A Generate Welcome

LJ Silverman
Head of Generate 

I get to spend my waking hours alongside the best and brightest socially driven entrepreneurs at LSE, leading the entrepreneurship centre at the School here in London as well as our global start-up hubs. I manage LSE Generate which is a community of innovators who can engage with our programme, seek mentorship, funding and a home where they can be equipped to go out and solve some of society's most pressing problems.

Prior to LSE I ran my own careers and recruitment consultancy focussed on climate change and before that I worked in TV. Many moons ago, I studied languages at Cambridge Uni. I am passionate about parent-tech, and any innovation that clearly contributes to a better tomorrow. I also quite like my kids, spider plants before they got cool, mulled wine in a mug and Liverpudlians.

Emma Davies
Deputy Manager

Emma is the Deputy Manager at Generate and is great person to head to if you can’t get LJ…. She also knows a thing or two about the wider world of LSE as she came to us via the Directorate (altogether now; oooOOOoooooo!!). Emma is often found in the GenDen coworking space, singing along to Billy Bragg.  She’s usually checking you guys aren’t working too hard and persuading all to have a glass of fizzy pop (or something stronger) and then she whips out something delicious she’s baked while making sure the Generate machine is ticking along perfectly and that LJ's diary hasn't imploded. Emma is an all-rounder, she has her nose in most things Generate and she loves hearing all about your business ideas on a brightly coloured bean-bag. Come and meet her… tell her I sent you. She also wants me to let you know, she once made a souffle in the back of a campervan.

Alix Richards
Operations Lead

When you sit in the pub and ask your mate, “I mean, WHO LIKES ADMIN?!” you now know the answer. Alix Richards.

And not only does she boss the bookkeeping, rule the receipts, sort the spreadsheets and basically keep us all alive here at Generate, she’s also an amazing entrepreneur too (I know!), running her own upholstery business on the side while looking after two kids, a dog and a husband. Total superhero and we love her.

Alice Eddie
Global Engagement Lead

I can always guarantee that on turning on my phone in the morning, there'll be a WhatsApp from my dad, a student apologising for a missed clinic and ALICE EDDIE. I challenge you to find a more efficient, hard working and all-round incredible human.

Alice joined us as the lead on our Comms, Marketing, and Events strategy about 1.3 seconds before the global pandemic graced us with its presence which meant that her job was even more essential to the smooth running of the Generate machine. She bosses the social media platforms and her specialist subject is events, making Glasto look like your nan's village fete. Our brand new Generate SOS programme is thanks to this little whizz.

Her background is as a professional clarinetist - playing with BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Proms, for Disney at the Royal Albert Hall, with Earth Wind & Fire in front of 30,000 peeps, and in West End shows such as Les Mis & War Horse along with freelance Orchestral Management roles, coaching for National Youth Concert Band and some teaching on the side - give her an aperol spritz and she'll recite Joesph backwards to you. Beat that.

Pemu Mungai
Data & Technology Lead

If anyone's gonna know how entrepreneurship at LSE works, it Pemu! Graduating from the LSE Management of Information Systems and Digital Innovation and a budding early-stage entrepreneur himself, Pemu is basically a walking Generate case study!  And what's more; he's helping us manage the beast that is our student offering! From data to digital, Pemu's all over the numbers and says things like wire-framing and back-end a lot.  His patience is off the scale and he's one of the loveliest people we've ever worked with. Right now, he's helping us pilot a ton of new exciting initiatives so watch this space to see what's new and just round the corner for our students and alumni!

Kiran Arokiasamy
Programmes Lead

Kiran founded his first business at 16 in high school (when most of us were making friendship bracelets and playing kiss-chase) and it was here where he starting getting super interested in supporting youth entrepreneurship networks, advising early-stage founders, and developing the startup ecosystem in Manchester, London, and Tallinn (weirdest combo ever?!). He is fascinated by early-stage company building and business development and has spent the past five years working with cutting edge technology companies across 12 startup accelerators/ corporate innovation programmes. Alongside his studies, Kiran worked at Entrepreneur First, an international deep-tech company builder, and talent investor, supporting European operations. In his free time, he advises some of the largest student startup accelerators in the UK, including Manchester's Accelerate ME, London's Kickstart and Bath's Acceler8 Programmes. He's pretty top notch stuff, so if you're reading this at Kings, please don't poach him!

Ramona Liberoff
Entrepreneur-in-Residence 2021

Meet Ramona, our Entrepreneur-in-Residence for 2021! Ramona works at the intersection of investment, innovation, and impact - (It's Friday, it's still Lockdown, we're entitled to an alliteration-fest, right?!).

Our first meeting with Ramona involved the words "That is SO up our street!" so many times that we knew straight off that she was the one for the job! Right, breathe in; here are her best bits: Ramona is the former Chief Operating Officer of the Innogy Innovation Hub, which invested in businesses working in the future of renewable energy. She was formerly CEO of SPRING Accelerator in East Africa and South Asia.  She is long-term early stage investor in impact and technology start-ups as well as a several-time founder, most recently of an inclusive transport start-up (Ride Tandem, with another LSE alum!). Exciting, huh?!

Ramona is currently supporting two investment funds with their thesis and impact, working extensively with civic tech company Civocracy on better democratic and Citizen Engagement, working to remove barriers to bringing investment capital into sustainable ag tech in Africa (through an accelerator with GIZ, the German development cooperative), and designing an inclusive agritech fund.

She holds master's degrees from the LSE (Social and Organisational Psychology '02) and Yale University (Pre-Columbian studies, 1993) as well as a first degree from Williams College.

Ramona's superpower - by the looks of that list above - is to bend time. And so, she's agreed to spend some of it with our gang and start working alongside you lot and help drive your brilliant businesses forward. I know you'll make her welcome! 2021 just got good!

Zsofia Kunvari 
Graduate Intern

Zsófia is the person who has accidentally stayed up to 3am to embroider an architecturally accurate snapshot of the local cinema for a crafty Christmas present. Could you get more LSE?! With a background in anthropology and organisational behaviour, Zsofia loves to dig deep into understanding how people and places work – this continual curiosity inspires her to create a happy, healthy community here at Generate as our resident Graduate Intern. If you are eating some home-made goodies while in the GenDen, that was also probably her. She probably also answered the door, fixed your Wifi and made sure that you, as a Founder, were doing OK with her brand new We're Better Together programme - check it out!

Yogesh Patel
Accountant-in-Residence

Yogesh is our go to person for all things accounting and tax for our budding entrepreneurs. He has been working with us from day dot of LSE Generate and passionate about working with socially driven entrepreneurs. 

He is a  Chartered Tax Adviser and FCCA accountant drawing over 15 years of advisory experience, including 7 years’ experience at PricewaterhouseCoopers. He has worked with clients from all walks of life, companies of all shapes and sizes, and absolutely loves tackling the wide range of complex business challenges entrepreneurs face.  

He also won the 2021 ACCA Advocate of the year for all his work within the accounting profession.

Emma Mirams
University Ecosystem Manager

Emma has the herculean task of mapping entrepreneurial activities and opportunities across Universities across the UK – it's exhausting just typing this but Emma takes this and everything else in her stride. She also has entrepreneurial blood in her as the Co-Founder of an amazing nutrition business. No donuts were involved in the making of this university ecosystem project!

Emma is based with us but liaises a lot with our friends at Oxford which we won't hold against her! Emma lives in the country and we aren't at all envious of that fresh air, countryside cycling and dog walking adventures! She's such an excellent addition to our team and we wish we had her for longer!

Matt Shannon 
Consultant

Matt is jumping on board to help us design and operate the growing Generate offering and set us up for exciting times ahead. He's got over 20 years of studying people (like my 80-year curtain-twitching next-door-neighbour but with design and product experience and ton of consulting work thrown in).

He asks the BEST questions, and is in the business of developing ideas to make them better.  He's an incredible start-up therapist so grab yourself a chaise-longue and make sure you're in a zoom meeting with this one sometime soon. And if you want to debrief on the latest podcast, show, article I can guarantee you there's no one better than Matt to share your thoughts with.

Matt'll be working alongside LJ and the team as we develop the acceleration programmes, international chapters and ensure we're meeting all your entrepreneurial needs.

Alanah Sarginson
Artist-in-residence

Alanah is the girl you always wanted to be in arts class when your own picture of a vase of flowers looked like an upside down tomato – she makes Matisse look like my 4-year-old son's portraits on the fridge. Her creativity and passion for design is infectious and she has an incredible way of magicking our ideas around social impact into some pretty awesome artwork that now forms part of our mural collection in the Creation Cave.

Alanah is a BSc Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method student from Hertfordshire, who came to LSE in 2019 to pursue her love for philosophy while setting up her own business as a creative freelancer. Swing by the Cave and talk to her about the meaning of life while she bosses our walls with her fabulous illustrations.