Jesper Christiansen
www.nesta.org.uk/team/jesper-christiansen/
www.nesta.org.uk/team/jesper-christiansen/
Head of Strategy and Development
Jesper was Head of Strategy and Development in the Innovation Skills team, contributing to Nesta's work to help people and organisations get better at innovating for the public good.
Jesper is a public innovation thinker and practitioner. His work focuses on how to deal most effectively with public problems in order to most effectively pursue the common good – in particular through better ecosystems for research and development.
Prior to joining Nesta, Jesper worked at Danish cross-public innovation unit MindLab for seven years. He founded and directed its research programme that captured, analysed and communicated the learnings from across MindLab’s project portfolio. He also managed MindLab’s international collaboration, and has worked with and advised several governments, public agencies and international institutions.
Before this he was a programme and project manager with responsibility for MindLab’s work with the Danish Ministry of Employment – with a particular focus on employment policy for marginalised and vulnerable citizens. This was also the focus of his 2012 secondment to design agency ThinkPlace in Canberra.
During his time at MindLab, Jesper also completed a Ph.D. in Anthropology with a thesis focusing on embedding human-centred innovation practices in public sector organisations. He also holds a Master’s degree in Anthropology from Aarhus University and an additional degree in journalism from the Danish School of Journalism.
