New Fellows - RSA

New Fellows

Chantal Coady

Chantal Coady is a sustainable cocoa expert and founder of Rococo Chocolates. She has been pivotal in changing the UK chocolate scene, weaning people away from sugary confectionery to single estate dark chocolate. While working with the Grenada Chocolate Company, she was inspired to take a radically different approach, ‘tree to bar’: adding value all the way back to the place where it grows. In 2019, Chantal launched The Chocolate Detective, a business that works with cocoa farmers based in Grenada to highlight sustainable chocolate. Chantal is the first person to be awarded an OBE for ‘services to chocolate making’.

Emma Wilson

Emma Wilson is the Director of Technical, Production and Costume at the UK’s Royal Opera House, having previously served in the same role at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, prior to which she toured extensively worldwide. She has a PhD in the field of environmental politics and she is particularly committed to sustainability in theatre production, working on steering and advisory bodies in the UK and Europe-wide. Her other interests in theatre include safety in the workplace, opportunities for young people and workplace diversity. She was awarded an MBE for services to the performing arts in the 2024 New Year Honours.

Charles Ebikeme

Charles Ebikeme is an academic, researcher and writer, currently working on the intersection of climate change and health. He received his PhD in parasitology from the University of Glasgow, focusing on understanding how drugs work against parasites and how parasites become resistant to drugs. As an independent freelance consultant, he has worked with organisations such as the World Health Organization and Wellcome Trust and is a Visiting Fellow at the United Nations University International Institute for Global Health. He is the recipient of the 2024 Health Innovation Fellowship from the International Center for Journalists.

Jane Setter

Jane Setter is Professor of Phonetics at the University of Reading. Best known as co-editor of the Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, she is also the author of the public-facing Your Voice Speaks Volumes: It’s Not What You Say But How You Say It and co-author of Hong Kong English. Her research publications are mainly in speech prosody, investigating pronunciation and phonology in Global Englishes and in children with speech and language differences. Jane is a National Teaching Fellow of UK Advance HE, a trustee of the English-Speaking Union and an advocate of public engagement with research.

Christoph Niemann

Christoph Niemann is an artist, author and animator. His work appears regularly on the covers of The New Yorker, National Geographic and The New York Times Magazine, and has been subject to numerous museum retrospectives. He has drawn live from the Venice Art Biennale and the Olympic Games and has sketched the New York City Marathon — while running it. A member of Alliance Graphique Internationale, in 2010 Christoph was inducted into the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame. He is the author of several books, including, most recently, Zoo, and a co-creator of children’s apps ‘Petting Zoo’ and ‘Chomp’.

Nigel Dunnett

Nigel Dunnett is Professor of Planting Design, Vegetation Technology and Urban Horticulture at the University of Sheffield and Director of Nigel Dunnett Studio. One of the world’s leading voices on planting design, he is a pioneer of the new ecological approach to planting public spaces. His work revolves around the integration of ecology and horticulture to achieve low-input, high-impact landscapes. His approach is based on decades of detailed experimental work and widespread application in practice (including planting schemes for the Barbican and London Olympic Park) and has been widely applied in the UK and abroad.

Laura François

Laura François is a Canadian impact strategist and Director of Awe Exchange, a non-profit lab building a case for the emotion of awe in systems change work. Previously, she co-founded The Spaceship, supporting social entrepreneurship education, and led nonprofits including Fashion Revolution Malaysia and Singapore, advancing circular production and ethical labour. She now mentors start-ups on impact storytelling at Fashion for Good. Alongside her awe-based impact strategy work, Laura is editing her first book, Reload.Earth, which explores creativity as a renewable resource for changemakers aiming to reimagine sustainable systems.

Melissa Thom

Melissa Thom is a voice actor who founded BRAVA (Bristol Academy of Voice Acting) to provide training for creative professionals wishing to add voice acting to their skillset. BRAVA Business, aimed at improving communication skills in the workplace and beyond, launched in 2024. Melissa hosts BRAVA’s High Notes podcast, featuring conversations on the art and business of voice. She is also a judge for the ARIAS, the UK’s audio and radio awards, and a Women in Games Ambassador. Her voiceover clients have included Rockstar Games (GTAV), Zenimax (Elder Scrolls), Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Unicef and LL COOL J.

Chris Houston

Chris Houston is co-founder and presides over the newly established Canadian Peace Museum in Ontario, which will open to the public in 2025. He is currently Principal Consultant for Humanitarian Associates, in which role he advises innovators and funders on scaling up innovations and programming. Chris previously served as head of logistics for the World Health Organization in Yemen and worked with Médecins Sans Frontières and the Red Cross across Asia, Africa and the Middle East. He is faculty at the University of Toronto’s Global Health Education Initiative and an editor of the Oxford Handbook of Humanitarian Medicine.

Manideep Yenugula

Manideep Yenugula is the Performance and Monitoring Engineer for The Chickasaw Nation (a federally recognised Native American tribe in the US) in Dallas, Texas. A subject matter expert in performance and monitoring engineering, he excels in leveraging cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, internet of things and deep learning across the IT landscape. He is also a mentor and coach and has authored numerous scientific papers on topics around AI and performance and sustainable cloud computing.

Circle of Fellowship

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Call for public speakers

We are currently seeking a diverse range of speakers from across the UK and beyond to refl ect our annual theme of ‘courage’ at the RSA’s public events. Please contact our events team with recommendations by emailing rsa.events@rsa.org.uk.