Our Story
The people behind Lucent
Lucent is formed of a growing team of core consultants – Katherine Rake, Charlotte Ravenscroft, Lakshmi Sundaram and Andrea Menapace - working together to help social purpose organisations achieve the greatest possible impact. As a team, we work closely together, we challenge and support one another across our various projects. Our expert associates have technical skills such as data analytics, that bring additional benefits to our clients. You can find out more about the whole team here.
Social change is our passion
All of us at Lucent are passionate about social change and have had careers in charities and foundations in the UK and internationally. We have specific expertise in women and girls’ rights, health and mental health, disability, climate change, children and families and racial justice.
Between us we have deep leadership experience in the social sector - including as chief executives and board members. This means we understand the trade-offs and challenges that our clients face and how we can help teams get to the heart of their strategy quickly.
“As a leader, I’ve been in situations where I have known that I need to take a step back and focus on big strategic questions.
It is critical to create the space to pause, no matter how enormous your to-do list. Lucent provides structured thinking space, allowing you to gain perspective and look at problems from a different lens and, ultimately, make much better decisions.”
How did Lucent’s story start?
Like so many small businesses, Lucent was born at a kitchen table. Katherine had spent all her professional life working for social change: she had been a charity chief executive and had set up a public body, as well as having been a government advisor and academic. She had no doubt that she wanted to pursue her passion for social change but had to figure out how.
“Having been a solo consultant for a couple of years, I got a big buzz from seeing other people’s strategies develop. But I also knew that clients could get even more impact if they had access to multiple experiences and talents.”
Building a consultancy with purpose
Katherine went back to basics – with the help of post-it notes, sharpies and brown paper – to figure out what needed to lie at the heart of a consultancy business that helped deliver social change. The answer was a team of people with deep experience of leadership, a wide range of complementary skills and a shared commitment to social justice. And that was how Lucent was born.
As the consultancy has grown since it was founded in 2020, so too have the insights and tools that Lucent has developed. We bring these simple and highly effective tools into the room to help our clients make rapid progress and we make as much of our resources and learning open source as possible, so that it is accessible to everyone involved in wider movements for social justice and social change.
“Our clients work on the biggest challenges of our time. They do so with courage and heart. We walk alongside them in their journeys of change, bringing fresh solutions and insights to the table.”
We would love to hear from you if Lucent can help support you in achieving your goals. Just drop us a line and we’ll stand you a virtual coffee!