Our mission is to improve the quality of life of those living in cities, while recognising that technology is a small part of any improvement.
Governance
We are responsible citizens first. We’re a steward-owned company, legally bound to both our mission and employee control in perpetuity. We use our structure to make commitments to openness, transparency, privacy preservation and long-term approaches. We evolve with our work and clients. You can read about how and why we started Diagonal.
We don’t collect proprietary data. We base our work on integrated open data sources, making our results repeatable, reproducible and replicable by anyone.
Our team
Andrew Eland
Software Engineering
Andrew has built software products for around 20 years, leading the global engineering organisations behind Google Maps Mobile, Google’s philanthropic efforts, and DeepMind’s work in healthcare. Andrew’s main interest is building software tools to help people understand, and responsibly change, complex systems. He lives in London, in a house built in 1865 retrofitted to Passivhaus standard. He sits on the board of Genomics England. Reach out if you’d like to chat.
Claire Fram
Product
Claire specialises in delivering tools for city planning. She’s been the product lead for R&D projects in the built environment - specialising in transport planning projects over the last five years. Most recently, Claire was the product manager for an agent based modelling toolkit - building a suite of data processing tools to model transport networks, infrastructure, and simulate millions of individuals' unique days. Claire is interested in open data and inclusive technologies for urban design.
Gala Camacho
Data Science
Gala is a mathematician and programmer, with a background in education, optimisation and all-things data. She has worked at big corporates and startups within the civil infrastructure and urban planning ecosystem, leading analytics projects strategically and technically. Gala is passionate about using analytics to explore and break down urban and social inequalities. She is in the Expert Advisory Group (Governance Framework) for the Cities Coalition for Digital Rights, and is a member of the Ethics Workstream for the OECD Geospatial Lab.
Lucy Brett
Comms and Marketing
Lucy is a comms specialist with a background in stakeholder engagement, branding and editorial, and advocacy. Recently she’s worked on behaviour change, creating web copy and social media campaigns for charities and non-profits and on newsletters capturing data stories for lay readers and experts. She is also an author and advocate. Her interests include health inequalities and system and service change, bias in healthcare data, accessibility and inclusion in planning and design, and changing the narrative around women’s health and disability.
Maddie Kortenaar
Product Marketing
Maddie Kortenaar is a strategic Product Marketing Manager, steering startups and scaleups towards growth and societal impact through data-driven strategies. Maddie is adept at driving product-centric campaigns and positioning organizations competitively. Maddie passionately supports smart city initiatives and STEM education, marrying technology and urban living for sustainable development. A strong advocate for the circular economy, she champions business strategies that promote environmental sustainability, transforming product marketing for a greener future.
Mari
Software Engineering
Mari likes to think of herself as a philosopher, not the publishing academic kind, but a rare specimen still found living in the wild. If she had to boil down her intellectual gaze to a single word, that word would be systems - thinking about stuff, like cabbages and kings, and everything in between, and how all stuff connects; she uses this love of systems to channel positive energy while solving silly little software bugs. Other words would be: backend, infrastructure, ex-Google.
Simona Ciocoiu
Design
Simona is a designer with experience exploring digital solutions that can help domain experts think through complex problems in the built environment. Her recent work includes the design and user experience of the Greater London Authority’s Infrastructure mapping application and a flood model viewer for the New York Metropolitan Transport Authority.
Veronica Barbaro
Urban Planning
Veronica is passionate about cities and positive place-making. She is a chartered Town Planner and brings over 10 years of experience working with major international consultancies (most recently Avison Young and Atkins) on significant infrastructure and regeneration projects including HS2 and key city centre schemes (e.g. Finzels Reach, Bristol and Redcliffe Quarter, Bristol). Veronica has a robust understanding of the development management process as well as development economics and viability considerations. She is an experienced project manager, having led and managed the submission of major planning applications for a range of clients, from both private and public sectors working with large multi-disciplinary teams and complex budgets.