Simon Kay

Simon Kay joined the INASP Board in December 2022.  

After completing a PhD in Cancer Research at the University of Nottingham, he joined the British Council, the UK’s agency for international cultural relations. He worked in Singapore, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Russia, Sudan, and Israel. The common theme in these assignments was building relations between the UK and the host country in education, science, the arts and English language. 

He joined Wellcome Trust in 2012 and led on health research capacity building in sub-Saharan Africa, India and SE Asia.   He worked with other major funders including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the African Academy of Sciences to build a new funding agency for Africa, now known as the Science for Africa Foundation.

He left Wellcome in 2021 and completed an MSc in Coaching and Behavioural Change in 2022.  For his research dissertation he explored career identity and career decision making in Kenyan Early Career Researchers, building on his work at Wellcome but exploring the more personal and individual side of research capacity building. He is now building a practice in coaching, team facilitation and consulting with a focus on researchers and staff in international development organisations and universities.  He has served on several Boards including the Malaria Consortium, Ardingly College and a number of research programmes in Kenya, South Africa and India.

Simon has many other interests and balances work with cycling, running, and swimming, classical guitar, and cooking.  He studied Russian language to a functional level and is currently learning Spanish.