Team

I believe that human culture and technology are in a bi-directional feedback loop: shaping, reinforcing, and evolving one another. With deeper understanding of the data around us, I believe humans can make better decisions (not just faster ones). In a time when AI is often used by monopolistic platforms and centralised powers to reinforce the status quo, I'm drawn to efforts that reimagine how technology can help us build more regenerative, just, and intelligent systems.

Over the past eight years, I've worked at the intersection of emerging technologies, systems thinking, and social impact. Most recently as Product Manager at Culture Hack Labs, I led the development of narrative intelligence tools and LLM-powered dashboards to help organisations in the Global South coordinate more effective social messaging. I'm fluent in translating complex needs into clear product strategies, and I'm not afraid to get technical when the work demands it.

From building emergency AR tools for first responders to researching post-capitalist economics and developing commons-oriented interventions, my work blends design, AI, and systems thinking to create usable, scalable, and responsible tech.

I'm especially excited by roles that allow me to collaborate across disciplines, apply technology with care, and build tools that improve how we relate to one another and to the natural systems we depend on.

Ayanda Ntombela is an innovation and technology leader with experience across startups, NGOs, and research institutions. He holds an MPhil in Inclusive Innovation (Distinction) and a Postgraduate Diploma in Business & Systems Analysis (Distinction) from the University of Cape Town. His work focuses on designing and scaling solutions addressing food security, regenerative agriculture, and climate resilience. He has led innovation programs across Africa, Asia, and Europe, including roles at Welthungerhilfe and the International Livestock Research Institute (CGIAR). Ayanda combines product development, venture support, and facilitation to enable collaborative, systems-level change.

I am a director and co-founder of Arkology Studio, an interdisciplinary design studio focussed on expressing patterns for distributed intelligence networks and knowledge systems. I see the world in terms of networks and processes, rather than static entities arbitrarily configured. Thus, I consider relationality as a first class function of being and interpret systems as conferences of interdependent agents, organised according to their collective entanglements, not their individual locus'. This lens informs my designs and gives rise to the production of development patterns that unlock these dynamics within cybernetic systems.

Diana works at the intersection of artificial intelligence, global development, and cultural systems, with a focus on how emerging technologies mediate access, agency, and institutional design. Her background spans nonprofit and for-profit leadership in tech strategy, international policy, and immersive experience architecture. She's interested in the ways AI systems are imagined, built, and governed, and how those choices shape participation, equity, and long-term social outcomes. Her work explores how technological development can align with broader questions of meaning, context, and human complexity, especially in regions historically excluded from shaping digital futures.

Erik Hartin is a Leverhulme Trust Doctoral Scholar at the University of East Anglia as part of the Critical Decade programme and the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts. His research examines how artistic interventions – from creative protest, street art and posters to public artworks and public commissions – can more effectively be used as tools to create radical change in our approach to tackling the climate and ecological emergency. As a climate activist, designer, editor and writer with more than fifteen years of experience in contemporary art, publishing and activism, Erik's work focuses on designing sustainable and regenerative content and systems to help drive change in culture. He holds an MA from the Royal College of Art, is an Associate Lecturer at the University of the Arts, London and a member of Culture Hack Labs.

Gavin works at the intersection of technology, systems design, and human transformation. His focus is helping people and organizations build tools and cultures that don't just scale—but restore coherence, connection, and responsiveness in a time of complexity. He believes our greatest innovations should be in service of something deeper: a world that feels more alive, more humane, and more whole. With a background in early-stage ventures, product strategy, and deep tech, he's spent years prototyping what's possible. But the real work is not just building better systems—it's making sure they reflect the values we don't want to lose. Gavin is the founder of Hippytech & Earthstream projects.

GEORGIA KOTRETSOS (b. 1978, Thessaloniki, Greece) is a visual artist and researcher based in Athens, Greece. She moved to South Africa in her early teens while the abolition of apartheid was underway. Kotretsos holds an MFA Degree from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago on a Full Merit Scholarship (2004) in the United States and a BFA Degree from the Durban Institute of Technology, in KwaZulu Natal, (2000) in South Africa.

With her work, she critiques the conformity of seeing by studying, proposing and practicing liberating and anarchic approaches of looking at art in an effort to support that seeing is site-specific and spectatorial emancipation the source of our art knowledge. Through her research-based practice, she encourages speculative approaches on how knowledge is and/or could be produced.

In 2016 Kotretsos was nominated for the FAENA ART Prize; in 2015 was a recipient of the NEON grant for her solo entitled OPEN ARTISTS STUDIO FOUNDATION at C9 MaximiliansForum in Munich supported the Arts & Culture Dept. of the City of Munich. In 2014 she was nominated for the Future Generation Art Prize and the Follow Fluxus Residency & Grant. She has exhibited her work in Greece, as well as abroad and has had seven solo shows.

Her work has been presented at: Onassis Art Center, NY; the Asian Society, NY; the 4th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art; the Tinguely Museum, Basel, La Kunsthalle Mulhouse; the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, and at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis among other institutions in Greece and abroad.

Her latest permanent site-specific installation may be found at the Minos Beach art hotel, in Agios Nikolaos, Crete, entitled 4 Cents: On Show For 500 Years supported by the G. & A. Mamidakis Foundation.

I build narrative capacity for organizations working in complex social, cultural, and institutional environments. My work focuses on helping teams develop the internal ability to map meaning, interpret shifting narrative landscapes, and design narrative-led interventions that support systems change.

I am Co-Founder and Managing Director of Narrative Intelligence Systems, where I lead the development of knowledge infrastructure and analytical tools that support narrative intelligence in practice. This includes building semantic systems, knowledge graph architectures, and machine learning pipelines that enable organizations to trace how narratives form, how meaning spreads, and where strategic opportunities for intervention are emerging. Our work equips institutions to move beyond reactive communication and toward sustained narrative capacity and long-term cultural influence.

Previously, I served as Executive Director of Culture Hack Labs until June 2025, leading strategic vision, research, and program development in narrative-led systems change. I worked with the team that launched the Rhizome Fellowship, bringing together narrative practitioners, organizers, and researchers to develop shared methods for cultural transformation. Our projects integrated cognitive linguistics, behavioural economics, and data analysis to design practical frameworks for narrative strategy and collective action.

Nathan is a multidisciplinary creative professional with extensive experience across performance, education, and community organizing. He brings a unique perspective to narrative work through his background in acting, directing, improvisation, and workshop facilitation. His work spans civic and social organizations, startups, and event production, bringing people together through storytelling, movement, and creative expression.

Ross brings an evolutionary, living systems perspective to technology design drawing from an academic background in social sciences, systems dynamics & sustainability transitions. At Arkology Studio, Ross leads development of P2P Data Commons, a project endeavouring to realise patterns and protocols for weaving human and non-human agents into cooperative networks that grow more coherent and integrated over time.

Ruth Łchavaya K'isen Miller is a Dena'ina Athabaskan woman from Dgheyay Kaq (Anchorage), Alaska, and a member of the Curyung Tribe with roots in Kijik village. She holds a BA from Brown University in Development Studies focused on Indigenous resistance. Ruth has led climate justice and just transition work across international, national, and local levels, including as Climate Justice Director for Native Movement and a founding member of the Fireweed Collective. She is Co-Director of the Smokehouse Collective, an Indigenous food sovereignty project, and now lives in New York City, integrating community music therapy, Theater of the Oppressed, and performance into her advocacy and storytelling work.

Tasneem Jaffer is a digital learning consultant with over a decade of experience designing and delivering global digital and blended learning programmes across sustainability, fintech, global health and more. She holds an MEd in Educational Technology and an MBA from the University of Cape Town. She has led complex programme and course development at scale, working with subject matter experts and cross-functional teams to create meaningful learning experiences. Her work is grounded in a strong commitment to provide equitable and accessible education for all.