Phil Hesketh

Founder | Consent Kit

Best dad jokes from a non-dad
phil hesketh headshot - man in blue shirt standing against a dark background

Phil (he/him) has worked in Design and Research for around 15 years—initially in the private sector, but recently in local government and health. He has gradually zoomed out over his career, initially closely focused on UI and ending up more holistically at strategy and operations.

In 2016, Phil retrained at Hyper Island where he wrote a thesis for his MA on design and research ethics: Being Human in Human Centred Design. 

One of his big takeaways was that informed consent is a huge missed opportunity—the experience of it was pretty bad everywhere he looked, both for participants and researchers. So, after GDPR dropped in 2018 and organizations started freaking out, Phil saw his fulcrum and started actively working to make the experience better. In 2019, Phil co-founded Consent Kit with Ben Aldred, and he's been helping Research Ops folks get their heads around scaling, democratizing and operationalizing data governance ever since.

Phil is weirdly fascinated by process and tacit knowledge, likes being outside (on big mountains in particular!), and is father to two cats: Shackleton and “Lady” Oates (it’s a long story) in Manchester, England. 

Currently listening to:
on their summer reading list:
Surveys That Work by Caroline Jarrett