Team Generate

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.

Alix Richards
Entrepreneurship Administrative Assistant

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.

Kajal Sanghrajka 
Acceleration Director

Kajal is a force of nature. We don't really want to share anything about her as we'd quite like for her to stay in our family forever but that kind of defeats the point of a bio, so just so you know, we have her tagged. She currently heads up LSE's first ever Accelerator Programme supporting 15 early stage businesses focused on profit and purpose. She managed to single-handedly transfer the entire programme online in the space of about 32 seconds when that pesky bug hit so she wins. 

She is the Director of Growth Hub Global where she supports European companies and universities to grow globally leveraging her own experience starting and growing a business internationally and wait for it, there's more, she built Columbia University’s first incubator as a graduate entrepreneur. She is also a Churchill Fellow researching immigrant entrepreneurship and writes a monthly editorial The Transatlantic Post on innovation and entrepreneurship.

Kaj holds a BSc in Economics from the London School of Economics and an MBA from Columbia Business School. I could go on and on and on and on but I'd recommend you just meet up with her and bask in her wisdom and amazingness, remembering she's tagged.

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!

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.

Matt Shannon 
Chief of Staff

We have a Chief Of Staff! Not in the House of Cards kind of way; move aside, Mark Meadows, there's a new Chief in town. 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.

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!

Marit de Bruijne
Digital Media Manager

Everyone needs a Marit in their lives. Marit is the brains behind the new all-singing, all-dancing Generate website organising the content, snapping the best photographic moments and coming up with all the ideas on how to best spread the good news on what we're up to! She spends most of the time perfecting the marketing and comms strategies over with our friends at LSE Consulting, but her boss has very kindly let us borrow her and she's now an indispensable part of the Generate family.

She has also been working as a researcher, writer and producer in the film and TV industry for years and was born and raised in the bike-riding, daffodilcious city of Amsterdam. She’s a total whizz and we love having her with us!

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.