Team | Fika. Emotional Fitness

We’re on a mission to mainstream Emotional Fitness.

Everyone in the Fika team is driven by our mission, believing in the importance of the change we’re bringing to the world.

Our PhD research and psychology leads are responsible for our evidence-based foundation. This enables continuous product innovation, built on decades of scientific evidence, combined with our own proprietary research programme. And all underpinned by data science and AI to enhance the human experience.

Nick Bennett

Co-Founder

Nick co-founded Fika to help solve the global problem of poor emotional health. With a background in fundraising, team building and product leadership in consumer and B2B, you’ll either find him on his mountain, screaming the Fika mission to the sky or in his boots, making pots of coffee for the team.

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Gareth Fryer

Co-Founder

Gareth co-founded Fika determined to change the way the world thinks and talks about emotional health. With a background in human-centred service design and leadership, he’s fascinated by psychology and brings his experience of developing the people, products and businesses of global organisations to Fika.

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Meet the Team Leads

Alex Swaab

Head of Partnerships

Alex brings extensive experience in organisational behaviour and management to Fika. Previously he set up and grew a human development business, becoming fascinated by what people can achieve when in the right mindset. He believes mainstreaming Emotional Fitness is the perfect way to maximise human potential.

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Sean Valentine

Head of Product

Sean joined Fika to design a product fit for purpose, to mainstream Emotional Fitness. And his extensive experience with global technology and sports brands has armed him with the skills he needs to fulfil his part in this mission. After hours you'll find him on court, trying to keep up with his professional squash playing dad.

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Jack Lawrence-Jones

Head of Technology

Jack is a full stack web and mobile developer. He originally studied Computer Science and Psychology, the perfect combo for enabling Fika’s mission to mainstream Emotional Fitness. When not at his computer, Jack can be spotted on stages around England, pursuing his other great passion as an opera singer.

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Fran Longstaff (PhD)

Head of Psychology

Fran has an academic and applied background in sport and exercise psychology. She brings 13 years’ experience of helping others get emotionally fit to Fika, where she’s excited to help mainstream Emotional Fitness. Fran’s also addicted to long-distance running and is secretly a budding singer-songwriter.

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Zoe Dimov (PhD)

Head of Research

Zoe is an expert in human-centred design research with a PhD in Human-Computer Interaction and 10 years’ experience working within government, public and private sectors. Her mission at Fika is to gather and transform evidence into an exceptional user experience. Her alter ego is a talented mixed martial artist who loves reggae.

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Kevin Pond

Head of Content

Kev brings over 20 years' experience in content creation and copywriting to Fika. He's also 'The Voice' of our Emotional Fitness packs as well as a yoga teacher and mindfulness addict on the side. With Fika, he’s realising a lifelong dream to do work that he loves, with people he loves, that really helps people.

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Fika Corporate Advisory Committee:

Ben Chamberlain (PhD)

Ben is a data scientist leader who specialises in customer profiling, machine learning and AI. He’s led the data science team at ASOS on the full spectrum of data science projects for e-commerce. He has over ten years’ industrial experience applying machine learning to business problems using big data and distributed algorithms.

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Brian Southward

Brian is an experienced CFO and Non-Exec Director and has spent the last 10 years helping to transform SMEs with high growth and disruptive business models. Brian has a TMT background and is currently working in the Intelligent Automation space.

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Toby Raincock

Toby is CEO at Shard Capital, an independent financial services company. Previously he held a number of senior management roles within the Financial Services industry, most recently as Head of CASS at Barclays Capital and Barclays Wealth. He’s also a member of the GB Rifle Team, competing successfully all over the world.

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Nick Finegold

Nick entered the financial services industry in 1987, joining Deutsche Bank in 1995 to set up their Equity Division. In 2000 he set up Execution Limited which was successfully sold in 2012. He then founded Curation Corp, a business that studies the world’s most disruptive trends and the risks and opportunities they create.

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Bobby Sethi

Bobby is Cofounder & Partner at ES Ventures, a global venture capital firm focused on seeding amazing entrepreneurs. He’s worked with great brands such as Citi, AmEx, Dr Pepper, NY Times and Dow Jones and brings a wealth of experience in business growth and creative thinking for digital platforms.

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Rachel Armstrong

Rachel is Studio Partner for Globant. She has a unique ability to unearth customer insights that transform strategic thinking and rapidly develop breakthrough solutions for global clients. Rachel brings nearly 20 years of knowledge, expertise and award-winning experience in digital and UX.

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