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.

Flourish is part of the Canva family. Read about our group mission and values here.

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

Product manager

Luisa drives the product development of new visualization templates and features, defines and prioritizes product decisions and improves user experience. 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.

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.

Georgia Diaconescu

Marketing lead

Georgia oversees the marketing team and is responsible for the development and execution of all marketing strategies. She has over a decade of experience in product marketing and has previously worked at Meta, what3words and other global brands.

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.

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 oversees commercial operations at Flourish. He’s responsible for the commercial growth of the company. 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.

Katie Tanner

Software engineer

Katie is responsible for the maintaining and improving of the Flourish backend. She has previously worked as a full-stack and software developer, and has years of experience in programming and web applications and services architecture.

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!


Julien Assouline

Newsroom intern

Daniel Gavrilov

Developer

William Keashock

Platform developer

Felix Michel

Newsroom intern

Anna Powell-Smith

CPO

Sarah Soutoul

Developer intern

Katherine Riley

Data journalist

Richard South

Head of business development

Tim Brock

Full-stack developer

Mark Everitt

Senior developer / Tech lead

Yaning Wu

Support and content intern

Andriani Pieri

Sales development representative

Eade Hemingway

Visualization developer

Vanessa Fillis

Product expert

Emma Atkinson

Senior SDR

Camilla Beach

Customer success manager

Adam Ben David

Customer success manager

Chisara Duru

Customer success manager

Callum Smith

Sales manager

Jamie Starling

Sales manager

Chris Newell

Designer developer

Jess Cooke

InfoSec Compliance Analyst