Alison Naftalin

Founder & Chief Executive Officer 

Alison is the founder and CEO and is based in the United Kingdom.

Alison founded Lively Minds in 2008 following a trip to Ghana where she saw the complex challenges facing rural communities and huge opportunities for change. She spent several years living in both Ghana and Uganda working with Mothers and kids in rural communities to design, test and optimise the programme and then later work out how to scale it.

 In recognition of her efforts in 2010, she was shortlisted for the Vodafone World of Difference Award. In 2011, she won the Civil Service Award for Volunteering, and in 2012, was short-listed for a Ghana UK-Based Achievement Award.

In 2013, she was a finalist in the Clarins Dynamisante Woman of the Year Award. In 2018 she was a Gratitude Foundation fellow and in 2019 a Rainer Arnold fellow of Mulago Foundation.

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Prior to founding Lively Minds, Alison worked as a lawyer in the Central Government for 7 years, working in the Treasury Solicitor’s Department, the Ministry of Justice, and the Ministry of Defence. Before that spent 2 years training at Clifford Chance LLP. Prior to that she studied Modern History at St John’s College, Oxford University