Hayley has worked in local government for the majority of her career and has stayed because she believes it’s the best place to be if you want to directly effect change with communities. For the last couple of years, she has worked in the research and insight space and her focus has been on the evaluation of cross-cutting programmes, such as the first ever London Borough of Culture programme and the Connecting Communities programme, part of MHCLG’s Integrated Communities pilot. Hayley’s overarching focus has been to articulate the impact of interventions and translate this into tangible outcomes to improve policy and service delivery, and ultimately, people’s lives. Hayley is currently Head of Strategy and Engagement at Islington Council where she continues to think about how we can design policies that enable the best outcomes for communities and that is rooted in meaningful evidence. It’s for this reason that she is fascinated by the relationship between academia and public policy and is extremely excited to be part of CAPE.