Meet the Team!

We're a small group, but we pack a punch. We've worked with over 1000 charities, community groups and commissioners. We understand the problems you're facing, and how best to solve them:

Tom Neill

Co-Founder

Tom graduated from Cambridge University with a degree in Economics at the age of 19. He became a management consultant at Oliver Wyman, working on projects across the UK and Europe, but most enjoyed the pro-bono projects he worked on with major national charities, and small local organisations. He has since been writing code for 6 years, and working in the voluntary sector for 5. Tom was born in Liverpool, grew up in Essex, and now lives in North London.

Will Thompson

Co-Founder

Will graduated from Cambridge University with a degree in Natural Sciences and a Masters in Systems Biology. After university, he qualified as a Chartered Accountant, helping companies and charities across the country. Since joining plinth, he has visited and spoke to hundreds of community groups about how they manage their clients, their data and their activities, and how organisations can improve the way they evaluate and increase their impact. Will grew up in Kent, and now lives in West London.

Ceci Sutcliffe

Partnerships Lead

Ceci founded a charity society at Edinburgh University, where she graduated with a degree in History. The society grew significantly over her three years as President, running weekly food hand outs in summer and hot water bottle distributions in winter, working closely with Social Bite and Crisis. In the pandemic Ceci also started a small business, creating and selling illustrated poems to raise money for NHS Charities Together. Ceci strongly believes that the right support can give people struggling through hardship the opportunity to turn their lives around. Ceci grew up in North Yorkshire and now lives in East London.

Chris Akroyd

Founding Engineer

Chris has been writing code since he was 13. He graduated from Kent University with a degree in Computer Science, and after university, he left his small town and moved across the pond to work for Cisco in San Francisco in their innovation team. He returned to London to do a Masters degree in Data Science at UCL, to set up his own business helping pubs take mobile orders, and to hike the length and breadth of the UK. He grew up in St Albans, now lives in South London, and particularly enjoys talking about Art, Architecture and how to fix any problems with plinth.

Henrik Jolérus

Growth Engineer

In his early teens, Henrik was active in sports and was on the board of a regional school sports organisation. This was around the same time as he wrote his first lines of code. Later on, he competed in Young Enterprise, placing 2nd nationally. After a stint at ABB, he enrolled in an MSc computer science programme at KTH, the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, while working with software and data engineering on the side for 4 years. His love for live music brought him to South London after his studies. Henrik thrives in the intersection of technology, partnership development and community impact.

Jess O'Neill

Partnerships Lead

Jess moved to London from the US in order to study Social Policy at LSE, writing about segregation and housing discrimination in her home town of Milwaukee. And after hiking the length of the USA and helping her previous start-up double in size, Jess decided she needed another challenge and joined Plinth. Self-described government nerd she loves talking about the best ways to drive positive change in society and losing in office typing races. When not being the best ambassador for the state of Wisconsin, Jess can be found somewhere around East London.

And our board of advisors

With diverse backgrounds in the charity, private and public sectors

Jonathan Flowers

Former Deputy Chief Exec of a Local Authority, now a Non-Executive Advisor, Chair, Director or Trustee of a portfolio of charities, Government Committees and startups focusing on public services, including us!

Dominic Campbell

Dominic is a public service entrepreneur with a background in design and technology-led organisational change, strategy and leadership. He has experience in Local Authority leadership, was the former CEO and co-founder of FutureGov, now supports and advises public service startups.

John Yeomans

John worked in early-stage tech companies, at HSBC and at KPMG, before moving into an advisory role in a number of startups - Chairing the board of Cambridge Angels, Hybrid Access, Rovco and Wazoku, and now plinth. He is also a trustee of a number of charities, including Onebillion Learners, which won the X-Prize for Global learning.

Peter Bennett-Jones CBE

Peter co-founded and Chaired Comic Relief and Sport Relief, served as Chair of Save the Children, as a Board Member for the Royal National Theatre, Liverpool Everyman-Playhouse and of the Oxford Playhouse. He was also a Governor of Rugby School, chairing the Arnold Foundation, is a Deputy Lieutenant of Oxfordshire and a trustee of the mental health charity the Prudence Trust.

Deven Ghelani

Deven is an expert on welfare policy. He worked on Universal Credit since its inception and has written extensively on welfare and other Government policy. He founded Policy in Practice to support Local Authorities to simplify the delivery of welfare policy on the frontline.

Andy Phillipps

Entrepreneur and investor. Andy was CEO of Booking.com, and co-founder of Active Hotels (merged with bookings.org to form what is now Booking.com). As well as a lecturer in entrepreneurship at London Business School, he now focuses on supporting tech startups aiming to make the world better.