Our Team
The Culture Initiative was founded in 2019 by Ella Saltmarshe and Beatrice Pembroke. We mobilise a large network to achieve change in the world. Our different initiatives have distinct teams that can be discovered on the programme websites.
Ella Saltmarshe, Co-founder & Director
Ella Saltmarshe is a recognised global expert working at the intersection of culture and systems change. Alongside her thought-leadership, in places like the BBC and the Stanford Social Innovation Review, she has decades of experience of working with culture in multiple ways. She co-founded The Comms Lab back in 2010 that sought to transform the role the advertising industry plays in shaping our collective trajectories, with the flagship Reclaiming Agency programme that led to the incubation of industry-led pioneers, the Purpose Disruptors. She has worked advising and in partnership with funders and CSOs, building the field for narrative and cultural change work globally, as well as co-creating narrative infrastructure like Inter-Narratives. She director of The Long Time Project and host of the multi-award winning Long Time Academy podcast.
Beatrice Pembroke, Co-founder
Beatrice Pembroke is the Executive Director, Culture at Kings College London. Beatrice provides overall strategic leadership for the university’s Culture directorate, which includes the specialist Culture team and Science Gallery London. Previously she was director of the Global Cultural Districts Network and Director of Creative Economy at the British Council, developing partnerships across the cultural sector and beyond in over 30 countries.
She is co-founder of the Long Time Project, The Culture Initiative and Tech for Good Global, a trustee of Auto Italia, and is on the Ashoka Ventures Board.
Paddy Loughman, Co-director Inter-Narratives
Paddy is curious about the root causes of our predicament, and what it will take to pursue viable trajectories towards just and caring worlds. He collaborates with and advises organisations, universities, funders and campaigns, from the high-level institutional, to corporates and grassroots. This has included working with the UNFCCC Climate Champions and various collaborations with Purpose Disruptors. He’s the co-author of Stories for Life, a speaker, former brand consultant (Wolff Olins), and once upon a time he trained as an actor. He is the co-director of Inter-Narratives.