Flourish was created to enable everyone to tell stories with data. Launched in 2018, the tool is used by a huge community of creators to inform tens of millions of viewers every day. Our team combines decades of experience in visualization, tech, data, journalism and design.
The team
Anna Al-Damluji
Customer operations manager
Anna brings technical expertise to the commercial team, working on customer success and operations. She has nearly 20 years' experience looking after customers at tech startups. She has a masters in AI and computer science.
Luisa Bider
Head of content
Luisa oversees our content team that operates across blogs, social media, help docs, examples and new feature launches. She has an MSc in digital journalism and previously worked in product development at NZZ and social media at Metro.
Mafe Callejón
Content specialist
Mafe creates content for our blog, social media, help resources, and webinars. She has a masters in computational and data journalism from Cardiff University and has worked in newsrooms in the US, Venezuela and Spain.
Duncan Clark
Cofounder & CEO
Before co-founding Kiln and Flourish, Duncan was a data journalist (Guardian), author (Profile Books), honorary researcher (UCL) and publisher (Rough Guides/Penguin), with a focus on data, technology and climate change.
Peter Cook
Senior visualization developer
Peter is a leading visualization developer, the author of “D3 in Depth” and founder of the visualization consultancy Animated Data.
Jess Cooke
InfoSec Compliance Analyst
Jess helps manage our information security management system. She has worked in various roles, from teaching windsurfing in France to monitoring security events at The Guardian. She's pursuing an MSc in information security at Royal Holloway.
Verity Dack
Vibe lead
Verity makes sure the Flourish office is a home away from home, plans social events and activities, and helps with recruiting and hiring tasks. She has a background in drama and theater.
Loukia Douka
Project manager
Loukia keeps our product development process running smoothly by connecting the dots between teams and coordinating ongoing projects and sprints. She has a background in corporate communications.
Raphaëla Dubreuil
User researcher
Raphaëla uses a mix of analytics, user testing and direct user interaction to help us better understand Flourish users and base product decisions around them. She has a PhD in ancient Greek history.
Solana Gaspari
People ops specialist
Solana oversees staff operations and wellbeing, making sure Flourish is a fun and rewarding place to work. She has a decade of experience in HR roles in startups and corporates.
Jane Glentworth
Operations manager
Jane keeps Flourish running smoothly, overseeing finance and contributing to operations and admin. She was previously an Executive Editor of Web Design and Production at the Guardian, managing teams and working on production tools.
Rosie Hill
Leadership operations
Rosie drives operational excellence at Flourish and Canva UK, making sure that everything runs smoothly and effectively. Prior to joining the team, Rosie ran operations functions in the finance and travel sectors.
Freddy Hoban
Sales manager
Freddy introduces Flourish to new customers. After studying History & Politics he developed an interest in tech and visualization while working in business development for an innovation intelligence platform.
Robin Houston
Cofounder & CTO
Robin is Flourish's technical architect. He previously ran the pathogen informatics team at the Sanger Institute, created web applications for mySociety and built the original Guardian website. Robin has a PhD in computer science.
Hugh Kennedy
Tech Lead
Hugh develops WebGL templates such as the 3D time maps. He previously worked with the Google Creative Lab in Australia and has contributed to a number of open source projects including stack.gl and glslify.
Ben Lloyd
Senior software engineer
Ben works on the development of new features on the Flourish platform. He previously worked as a backend engineer for Canva, TripAdvisor and Skyscanner.
Mark Longair
Head of development
Mark oversees technical development at Flourish. Before joining the team, he worked as a senior developer at civic-technology charity mySociety, building data-driven websites and applications. Mark has a PhD in neuroinformatics.
Olivia Lawlor
Support lead
Olivia oversees customer support at Flourish and helps our customers get the most out of Flourish through answering their requests and sharing her product expertise. She joined Flourish after completing a masters in data journalism at Birmingham City University.
Lucia Lau
Customer success manager
Lucia helps our agency customers have a smooth experience with Flourish and builds strong relationships along the way. She has over 8 years of experience in customer-facing roles and has a background in graphic design.
Daan Louter
Head of product
Daan oversees Flourish product development, from platform UX to visualization templates. A developer and designer, Daan joined Flourish from the Guardian where he created award-winning interactives, data projects and VR experiences.
Connor Musoke-Jones
Product expert
Connor works on serviced visualizations and bespoke projects for customers on our enablement team. He studied industrial product design and has a background in graphic design and teaching.
Chris Newell
Designer developer
Chris is a graphic designer and developer specializing in visualization and interactive content. Before joining the team at Flourish he worked at several leading newsrooms, including the Guardian, the Telegraph and Tortoise.
Florin Oprina
Senior DevOps engineer
Florin works on maintaining and improving our technical infrastructure. He has a masters degree in neuroscience and a PhD in linguistics.
Annie Parker
Social media specialist
Annie creates and manages our social media and marketing materials. She joined Flourish after graduating with a first in media studies from UEA.
Lyndsey Pereira-Brereton
Head of customer enablement
Lyndsey oversees the customer enablement team, empowering our customers to realize the full value of Flourish for their needs. She was previously Data Visualization Editor at the Bank of England.
Allan Rechtman
CCO
Allan works across key customer accounts, new business and commercial strategy. He previously held similar roles at startups and agencies including Freespee, Vitrue and Havas.
Helena Robertson
Software engineer
Helena maintains and develops Flourish templates and components. She has a masters in computational and data journalism, was a Google News Initiative Fellow, and has experience in the Guardian and FT newsrooms.
Sophie Roopnarinesingh
Sales development representative
Sophie helps bring Flourish to new customers, ensuring that prospective clients are rapidly responded to and met with helpful information. She has a bachelor in business studies and a masters in strategic marketing.
Ilias Stathatos
Support & newsrooms
Ilias supports our customers and administers our newsroom program. A data journalist by background, he co-founded the Mediterranean Institute for Investigative Reporting and won fellowships from Columbia University and Google.
Bobby Sebolao
Software engineer
Bobby works on the Flourish backend, across everything from testing and features to accessibility. He joined Flourish from Founders & Coders and has also worked at the British Council.
Cale Tilford
Senior visualization engineer
Cale develops and maintains visualization templates and components. He has a masters in computing from Imperial College London and previously worked as a newsroom developer at the Financial Times.
Simona Tselova
Content specialist
Simona works on our content team and creates content for our blog, social media, help resources, and webinars. She studied journalism at City, University of London and has previously worked in social media and copywriting.
Joe Turner
Senior engineer / Tech lead
As a tech lead on the Flourish platform, Joe oversees the development of new features. He has more than a decade of experience as a full-stack developer and previously worked in tech education.
Lars Verspohl
Senior visualization engineer
Lars develops visualization templates and works on bespoke projects. He has over 20 years of experience as a data scientist, visualization designer and developer and founded the visualization consultancy datamake.
Joseph Witcombe
Learning manager
Joseph defines, develops, and designs impactful learning solutions and training materials for Flourish customers. Before joining Flourish, Joseph worked as a software engineering and data analysis program manager and developed a frontend coding bootcamp.
Alec Zammit
Tech business analyst
Alec helps keep our website safe by helping identify harmful and unlawful content before it reaches other users. He also works alongside other teams to assist them with their business and growth opportunities. He studied computing and information systems at Queen Mary University.
Bandana Gill
InfoSec manager
Bandana oversees our information security management system at Flourish. She has over 15 years of experience in information security across multiple sectors, more recently focusing on small to medium-sized businesses in the software industry.
You?
Get in touch
We are always happy to hear from interesting people. See our jobs page for more details. Feel free to reach out to anyone on the team individually if you want to know what it's like to work here.
Our story
Flourish was co-founded by Duncan Clark and Robin Houston. Duncan comes from a storytelling background in data journalism and publishing, while Robin is a mathematician and developer. The pair started working on visualizations as a side project in 2012.
Their first projects, such as the Carbon Map, generated a lot of interest, so they set up a visualization studio, Kiln. Over the next few years, they worked with clients from the Guardian and Google to the WHO and LSE, and won prizes at the Data Journalism Awards and the Information Is Beautiful Awards, among others.
Throughout this time, Duncan and Robin were working on an idea: a tool to allow non-coders to create high-end visualizations and stories without the cost and delays of commissioning bespoke projects. By 2016 they had a clear vision for such a tool and Flourish was born.
Alumni
Following are staffers and interns who were part of the Flourish team for six months or longer in the past and contributed greatly to the company's development. Thanks to you all!