Team

Anthony Zacharzewski

Anthony is the President and Director General at the Democratic Society, and one of the co-founders of Tomorrow’s Cities Partners. Anthony worked in central and local government in strategic roles for 14 years before founding the Democratic Society in 2006. He has deep practical experience of policy making as an official, and of creating democratic innovations in nine years running the Democratic Society’s work day-to-day. He has worked with institutions at every level of government to design, implement, and test new democratic models and systems.

Jacqueline Oker-Blom

Senior consultant at Material Economics. Previously, independent, project leader for The Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences during several project regarding Resource Efficiency – Circular Economy (2014–2020). MBA from The University of Lund (1996), Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Reims, Vanderbilt University.

Chris Smith

Chris is a Managing Director at Bankers without Boundaries. He worked in the City of London for 15 years up to 2009 where his last role was Head of Sustainable Finance at Standard Chartered. In 2009 Chris was seconded by Standard Chartered to work for HRH The Prince of Wales where he helped set up The Prince’s Rainforest Project. Chris has worked extensively across emerging markets.

Indy Johar

Indy is a founding Director of Project00 and Dark Matter Labs. An architect by training, Indy is a Senior Innovation Associate with The Young Foundation and a visiting Professor at The University of Sheffield. He co-founded Impact Hub Birmingham and Open Systems Lab, was a member of the RSA’s Inclusive Growth Commission. He is a thought leader in system change, the future of urban infrastructure finance, outcome-based investment, and the future of governance.

Daniela Amann

Daniela is a Network Delivery Manager at the Democratic Society, based in Vienna, focussing on participatory research, facilitation, and project management. She is passionate about designing participatory processes, community led projects, and standing up for a healthy environment. Daniela holds a degree in law with a specialisation in international law and Human Rights and an MA in Participation, Power and Social Change from the Institute of Development Studies. Before joining DemSoc in March 2020, Daniela worked as a Researcher at the Vienna Centre for Societal Security.

Joost Beunderman

Joost is a co-founding Director at Dark Matter Laboratories and at its parent organisation Project00. He leads Dark Matter Labs’ work in the EIT Climate-KIC Deep Demonstration on Healthy Clean Cities and has 15 years of experience in urban regeneration, policy innovation and civic venturing working with local and regional government, international organisations and philanthropic organisations. Before joining Project00 he was a researcher in urban innovation programme at the UK think tank Demos. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Nadja Nickel

Nadja Nickel is the Director for Climate at the Democratic Society. Her work focuses on ensuring citizen participation in decision-making and building bridges between sectors to find innovative solutions to current challenges, including populism and climate change. Previously, Nadja was the Managing Director of WithoutViolence, a non-profit advocacy agency for the social sector. At WithoutViolence, she applied lessons learned from behavioral science to solutions-focused advocacy on the issue of violence prevention. In past positions at GIZ, she advised former Federal President Köhler in his role on the UN Secretary General’s High-level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda.

Robert Westerdahl

Partner at Material Economics and previously Business Development and Strategy Director at MTR Nordic and Senior Project Manager at McKinsey & Company. Has significant experience from circularity strategy work from several projects with the private sector; automotive companies, industrial manufacturing, PTAs, medical supplies, construction. He also leads Material Economics’ work with cities, leading our work with ‘EIT Climate-KIC Healthy, Clean Cities Deep Demonstration’. MSc in Electrical Engineering from Linköping University.

Rupesh Madlani

Rupesh spent a decade at Lehman Brothers and Barclays in equity research in sustainability and clean technology, ranking first in the Institutional Investor survey. Prior to this, Rupesh worked at PwC in the corporate finance practice. Rupesh is a chartered accountant and Freeman of the City of London. Rupesh is an expert reviewer in various publications with the World Economic Forum, the OECD, Prince of Wales Sustainability Unit and the United Nations relating to sustainable development.

Sean Lockie


Sean was a co-founding Director of the Healthy Clean Cities (HCC) programme at EIT Climate-KIC the EU’s largest innovation agency looking at solving the climate crisis through systems innovation. The HCC programme is working with 15 of the most ambitious cities in Europe through radical innovation in; citizen activation, procurement, policy / regulation, education, production and supply chains, finance, business models and governance. Prior to this he spent 15 years at Atkins where he was head of sustainability and had a key role in the delivery of London’s 2012 Olympic games and associated regeneration activity. He has also held programme design and management roles at the Building Research Establishment and is a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).