Bridging ideas, people and perspectives to keep complex projects moving forward.

From climate resilience and community cohesion to sustainable design, healthy lifestyles and the future of work, today’s challenges can’t be solved in silos. For conversations to flow, collaborations to spark, and meaningful solutions to emerge, awareness, trust and alignment must be built before ideas and communication plans are fully formed. Skipping this stage leads to missteps, false starts, and communication breakdowns that cost time, money and momentum.

I work with public, private and civil society leaders to remove barriers to collaboration and consensus on 21st century challenges.

Using the city/regional scale as both a practical systems lens and a bridge between global frameworks and local realities, I focus on the early, often-overlooked work that unlocks understanding, closes knowledge gaps and builds relationships - creating the conditions for collaborations that last.

Examples of where I help:

Consultancy

With over 15 years of cross-sector insights spanning environmental, social and economic health, I help established and emerging leaders remove the barriers that slow collaboration and uncover the opportunities that strengthen it - always with a focus on real-world connection and systems alignment.

Who I work with:

Skilled at navigating vertically (from global governance to grassroots) and horizontally (across sectors and disciplines), I work with senior leaders to surface hidden assumptions, integrate diverse perspectives, and connect ideas to action in ways that create lasting, practical impact.This includes:

How I work:

Drawing on systems/design/futures thinking, behavioural and cultural insights, and values-led communication, my approach develops skills and understanding in ways that are immersive, practical and immediately applicable.

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Project Support

Helping leaders and teams find common ground, uncover new possibilities, and turn complex challenges into co-ordinated action. From global health communication to local climate initiatives, these are some of my favourite examples of what becomes possible when collaborative thinking replaces siloes and segregation.

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Writing

My writing explores the same questions I help teams work through: how people think together, how change takes hold, and how complex topics become clear enough to act upon. Whether contributing to publications or writing independently, I aim to sensemake, reveal pathways for alignment, and support collaborative thinking that drives meaningful change.

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"Carra brought insight, thoughtfulness, and a deep sense of curiosity to the work we did together at the WHO on tobacco control. She approaches complex challenges with care and intellectual rigor, always seeking to understand the deeper dynamics at play. At the same time, she brings real joy and warmth to a team - Carra made a lasting impact on the work and on me personally."Dr Hebe Gouda, Project Officer, World Health Organization

"Carra is a driven, intelligent and curious colleague - when working with us at the Design Council, she helped to deliver a complex project with a range of stakeholders. She pushed participants to think deeper about the work they were aiming to deliver, and ultimately created a more meaningful process. This, in turn, led to longer-lasting outcomes."Emily Whyman, Senior Programme Manager, Design Council

"I would describe Carra as rigorously creative, in that she combines systems thinking and critical thinking with the spontaneity needed for new ideas. Not many people can do this. She questions everything and because she's also a terrific person, connects with people on many levels. It's an impressive combination of skills for change-making. Working with Carra definitely made me a better designer."Darren Evans, Strategic Designer, Agency Founder & Design Council Associate

“A special talent for looking at projects delivering solutions that satisfy the requirements from all stakeholder perspectives, are truly relevant and have undeniable integrity.”William Knight, former Show Director, 100% Design London

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Coaching & Capacity-Building

I help senior leaders and small teams navigate complexity, align priorities, and collaborate effectively across sectors. My coaching and learning programmes combine experiential methods with practical tools to strengthen the skills needed for cross-sector impact.Participants develop:

Across all my work, the goal is to connect research, policy, and practice - helping people see how their ideas can shape systems and social outcomes in ways that feel both authentic and actionable.

Signature frameworks and approaches:

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What people say

“Working with Carra is a fantastic opportunity that all businesses should be lucky to have. You need to know more than you think you know, and I would highly recommend that Carra be the person to bring the passion and creative solution to your business.”Studio Manager, international design studio (place-centric design services)

“We engaged with Carra when we, as a studio, felt we needed to really understand sustainability properly. Carra set out [...] a very simplified approach that has worked well for us ever since and as we have progressed in our development in this area. More education planned for the team this year which will help us focus even more on the details that help to improve design within these parameters. I highly recommend!!”Simon Clark, Co-Founder, Lumsden Design (place-centric design services)

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Writing

Carra Santos

Navigating perspectives to keep complex social and urban projects moving forward.

From climate resilience and community cohesion to food systems, health promotion and the future of work, today’s challenges can’t be solved in silos. For conversations to flow, collaborations to spark and meaningful solutions to emerge, awareness, trust and alignment must be built before ideas are fully formed. Skipping this stage leads to missteps, false starts, and communication breakdowns that cost time, resources and momentum.I work with organisations to align diverse stakeholders, uncover hidden opportunities, and translate insights into shared strategy, helping:

Using the city scale as both a practical systems lens, and a bridge between global frameworks and local realities, I focus on the often-overlooked early work that builds trust, closes knowledge gaps, and informs evidence-based strategy for collaborative action. This includes creating space to explore diverse perspectives, identify connections, uncovering untapped opportunities, anticipate barriers, and avoid missteps before moving forward.My approach is for you if:

I prepare public, private, and civil society leaders for smoother collaboration on 21st-century challenges - from climate resilience and community cohesion to food systems, health promotion, and the future of work.

From climate resilience and community cohesion to food systems, health promotion and the future of work, today’s challenges can’t be solved in silos. For conversations to flow, collaborations to spark and meaningful solutions to emerge, awareness, trust and alignment must be built before ideas are fully formed. Skipping this stage leads to missteps, false starts, and communication breakdowns that cost time, resources and momentum.I work with public, private and civil society leaders to enable smoother collaboration on 21st-century challenges.Using the city scale as both a practical systems lens and a bridge between global frameworks and local realities, I focus on the early, often-overlooked work that unlocks understanding, closes knowledge gaps and builds relationships - laying the foundation for evidence-based, cross-sector strategies that lead to lasting impact.

Using the city scale as both a practical systems lens, and a bridge between global frameworks and local realities, I focus on the often-overlooked early work that builds trust, closes knowledge gaps, and informs evidence-based strategy for collaborative action. This includes creating space to explore diverse perspectives, identify connections, uncovering untapped opportunities, anticipate barriers, and avoid missteps before moving forward.My approach is for you if:

Getting people from different backgrounds into the same room is easy. Getting them on the same page is the hard part - and that’s where even well-intentioned projects stall.From climate resilience and community cohesion to food systems, health promotion and the future of work, big challenges can’t be solved in silos. For conversations flow, collaborations to spark and meaningful solutions to emerge, awareness, trust and alignment must be built before ideas are fully formed. Skipping this stage often leads to missteps, false starts, and breakdowns in communication.Where I come in:
I help leaders and teams across the public sector, private sector and civil society develop cross-sector literacy, behavioural foresight and strategic clarity for collaborative change. Drawing on systems and design thinking, urban ethnography, social psychology and values-based communication, my approach helps stakeholders:

Whether a project is just starting, experiencing misalignment, or facing stalled progress, I support high-impact collaborations to start strong and stay on course.

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• Context

Engagement Strategy & Support

I work with universities, public sector bodies, innovation agencies and global consultancies to develop cross-sector engagement strategies, creating the pre-conditions for effective collaboration and evidence-informed decision-making.By testing assumptions, identifying overlaps and anticipating barriers early, I help ensure that communication, partnerships and projects begin from a shared understanding.This work prepares the ground for successful collaborations in areas such as:

Representative Projects:

Capacity-Building

Alongside leadership consultancy, I design original tools, methodologies, and CPD-accredited/non-accredited learning experiences that equip established and emerging leaders for collaboration on 21st century challenges. My creative origins ensure learning experiences aren’t just informative - they spark curiosity, shift perspectives, and enable participants to adopt leading practices for lasting impact.Recent examples include:

The Basics of Sustainable Futures CPD series for design, business, finance and technology academics, integrating a sustainable futures layer across curricula.
The Sustainability Spectrum A CPD learning series for creative services, demonstrating the full scope of sustainable futures beyond 'green', and their potential to drive environmental, social and economic innovation.
Design for Thriving Cities CPD series for architects, urban planners and designers, enhancing practice on circular economy, social value, inclusive design and nature restoration.
Doughnut Economics Workshop adaptation and facilitation translating Doughnut Economic principles into place-based, cross-sector learning and collaborative action.

Transdisciplinary frameworks for collaborative decision-making include:

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• Project-based learning

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WHO Tobacco Cessation Consortium
Strengthening public-private-civil society collaboration

Snapshot

Challenge

The WHO Tobacco Cessation Consortium unites public, private, and civil society partners - from ministries of health and NGOs to industry and digital health providers - around accelerating global tobacco cessation.The ongoing challenge for the Consortium is to enable cohesion across the different sectors while anchoring it within WHO’s 14th General Programme of Work (GPW14), ensuring strategic and policy relevance. This, in turn, avoids any potential fragmentation, duplication of efforts, relationship strain or loss of momentum that may arise along the way.

Approach

Acting as both cross-sector translator and strategist, I reviewed current developments before recommending enhanced guidance to ensure all members are clear on the Consortium’s mission, and guardrails to keep members aligned and moving forward together to fulfil it. In summary: strengthening the Consortium’s collaborative potential, and the application of their expert knowledge and resources to best effect, through achieving the following objectives:

Combining Design Thinking and Mission Mapping, this approach created a shared baseline for trust and alignment from different insights and motivations.

Outcome

The consultancy project produced a strategy review and set of recommendations, offering a clear, evidence-based pathway to define the Consortium’s first mission, anticipate challenges, and align cross-sector partners with GPW14 priorities.The review outlined next-step opportunities for participatory workshops to define the First Mission, a Theory of Change to map milestones and outcomes, and a Stakeholder Mapping exercise to identify key actors, their contributions, and their collaboration needs. It also recommended engaging members through mixed-methods research, applying values-based communication before consolidating insights in a final report and stakeholder communication.By providing this shared framework and clearer reference points, the review helped senior leaders at WHO support cross-sector Consortium members to get on the same page from the outset - clarifying roles, expectations, and priorities - so public-private-civil society partnerships start with confidence, alignment and clear purpose.

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Design Council / Essex County Council
Connecting young voices and values to climate communication

Snapshot

Challenge

Essex County Council and the Essex Climate Action Commission wanted to launch a Student-led Climate Ambassador Network, supported by the Design Council's Design, differently programme. But young people across the county had varying levels of awareness, motivation and climate anxiety - exacerbated by the cost-of-living crisis and conflicting social influences. Traditional science-led messaging was falling short, leaving the team searching for a strategy that would meaningfully engage students and inspire them to act.

Approach

Working with my Design Council colleague, I co-developed and facilitated The World We Will Create - a storytelling-led co-creation workshop grounded in futures, systems and design thinking.The session brought together 15-18-year-olds, their teachers and council members to imagine life in a thriving, climate-positive Essex in 2033, and journal how they would live, learn and work in a thriving future. Drawing inspiration from Doughnut Economics, the session concluded with students illustrating their visions as 'Doughnut Dreams', which were assembled into a 'Dream Spiral' as a shared roadmap to a climate-positive region.This process created a safe, imaginative space for dialogue, shifting the approach to communication from science-driven to local identity-led and values-based.

Outcome

The workshop surfaced ten hopeful themes - from Circular Communities and Clean Energy to Caring Communities and The New Role Models. These reflected students’ diverse values, identities, and lived experiences, revealing unexpected yet powerful pathways for climate action.Essex County Council gained:

Overall, the project demonstrated how storytelling and design-led facilitation can bridge gaps between technical strategy and community voice, creating space for fresh, youth-driven climate leadership.

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Design Council / London Borough of Hounslow
Aligning Net Zero with lived experience

Snapshot

Challenge

The Council’s Net Zero team set out to strengthen community spirit and tackle climate change in the London Borough of Hounslow, an area of extreme inequality. Early ideas focused on air quality, transport and public space, and their solution was to install a new parklet - a small seating area/green space usually in a former roadside parking space. But questions remained: were resources being directed to the right problems? Would residents use it?In addition, departments were set up to work in silos, limiting shared knowledge and alignment across policy, housing, environment and social services.

Approach

Working with my Design Council colleague, I guided the team through a design and futures-led process that combined field research with collaborative workshops.

Outcome

The process shifted the project from installing a parklet to designing a community hub and council presence at the heart of the Redwood Estate - a far more relevant intervention for building safety, trust and cohesion. Key results included:

This project demonstrated the power of starting with people’s everyday realities: the council entered with a clear idea, discovered it wasn’t the right solution, and developed a stronger, more community-driven brief to move forward.

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Centre for Sustainable Design @ UCA
Displacing fast fashion through brand-customer collaboration

Snapshot

Challenge

Fast fashion dominates the global clothing system, with such brands seemingly strategically disconnecting consumers from the lifecycle, value and production of their clothes. The challenge was to explore how sustainable fashion brands might work with their customers to restore that connection, enabling more sustainable behaviours and reducing fast fashion consumption.

Approach

I began by presenting my independent research paper All Sewn Up: Dismantling Fast Fashion Consumption as a Social Practice through Creative Empowerment and Consumer Collaboration at the Sustainable Innovation Conference by the Centre for Sustainable Design at the University for the Creative Arts.The paper used Social Practice Theory to evaluate the strategy of fast fashion brands to 'lock in' consumers to unsustainable consumption practices, and the potential to break their hold through restoring creative agency and enabling enterprise innovation.This led to my role as lead author for Chapter 17, Crafting Connections with Clothing: Values, Influence and Relationships, in Accelerating Sustainability in Fashion, Clothing and Textiles (Routledge, 2023). The chapter examined how to empower people to move from passive ‘consumers’ to active ‘participants’, using craft skills, social media, and collaborative approaches as methods to co-create value with sustainable fashion brands.I presented the chapter at the book launch and facilitated a roundtable discussion with industry professionals on a more sustainable future for fashion.

Outcome

The book's global reach and holistic approach brings together both academic and industry perspectives on actions to move towards a more sustainable fashion, clothing and textile sector.In collaboration with my co-authors, the chapter focus positions fashion enterprise innovation as a credible driver of citizen-led change, offering strategies for reconnecting people with materials, skills and meanings to enable long-term sustainable behaviours.This emphasis on social and cultural behaviours has helped secure people-centred approaches to sustainability in fashion within academic and industry discourse.

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WHO No Tobacco Unit / Tobacco-Free Initiative
Expanding narratives for tobacco prevention and cessation

Snapshot

Challenge

For nearly a century, the tobacco industry has embedded smoking into culture by shaping its meaning - aligning it with values like freedom, status, and tradition. By contrast, tobacco control messaging has leaned heavily on fear and health risks, which can limit resonance across diverse or desensitised populations. WHO asked for insight into how what fresh narratives might inform broader prevention and cessation communication.

Approach

I conducted novel research applying Social Practice Theory and Schwartz’s Theory of Universal Human Values to analyse tobacco communication, including WHO’s own pictorial health warnings. This naturally revealed both the dominance of health-focused messages, but also the underuse of values such as Hedonism, Achievement, and Tradition - frames long leveraged by the tobacco industry. I produced a suite of outputs:

Outcome

This work provided WHO with fresh perspective, showing how values-based and culturally-informed approaches could complement existing strategies. By reframing communication around deeper motivations, WHO gained practical opportunities to engage civil society more effectively, strengthen FCTC implementation (Articles 11 and 12), and position tobacco prevention/cessation messaging to counter industry narratives while respecting cultural differences.

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Independent Framework Development
Resolving tensions in academic-industry communication

Snapshot

Challenge

Conversations between sustainability advocates in academia and business leaders can sometimes collapse into tension and hostility. Even where interests overlap, misaligned language and negative framing (e.g., 'degrowth') can risk wasted opportunities, damaged relationships and stalled collaboration before conversations start. The challenge I set was to identify common ground before positions hardened.

Approach

I designed and led a grounded theory study that analysed academic and industry-facing publications through the lens of Schwartz’s Theory of Basic Human Values. This values-based approach uncovered what truly motivates/concerns business leaders and how certain sustainability concepts were being framed - occasionally in ways that alienated rather than invited dialogue.The research focused on 'degrowth' - a term chosen for its tendency to cause hostile reactions. However, my findings revealed that while 'degrowth' was rejected as a term, many degrowth-aligned practices were already being adopted under the banner of the 'future of work'. Notably, the concept of 'meaningful work' emerged as a powerful frame that resonated with both advocates and business leaders. This suggested a way to reposition the degrowth conversation from austerity and limitations to purpose, innovation, and human potential.

Outcome

The project tested an interdisciplinary framework for identifying overlapping values and uncovering new frames to begin difficult conversations more constructively. Specifically, it showed that:

These insights now offer academics and advocates practical ways to reframe discourse with industry, moving beyond any potential antagonism toward collaboration on shared sustainability values.

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“Extremely knowledgeable and passionate - these two qualities don’t always come together.”Founder, early-stage digital innovation company

What capacity-building looks like in practice: