Socially Adept helps senior leaders engage with clarity in transitions. We work well in settings with multiple organisations with competing operational and strategic priorities. We use social research methods to provide actionable insights and work with you to make sense of them and apply them in your settings. We work alongside you, your teams and partners to bring the joy into thinking big, long-term and with your peripheral view.
Socially Adept’s methods draw on:
- Futures and Foresight – to understand our relationships with the past, present and future, in navigating change and uncertainty.
- Social Science – to design changes that create new understanding of people based on sound evidence of theory and practice
- Dialogue and Mediation – to work purposefully with intentionally diverse groups through change.
We are a small company that works with a network of environmental, social science and sectoral experts for teaching practical foresight methods and for consultancy projects. Every project we do is bespoke. This way of working allows us to bring a unique and diverse set of people together, embodying the joy of diversity that we practice in our intersectional work with you.
Professor Gary Kass is a leading expert in environmental and sustainability science, policy, foresight and systemic change. He is a Visiting Professor of Sustainability Policy and Practice at Royal Holloway University of London and at the Centre for Environment and Sustainability, University of Surrey. Gary has over three decades of experience at the intersection between policy, evaluation and implementation research and practice. He has worked in consultancy, academia and government in the UK and internationally. His previous roles have included: co-member on the Global Environmental Outlook Review Steering Group for the United Nations Environment Programme; UK technical lead on foresight and system transformation within the European Environment Information Network, working with the European Environment Agency; Deputy Director for Foresight and Innovation at Natural England; and Deputy Chief Scientific Adviser at Defra.
Gary teaches, writes and presents widely on sustainability transition capacities, and the interfaces between science, policy and practice. He enjoys working in generative and collaborative learning environments, and is a Chartered Scientist, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, Fellow and Vice President of the Institution of Environmental Sciences, and a member of the Office of Environmental Protection College of Experts.
Rosemary Bangham is a qualified project manager with extensive experience of working with social enterprises, charities, and educational institutions across the UK and internationally. Rosemary brings order into the organisation of a wide variety of data, information, organisational knowledge and people. Rosemary’s visual design and critical thinking skills have enabled her to enjoy varied creative, research and editorial roles. Rosemary’s recent experience includes project co-ordination for the Cambridge Social Ventures Programme at the Cambridge Judge Business School, working with a range of environmental and cultural social enterprises. Rosemary is currently working with the Cambridge Makers to support their growth and development.
Rosemary holds an MPhil in African Studies from the University of Cape Town, a BA (Hons) in Visual Culture from the University of Brighton.
Please contact me for more information about working with us.
Esmee Wilcox: Biography
Esmee Wilcox has a wealth of interdisciplinary policy-making, operational and strategic consultancy experience. She has taught at Henley Business School, Goldsmiths and mentors with the Cambridge Judge Business School. Esmee works with a range of clients and sectors from healthcare, migration and net zero. She worked for 10 years in policy and political engagement in central government, including a stint at the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit as Deputy Chief of Staff, where she was a co-author for the 2005 Cross-government Disability Strategy and got her curiosity for mechanisms that help people thrive at work.
Esmee worked on the delivery of Defra’s rural strategy, and then with Defra’s environmental science laboratory in her transition from policy-making to policy-delivery. She had a second career in local government, leading an award-winning change team and programme across health, education and social care, and working on a number of corporate partnership priorities including environmental sustainability.
Esmee set up her consultancy practice in 2017 to work intentionally at the leading edge of strategic change practice. Recent commissions include participatory research and development for local government decision-making structures; co-producing futures for the ‘caring economy’; strategy development for people migration; and research and strategy development for social prescribing.
In 2020 Esmee was awarded the Emerging Fellowship on Social Change by the Association of Professional Futurists for her published work on systems change. She now teaches foresight methods. Esmee has an MA in Business and Management sponsored by Defra, gained at Middlesex University. She has been a Visiting Senior Fellow at the University of Suffolk since 2015.
Esmee was Chair of Trustees for a participatory arts charity. She was a member of the Institute for Community Studies, Community Advisory Board from 2019 to 2022. Esmee is a Non-Executive Director for an arts therapy mental health social enterprise.
Esmee’s futures work has been published throughout 2019 and in 2020 in a collection of work in ‘Capital Transformed’ (Designed by Accident)
Esmee was also published on innovation and risk in government in 2012 in “The Glory of Failure” (Triarchy Press).