Tom Shirley

Sir Cyril Taylor Memorial Award for Social Entrepreneurship, Harvard University - Business Administration

During his time in America Tom plans to do a Master’s in Public Policy and an MBA, starting with the MPP at Harvard Kennedy School. Tom has always hoped to have a positive impact with his work. He started his career with Mime Education after realising he was not personally suited for the laboratory, following a Natural Sciences BA at Cambridge. This involved analytics for schools and children’s centres, with the mission to improve the life chances of young people using data. After five years he started his own social enterprise, Illustrating Impact, offering data analytics and visualisation to public sector audiences more broadly and has since worked with clients in education, homelessness, and welfare. Tom has become increasingly interested in public sector commissioning. In 2019 he was offered a Winston Churchill Fellowship to meet international leaders who are combining impact measurement with finance to create more sustainable funding models. He is honoured to receive the Sir Cyril Taylor Fulbright Award to explore the academic principles behind how commissioning policy could be made more effective in both the UK and the USA. He is also excited to explore the United States and visit the national parks.