Carra Santos
Navigating perspectives to keep complex social and urban projects moving forward.
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 well-intentioned plans can stall.From climate resilience and community cohesion to food security and the future of work, big challenges can’t be solved in silos. For conversations to flow and collaborations to spark, awareness, trust and alignment need to be built before ideas fully form or solutions are proposed. Skipping this stage leads to missteps, false starts and breakdowns in communication - yet it’s often overlooked.That’s where I come in. As a cross-sector communication and collaboration specialist, I design and strengthen programmes, projects and learning resources that help senior leaders in the public sector, community groups, and place-shaping design businesses consider diverse perspectives early in the process - so projects with great changemaking potential start off strong and stay on course.
Context
I’ve worked at the intersection of systems thinking, innovation and design for over 15 years, starting with ideation and concept development to promote sustainable behaviours.In a consumption-driven, trend-focused market, I intuitively championed good food, health, nature, creativity and community - unifying work that led to internationally acclaimed product innovation and prescient concepts for world-class events that inspired industry developments worldwide.In 2021, I grounded this intuition with an interdisciplinary MSc Sustainable Development in Practice (distinction). Since then, I’ve advised WHO on public-private-civil society collaboration on tobacco control, enabled UK councils to co-create climate strategies with communities, shown how brand-customer collaboration can help displace fast fashion, and much more.This breadth has sharpened my ability to navigate complex systems and align diverse stakeholders. Combined with ongoing ethnographic research into what inspires - and what inhibits - positive change in everyday behaviours, it grounds strategies in the trust, relationships and practical tools needed to make change happen with people, not to them.
How I Help
Programme & Project Support
Opportunities often disappear when stakeholders talk past each other, each bringing their own pace, expectations and definitions of success. Misunderstandings waste resources, stall progress and erode trust.These gaps often arise because:
Complex issues aren’t communicated clearly or in ways that resonate with real-world stakeholders.
Ideology or theory doesn’t translate into practice.
Ideas are imposed on the people they affect, rather than co-developed with their critical insights.
Purpose-led businesses and public sector partners often operate at different speeds, use different terminologies, and start from different motivations and knowledge bases.
Drawing on systems and design thinking, social psychology and values-based communication, I work upstream to prevent this, bridging the public sector, community groups, and place-shaping design businesses with cross-sector insights that increase mutual understanding, communication and momentum.I’m usually introduced at one of three points in a programme or project's development:
Starting Point
When the challenge is still being defined and the team not yet formed. This is the best time to gain fresh perspective, surface hidden dynamics, align expectations, and set a clear direction before energy and resources are invested.
Checkpoint
When there's a sense of misalignment or uncertainty, so assumptions need testing before the project goes too far. This is the moment to pause, check alignment, strengthen weak spots, and make adjustments while there’s still flexibility.
Crisis Point
When cracks are already visible, and conversations and progress have stalled. Here, the focus is on diagnosing root causes - understanding resistance, restoring trust, and regaining momentum before reputations, relationships or outcomes are affected.
Learning & Development
I design learning experiences and CPD resources that build the shared skills, confidence and understanding needed for collaboration on complex projects.My strength is connecting people, issues and ideas in ways that make theory practical, relevant and actionable. Recent examples include:
The Basics of Sustainable Futures A CPD learning series for design, business, finance and technology academics, applying a sustainable futures lens to their subject specialisms to support curriculum development.
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 A CPD workshop series for architects, urban planners and interiors designers, enhancing practice on Circular Economy, Social Value, Inclusive Design and Reinstating Nature.
Doughnut Economics Workshop adaptation and facilitation translating Doughnut Economic principles into place-based, cross-sector learning and collaborative action.
I’ve also developed transdisciplinary frameworks - conceived during my MSc and commended by my professors - which have since become practical tools I teach and apply with clients across sectors to gain strategic consensus:
The Perspective Shift Approach
A method for identifying constructive, evidence-based starting points for difficult conversations - around climate, economics, public health, or other complex issues - by temporarily setting aside your own perspective, exploring alternatives, and uncovering overlapping values and concerns. This reveals common ground on which conversations can move forward.
The Bridge to Belonging Method
A place-based evaluation approach that builds consensus between urban planning professionals, purpose-led businesses and communities. Linking social and environmental health, establishing shared understanding and setting research priorities, it creates ripple-effect strategies at a hyperlocal scale - particularly in areas of urban inequality and deprivation.
Representative Projects
My speciality is building connections between people, sectors, topics and lived realities, and uncovering common ground for 'top-down-bottom-up' communication. Here are a few of my favourite examples:
WHO Tobacco Cessation Consortium
Strengthening public-private-civil society collaboration
By compiling a review and recommendations report using behavioural foresight and design research methods, I strengthened public-private-civil society collaboration and engagement strategy for the WHO Tobacco Cessation Consortium, which seeks to reach 5 million people globally with health innovations.
Design Council / Essex County Council
Connecting young voices and values to climate communication
Designing and facilitating a storytelling-led, futures-thinking workshop, I helped students, teachers and council staff imagine a climate-positive Essex in 2033. The process surfaced ten hopeful, youth-driven, values-led themes to inform Essex’s climate communication and youth ambassador programme.
Design Council / London Borough of Hounslow
Aligning Net Zero with lived experience
Through design- and futures-led facilitation, I helped council departments connect across silos and align Net Zero goals with the realities of residents in areas of urban deprivation. The process reframed Hounslow’s climate strategy around equity, care and social-environmental co-benefits, creating a stronger foundation for long-term, community-driven action.
Centre for Sustainable Design @UCA
Displacing fast fashion through brand-customer collaboration
I positioned fashion enterprise innovation as an antidote to fast fashion consumption - presenting people-centred strategies for brand/customer collaboration to academic and industry audiences, and serving as lead author of Chapter 17 in Accelerating Sustainability in Fashion, Clothing and Textiles (Routledge).
WHO No Tobacco Unit / Tobacco-Free Initiative
Expanding narratives for tobacco prevention and cessation
I initiated and produced novel research exploring culture-specific motivations as an opportunity to expand tobacco abstention and cessation messaging. This revealed fresh direction and practical tools for global policymakers and practitioners to engage with local populations, supporting WHO FCTC Articles 11 and 12.
Independent Research Framework Development
Resolving tensions in academic-industry communication
I designed and tested a research framework to find positive starting points for calm discussion on a topic widely proven to cause tension and hostility - in the test case, between academic advocates and UK finance/technology business leaders. This revealed overlapping values and clear frames on which to test more effective communication.
What people say
"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, Director, Material Matters, formerly 100% Design
“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
Let’s talk
If your programmes or projects require careful navigation of cross-sector perspectives, let’s talk about how I can help you move forward through resources, strategy and skills.Email me or connect on LinkedIn, or use the form below to arrange a call.
Carra is UK-based and works internationally.
© Carra Santos. All rights reserved.
WHO Tobacco Cessation Consortium
Strengthening public-private-civil society collaboration
Snapshot
Client: World Health Organization (Geneva)
My Role: WHO Tobacco Cessation Consortium strategy development
Focus Area: Public–private–civil society collaboration, health communication
Outcome: Strategy review and recommendations to position the Consortium as a cohesive, sustainable and attractive network for scaling tobacco cessation
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:
Define the Consortium’s First Mission.
Strengthen the Consortium’s case and collaborative potential to fulfil the First Mission.
Inform Effective Stakeholder Communication surrounding the First Mission.
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.
Design Council / Essex County Council
Connecting young voices and values to climate communication
Snapshot
Client: Design Council & Essex County Council (UK)
My Role: Design, differently Programme Coaching, Workshop Design/Facilitation & Report
Focus Area: Climate strategy, youth engagement, futures thinking
Outcome: Ten co-created, values-led themes supporting Essex’s climate communication and youth ambassador programme
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:
A strategic narrative and engagement framework for its youth climate ambassadors.
A replicable workshop format to extend participation across the county’s schools.
Stronger trust and connection between young people and their local council.
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.
Design Council / London Borough of Hounslow
Aligning Net Zero with lived experience
Snapshot
Client: Design Council & London Borough of Hounslow (UK)
My Role: Design, differently Programme Coaching, Workshop Design/Facilitation & Report
Focus Area: Interdepartmental collaboration, Net Zero strategy, equity
Outcome: Climate strategy reframed around equity, care, and co-benefits, with a new community hub brief
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.
Discovery: A ward walk with multiple council departments highlighted both community assets (centres, artwork, green spaces) and significant barriers (unsafe parks, poor crossings, unhealthy retail, inequality between neighbouring streets). Each department could clearly see the issues linked to their remit. Importantly, previous investments such as gym equipment and cycle storage were going unused - raising questions about the parklet, the deeper needs, and indicating the importance of a combined social and environmental response.
Workshops: Building on these new insights into inequality, we introduced my Bridge to Belonging evaluation tool. Departments mapped resident needs, from basic safety and shelter through to community and education. This process pinpointed the Redwood Estate as a critical area where unmet basic needs and fear were preventing participation in community life.
Design Research: Further investigation revealed financial insecurity, reliance on sibling care, limited access to green space, and distrust of the council. The parklet idea was set aside in favour of deeper engagement with residents - including through trusted intermediaries - to ensure basic needs were met and future interventions would be relevant and used.
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:
A reframed strategy rooted in equity, care and co-benefits, aligned with lived experience.
Stronger interdepartmental collaboration and shared accountability across council teams.
A replicable model for design-led policy making, where initial assumptions are tested, challenged and reshaped into evidence-based solutions.
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.
Centre for Sustainable Design @ UCA
Displacing fast fashion through brand-customer collaboration
Snapshot
Client: Centre for Sustainable Design (UK)
My Role: Research Paper, Presentation, Book Chapter and Roundtable Discussion
Focus Area: Sustainable fashion, brand–customer collaboration
Outcome: People-centred strategies for a more sustainable future for the fashion industry
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.
WHO No Tobacco Unit / Tobacco-Free Initiative
Expanding narratives for tobacco prevention and cessation
Snapshot
Client: World Health Organization (Geneva)
My Role: Opportunity Analysis & Presentation
Focus Area: Tobacco prevention and cessation, behavioural insights, civil society engagement
Outcome: Evidence-based recommendations for values-driven, culturally tailored messaging supporting WHO FCTC Articles 11 and 12
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:
Research and data analysis to identify the untapped values to inform policy guidance within the 10th WHO GTCR.
A presentation highlighting creative opportunities for practitioners to expand messaging from predominantly health-based to include social and cultural meanings through citizen engagement.
A discussion article exploring the potential for a standardised yet adaptable global framework for WHO regions to develop culture-specific cessation messaging at a country/city level.
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.
Independent Framework Development
Resolving tensions in academic-industry communication
Snapshot
Client: Independent Project (UK)
My Role: Research Paper & Presentation
Focus Area: Academic–industry communication, UK finance and technology sectors
Outcome: New framework and frames to support calmer, more constructive dialogue on sustainability challenges
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:
'Meaningful work' provides a neutral, motivating entry point into degrowth dialogue with UK finance/tech leaders.
Reframing sustainability in terms of stimulation, innovation, and collaboration aligns with business values while advancing degrowth-aligned goals.
Communication strategy matters: 'one-size-fits-all' advocacy can backfire, while context-led and value-sensitive frames open space for dialogue.
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.
Browse inspiration and resources on Substack
Explore my growing library of articles, tools and resources designed to spark fresh thinking for social and urban innovation.
The Perspective Shift Approach: Finding common ground in difficult conversations.
The Bridge to Belonging Method: Building consensus between planners, businesses and communities in areas of urban inequality.
“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:
Reframing challenges at the systems level for greater effectiveness
Bridging perspectives across sectors and scales to enable lasting collaboration
Mapping dynamics to uncover shared values and narratives that strengthen communication
What project support looks like in practice:
Auditing progress and introducing methods that close research gaps and aid decision-making.
One-to-one consultancy and document review for discreet guidance when urgent clarity is required.
Ongoing project coaching supported with clear, design-led communication that inspires confidence among audiences and decision-makers.
What capacity-building looks like in practice:
Creative workshops that sense-make, spark new ideas and reframe challenges to strengthen direction.
Learning resources and CPD modules that close knowledge gaps, connect disciplines and define next steps.
Self-guided exercises with scheduled check-ins for reflection, discussion and review.