Meet the Team
Alun Hughes, Managing Director
Alun was one of the founding Directors of 20 Degrees back in 2013. Since then he has delivered well over 100 projects. His interests have grown during the period, most notably in the area of heritage.
Prior to 20 Degrees, he spent 13 years running the commercial services company of the University of South Wales. This gave him wide ranging experience of training, consultancy and innovation management both in the UK and internationally. Experiences ranged from evaluating business plans for new businesses to securing government grants to establishing a network of university training providers to deliver training into China. Some of his key formative experiences involved leading change management projects. He set up a number of departments, reconfigured others and developed new incomes streams - always profitably. A useful area of expertise for clients has been a very wide range of experiences of generating new income streams across a broad range of business sectors. Prior to Alun’s time in the university sector, he enjoyed a variety of private and voluntary sector experiences at organisations ranging from GEC to the Methodist Church. His PhD was in Surface Physics and he has been a Fellow of the Institute of Leadership & Management, a Member of the Association for Project Management and a Member of the Social Research Association.
Virginia West, Senior Researcher
Virginia is a researcher who works across our full range of research, evaluation and capacity building projects. Her 30 years experience of working with people whose first language is other than English has been crucial in evaluating projects with people from BAME backgrounds. Her experience ranges from being a teacher of English to being the Deputy Director of the International Division of a Russell Group University and a Development Director (fundraising). She then spent 9 years as Director of the Wales International Consortium (Welsh universities working internationally) before embarking on a new venture in research and consulting. She holds a MBA and RSA Diploma TEFL.
Natasha Hirst, Senior Researcher
Natasha is a highly experienced researcher, bringing capability with quantitative and qualitative methods. This experience ranges from her PhD in Physical Chemistry to being a political researcher for a former First Minister. She gained further policy and research experience at Disability Wales, the Wales Co-operative Centre, Wales TUC and the Wales Audit Office. She has particular interest in equalities issues, particularly those facing disabled people.
Carys Evans, Research Associate
Carys works across our full portfolio of projects. She has a research career spanning some 35 years. Carys was the former Head of Data and Insight at S4C, an organisation where she developed her career, with interludes at WJEC and HTV Wales. She has also worked with the Welsh Language Commissioner and is a first language Welsh communicator.
Georgia Day, Researcher
Georgia is a graduate researcher, delivering desk research, surveys and telephone interviews in support of a wide range of 20 Degrees projects. To date, Georgia has supported landscape-scale project evaluations through to research related to disabled people's experiences in Wales and Africa. Georgia's postgraduate qualification was from Cardiff University. Beyond the working week, they are a charity worker and community organiser.
Sam Fuglestad, Research Analyst
Sam specialises in qualitative data analysis but is highly adept at using a wide range of research methods. From an initial career as a Research Manager with the Post Office Ltd, she has worked for some of the best known names in social research, including NatCen Social Research, Ipsos Mori, Kantar Public and the National Children's Bureau.
Interns
From time to time we like to give people an opportunity to develop their skills as paid interns or work taster students. Here are some thoughts from Jack after he had spent a day with us undertaking some research at a conference.