CEO, Centre for Global Equality

Senior Research Associate, Cambridge Centre for Inclusive Innovation, Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Cambridge

Dr Lara Allen is CEO of the Centre for Global Equality, a Cambridge-based civil society organisation that evolves innovative solutions to global challenges. She also heads the Cambridge Centre for Inclusive Innovation, Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Cambridge. Over the past decade she has led the evolution of a framework for inclusive innovation, a theory and methodology for researching and implementing innovation for sustainable development. This approach is premised on facilitating both equitable co-creation between researchers, innovators and end-users in low-resource communities, and productive collaborations between key actors in academia, civil society, government and business, to ensure that innovations are context-appropriate and are diffused and scaled effectively.

Lara has fifteen years’ experience as a sustainable development practitioner in South Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Ireland and the UK. Prior to this she was an academic with nine years post-PhD experience at the University of Cambridge and the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa.