New Priestley Centre appointment to drive innovation
The Priestley Centre for Climate Futures has appointed a new Deputy Director to spearhead innovation that addresses climate change.
Chelsea Boothroyd will join the Priestley Centre leadership team in late 2024.
In 2023 the Priestley Centre announced an expanded remit, taking its activities beyond research, to include innovation, knowledge exchange and collaboration on postgraduate education.
This new role will oversee the development and delivery of an ambitious innovation strategy that draws upon the world leading climate expertise from across the University of Leeds.
Important development
Director of the Priestley Centre, Professor Piers Forster, said: “This is a really exciting appointment for the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures.
“Chelsea brings a wealth of experience in innovation to the Priestley Centre that will help us foster an entrepreneurial mindset, getting us working more effectively with private sector organisations to drive impact.”
Developing partnerships
Chelsea joins the Priestley Centre from Nexus, where she has been Head of Strategic Partnerships and Fintech Lead.
She has extensive experience of creating successful collaboration opportunities with small businesses and large organisations. She also led the team that designed and delivered innovation programmes to entrepreneurs, guiding numerous, diverse start-ups on their journey from initial idea to product delivery .
With knowledge across Business Engagement and Enterprise and Nexus, the move provides a strong opportunity to marry together the University’s work on innovation and engagement.
Before joining the University, Chelsea worked at J.P. Morgan in various innovation strategy roles. She was part of the first FinTech team responsible for harnessing the potential of emerging technologies in finance.
Chelsea said: “I am excited to be joining the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures.
“Innovation has an important part to play in catalysing and accelerating the application of real-world climate actions and I’m looking forward to driving forward the Centre’s ambitious agenda”
Priestley Centre leadership
Chelsea will join the Director, Professor Piers Forster, the Head of the Priestley Centre, Dr Shona Smith, and Professor Suraje Dessai, Deputy Director, Policy, as part of the Priestley Centre leadership team.
Find out more about the new direction of the Priestley Centre in this blog post.