform connecting employers with talent from underrepresented communities, while also managing a large network of voluntary, community, and social enterprise partners.

Molly leads major programmes within the early years sector bringing her experience of developing and scaling programmes and stakeholder management.

Agile and PRINCE2 project management trained, Molly has a Master’s degree in Chemistry from the University of Edinburgh.

Ellen Michael

Data Scientist

Ellen brings expertise in a range of complex technologies to bear on the end-to-end innovation and implementation lifecycle, from front-end research to building solutions at pace. Their high-impact work with a major global consultancy provided valuable experience in deploying data science effectively for real-world business and system challenges.

As a Data Scientist at Capgemini Engineering, they helped drive projects ranging from developing AI and machine learning tools to building data pipelines and creating automated systems to improve performance and decision-making. Their work included advanced R&D projects with industry partners and published and presented research in quantum computing.

Ellen holds a First Class BSc in Mathematics from Warwick University. Prior to moving into consultancy, they worked in-house on research projects including improving the methodologies and data quality – and therefore accuracy – of house price indices for LendDirect, a major consumer financial services brand. Their in-depth experience across AI, data science, quantum technologies and software engineering, and practical problem-solving abilities helps power our goals to develop scalable solutions to complex social challenges.

Pranoti Waingankar

Head of Insights and Innovation

Pranoti helps organisations make better strategic decisions when facing complex challenges through her research, analysis, and business insight. She has delivered major projects for corporates, non-profit think tanks, and global consultancies such as Gartner and The/Nudge Institute; and led rapid sales growth for her business unit at an Indian lifestyle brands giant, Titan.

Her experience spans designing large-scale partnership programmes, advising C-suite leaders across technology, consumer electronics, manufacturing, health, and energy sectors, and leading a programme to improve drinking water supply and quality across large swatches of India.

Pranoti applies this special skillset to strategy, evidence, and systems thinking across our projects. Her primary and operational research and data science expertise – plus the skills to operationalise and bring solutions ‘to the market’ – helps build and scale up approaches to improve lives.

Along with an MSc in Operational Research with Data Science from the University of Edinburgh, Pranoti holds an MBA from the leading Indian business school, MICA, and a Bachelors in Electronics Engineering from the University of Mumbai.

Graeme McEwan

Strategic Advisor

Graeme brings a unique mix of experience, innovation and expertise in delivering change at national scale, drawn from executive leadership and Board roles in charities - and a career in senior management with some of the world’s largest financial services businesses.

He has been Chief Executive of MCR Pathways, which has given more than 7,000 disadvantaged young people a more equal chance to thrive through a dedicated adult mentor, and he is currently a Board member of The Carnegie Education Trust. As a Director of the Vardy Foundation, he has led expansion of the charity’s pioneering work with Local Authorities nationwide to build more, urgently needed new children’s homes through innovative financial partnership arrangements.

His corporate leadership roles with FSTE top 50 UK businesses include as Chief Communications Officer for investment giant Standard Life Aberdeen, and with Prudential and Scottish Amicable.

For Elevate Great, he helps drive our approach of developing solutions through data, deep insight, and cross-sector partnership-working – and laser focus on clear outcomes that improve lives. He brings the skills not just to create new collaborations across business, central and local government and the third sector, but also ensuring the strategic and operational processes are in place to turn innovation into implementation.

Steve Murray

Chair

Steve was appointed as a director of Chesnara in August 2021 and as Group CEO in October 2021. He joined Chesnara from Royal London, where he was Group Corporate Development Director and a member of the Group Executive Committee.

Steve started his career at Ernst & Young, primarily working in financial services, before joining Standard Life in 2004.  At Standard Life, Steve held a wide range of senior roles including Group Strategy & Corporate Finance Director where he led the Group’s Strategic Development and M&A activity and sat as part of the Standard Life Group Executive team. He was also CEO of 1825 Financial Planning and Managing Director of Commercial & Strategy for Standard Life UK and Europe and in both roles he was a member of the Standard Life UK & Europe Executive Team before joining Aberdeen Standard Investments as Deputy Head of Private Markets.

He was appointed as a Cattanach (now Elevate Great) Trustee in February 2013 and took over as Chair in January 2021.

Alan Armitage

Trustee

Alan is an experienced non-executive director (NED) and former CEO of Standard Life (Asia) Limited. He has financial services sector expertise in banking, pensions, savings and long-term investments, with extensive international experience. His deep expertise in leadership, general management, growth and transformation is well suited to supporting Elevate Great’s ambitions.

Alan also manages his own private equity portfolio and is a qualified executive coach. He is an alumnus of Wharton Business School, a graduate of the Financial Times Non-Executive Director Programme and a member of the International Coaching Federation.

Alan was appointed as one of our Trustees in June 2024.

Jennifer Corrigan

Trustee

Jennifer is an Investment Manager at Quilter Cheviot where she manages discretionary portfolios on behalf of charities, individuals, trusts and pensions. Jennifer is a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment (CISI). She also holds the CFA Certificate in Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Investing, which reflects her passion for incorporating values within portfolios as well as promoting overall positive engagement through investment. She has over 10 years' experience in the wealth management industry.

Prior to this, Jennifer was on the graduate scheme at Morgan Stanley and graduated from the University of Strathclyde with a First Class Honours BSc in Mathematics.

Jennifer was appointed as a Trustee in January 2021 and as Chair of the Investment Committee in September 2021. She became a mother to her daughter in 2023, which has further strengthened her commitment to Elevate Great’s ambitions.

Scott Ferguson

Trustee

Scott is originally from Ayrshire but was educated in England and the USA. He has an MBA in Finance and a BA in Economics.

He then spent his 30-year career based in London, New York, Hong Kong, and Dubai. Scott has held a number of senior roles in investment banking and capital markets.

Scott has been one of our Trustees since June 2024.

Trisha Hall

Trustee

Patricia (known as Trisha) worked in secondary and further education in the Netherlands for a decade, before moving to the UK in 1987 and retraining as a social worker. After settling in Scotland in 1993, she held posts at Moray Council and Aberlour Children’s charity at various levels. In 2013, she became National Director of the Scottish Association of Social Work, retiring from full-time work in June 2019 while occasionally engaged as a professional practitioner at the University of Stirling’s School of Social Sciences.

Trisha has held non-executive director and trustee posts on the boards of large national as well as smaller organisations, and is currently involved as Chair and trustee on two local boards. She is passionate about systems change that is shaped by real and meaningful input from children and families, grounded in human rights and supported by clear evidence of what works, for whom and under which circumstances. Trisha lives in Stirling with her family.

Trisha has been one of our Trustees since 2022, after two years as an Associate.

Dr Patricia Jackson OBE

Trustee

Patricia trained as a Paediatrician at the University of Edinburgh. She specialised in neurodevelopmental assessment and, although now retired from clinical practice within the NHS, continues her research attachment with the University. As a Senior Fellow of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, she continues to teach there and represents it on several advisory groups.

She is a former Chair of the Scottish Association of Community Child Health and a past President of the Scottish Paediatric Society.

Her work in connection with policy and service development includes:

Contributing to the development of the Early Years Birth–Three publications

Being a member of the Children’s and Young People’s Mental Health Task Force

Establishing the CEN NMCN (National Care Network in Scotland for Children with Exceptional Health Care Needs)

Developing Scotland’s Additional Support Needs (ASN) legislation

Co-chairing the SIGN (Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network) Fetal Alcohol Spectrum

Disorder (FASD) Diagnosis Guideline Group which published the first UK guideline for the care of children and young people exposed prenatally to alcohol

Serving as a member of the Scottish Government Preconception Health and Care Group

Rory Marsh

Trustee

Rory lives in Edinburgh and currently works at Royal London, where he leads their Workplace Pensions business. He has worked across a range of strategy, commercial and marketing roles in the financial services sector in Scotland and Australia.

Rory is passionate about Elevate Great’s purpose and is ambitious about the impact it can make in partnership with others for children. Having recently become a dad, Rory is also desperately trying to practise what he preaches in helping his wee girl to flourish.

Rory has been one of our Trustees since January 2021.

Aron Mitchell

Trustee

Aron qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Coopers & Lybrand (now PwC) before moving overseas with KPMG, working primarily in financial services audit. Since returning to the UK, Aron has accumulated over 25 years’ experience working in financial services, predominantly within the asset management and insurance sector. Aron is highly experienced in corporate governance matters and has held a number of directorships within the Aberdeen Group. Aron is currently Chief Executive for Aberdeen’s UK Insurance business. 

Aron is married with two children, now at university. Aron and his wife love the outdoors and can generally be found up a mountain, skiing or hillwalking depending on the time of year.

Aron has been a Trustee on our Board since November 2022.

Caroline Murray

Trustee

Caroline is a chartered accountant with nearly 30 years’ experience in financial services. She's been with Aberdeen Investments for over two decades and currently leads Product Management for Alternatives. In this role, Caroline oversees investment vehicles for real estate, infrastructure and other private market assets around the world. As part of this, she works closely with boards of directors to ensure best practice corporate governance standards are applied. Caroline also has a background in operational risk, with extensive experience of risk and control frameworks and process improvement.

Outside work, Caroline volunteers with Girlguiding Scotland, leading a Rainbow unit that offers a fun and exciting programme for girls aged 4–7, helping them learn new skills, build confidence and make friends.

She has been one of our Trustees since January 2021.

Ginny Richardson

Trustee

Ginny is Global Head of Strategy and Investment Specialists for Fixed Income at Aberdeen Group. She joined the company in 2009 and has held roles in Group Strategy, Corporate Development and Investment Management, focused on driving positive change. Prior to her current role, she spent three years as Chief of Staff to the Chief Investment Officer, covering aspects of strategy, governance, finance, communications and HR.

Ginny is a CFA Charterholder and holds a Maths degree from the University of Cambridge. She has two small children, and is passionate about improving the system and lives for children and their caregivers in early years. She joined the board of Elevate Great in June 2024.