The Impact Equation

As Chief Executive of Yorkshire Housing, Nick Atkin leads the region’s largest provider of affordable, eco-friendly homes. He also chairs major regional partnerships and is pushing the government to treat housebuilding as a national priority. His team is at the vanguard of using data, sensors and AI to make housing services work better for the people living in those homes. In this episode of The Impact Equation, Nick joins Adam and Rafi to talk about why housing matters so much to health, dignity and life chances, and why leaders in the sector cannot afford to get stuck in spreadsheets and slide decks.

In their latest wash up episode, Adam and Rafi reflect on recent episodes to explore how systemic change happens at a local and global level. They discuss the "triumph of place-based localism" through Simon Case’s work in Barrow and Claudine Blamey’s community-led flood resilience at Aviva, emphasizing that impact is most effective when rooted in the reality of people's lives. They examine the power of "harnessing capitalism for climate," contrasting Alyssa Gilbert’s focus on scaling innovation at Imperial with Luke Leslie’s investor-led approach to carbon markets and nature-based assets. The conversation also highlights the human side of leadership, from Madlin Sadler’s evidence-based humanitarian work at the IRC and Edward Timpson’s navigating of complex legislative systems for children's services, to Ed Davey’s "clear-eyed hope" regarding international cooperation and land use.

This is the first episode in our second series, Scaling Tomorrow's Social Unicorns, with 100x Impact. Rhea Yadav leads impact and strategy at Wysa, the AI-led mental health platform that has supported more than 7 million people across 95 countries. She founded the organisation’s impact business and now works across governments, health systems, NGOs and employers to take evidence-based mental health support into places where care is scarce.

What does it really take to deliver humanitarian aid in the world’s most fragile places? In this episode of The Impact Equation, we sit down with Madlin Sadler, Chief Operating Officer at the International Rescue Committee - an organisation working at the sharpest edge of conflict, disaster and displacement.Madlin offers a rare, inside view of what it means to operate in over 40 of the world’s most crisis-affected countries; where systems have broken down, need is accelerating, and resources are shrinking. Madlin shares what it looks like to deliver vaccines to children in remote conflict zones; how humanitarian organisations make impossible decisions when funding is cut; why evidence, cost-effectiveness, and scale matter when lives are at stake; and why, despite everything, she still feels lucky to do this work.

Edward Timpson is the former Children’s Minister, part of the family behind Timpson, and brother of Lord James Timpson, now a Labour prisons minister. In this conversation with Rafi’s former Ministerial boss, Edward reflects on growing up in a family that fostered more than 80 children, alongside one of the UK’s best-known family businesses, recognised for both its high street services and a culture built on trust, kindness and second chances. That experience shaped everything that followed: family law, politics, reform in government, and his work today across children’s services and family care. Edward’s life and career show what stability, love and belief can do in a child’s life. This is an episode about childhood, public service, fostering, politics, and the decisions that can alter a life’s direction.

Luke Leslie is the co-founder and CEO of Key Carbon, investing directly into businesses generating high integrity carbon credits, from clean cooking stoves in sub-Saharan Africa to regenerative agriculture in Europe and mangrove restoration in Myanmar. Luke explains how Key Carbon has borrowed from royalty and streaming models used in mining, then adapted them for carbon markets. The result is a more hands-on and structured approach that is attracting hundreds of millions of dollars of institutional finance into nature investment.

In this episode, Rafi sits down with Claudine Blamey, Chief Sustainability Officer at Aviva. Claudine’s story starts far from the boardrooms of British business. She arrived in London from Tehran as a child, speaking no English. That experience shaped a mindset that has stayed with her throughout her career: nothing is forever, and even the most complex situations can be navigated. Three decades later, Claudine has helped shape sustainability strategy across sectors – from sustainable buildings at British Land to aviation’s first net-zero strategy at easyJet, and now climate and nature strategy at Aviva. In this conversation, she reflects on how her early experiences of migration shaped her resilience and leadership; why insurers have a unique role in managing and pricing climate risk; the growing reality that parts of the UK could become uninsurable due to climate impacts; Why nature restoration could become a major global asset class; And, how sustainability leaders are shifting from ambition-setting to systemic change.

This episode we're joined by Summer Kennedy for a special episode looking back at our first series with Fast Forward. In this series, we’ve featured three amazing entrepreneurs backed by Fast Forward, a trailblazing accelerator backing tech nonprofits solving urgent, global problems at scale. Summer quite literally drives Fast Forward forward; shaping the strategic vision and building the systems that get the organisation there. Her path to leadership has been anything but linear: from teaching first grade in Oakland to spearheading tech-for-good initiatives, Summer’s career proves that the most impactful journeys don’t follow a straight line. We reflect on three conversations with Fast Forward investments - Sunny Patel of Vector Cam, Alysia Garmulewicz of Materiom and Michelle Brown of CommonLit.

This episode we're not joined by Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, but a pioneer on forests, agriculture and food security who has worked all over the world, from Tibet to Yemen and Colombia. With roots in social justice and anti-poverty campaigning, Ed cut his teeth in efforts around debt, poverty, and development with organisations like Oxfam and the wider Make Poverty History movement before joining the then Prince of Wales – now King – to drive high-level work on forests, sustainable agriculture, and climate through his International Sustainability Unit. Since then, Ed has become a driving force in the world of sustainable food, nature and climate, helping drive the work of the World Resources Institute and advising the Food and Land Use Coalition and its push to transform how the world grows and eats.