Alice Newton-Rex

Head of Product at Worldremit

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Product Director, WhatsApp
Junior Policy Fellow Alum, Centre for Science and Policy

Alice Newton-Rex is based out of London, England, United Kingdom and works at Whatsapp Inc. as Director of Product at WhatsApp.

Alice was Head of Product for WorldRemit, a VC-funded startup that aims to make it easier and cheaper for migrants to send money back to their families abroad, primarily in Africa and Southeast Asia. She was responsible for improving the web and mobile service for senders, and expanding the ways that recipients can receive money to include all mobile wallets, as well as bank transfer and cash pickup.

Before moving to the private sector, she was a Product Manager at the Government Digital Service from 2013 to 2014. In this role she helped to set the vision for the Departments and Policy section of the single government website, GOV.UK, including commissioning and interpreting user research; managing teams of developers and designers; and promoting government big data.

Previously she was Digital Strategy and Policy Advisor at the Ministry of Justice (2012-13), co-writing the Ministry’s Digital Strategy for redesigning justice services around the user and putting them online, as well as implementing more transparent and agile ways of working in the department. She led key strands of the delivery of this strategy, including approach to service redesign. Her first role in government was as Associate Product Manager in the Cabinet Office (2011-12), leading teams to design and deliver (a) a data app for the Prime Minister that aggregates and visualises real-time information on government priority policies, and (b) a transparency tool that allows the public to explore government spending.

Before joining the Civil Service “Fast Stream” she was a Mobile Health Analyst at GSMA, where she carried out a market analysis of mobile health services and devices, with outputs including a global tracker and a strategic categorisation framework for mobile health services. She retains an interest in this area as Publicity and Research Lead for the Sana open-source health app, managing the website, writing blog posts and participating in strategy discussions about partnerships in academia, healthcare and government.

Alice holds a First Class BA in Classics from Cambridge (2010). In 2010-11 she held the Henry Fellowship at Harvard (one of two academic scholarships awarded for graduate study) in International Development, Economics and Computer Science.