Jo Bacon Email & Phone Number

I am a highly motivated and results-driven leader and social and behavioural science professional. I am expert in supporting public policy organisations to design and deliver robust and impactful social and behavioural science, in finding new opportunities for behavioural approaches and in applying the results to improve policy and delivery.With over 17 years’ successful track record of building, developing and managing diverse teams to deliver innovative, evidence-based solutions in public policy, I am a passionate champion for the role of social and behavioural evidence and insight. I have a strong focus on delivery, with a proven record of successful strategic planning, programme and project management, persuasive communication and strong networking and influencing skills.A leading expert in transport behaviour and people-centred research and analysis, I am proud to have founded and to now lead the UK Department for Transport’s (DfT) Behavioural Science team, developing and leading an expanding portfolio of behavioural science research and analysis that supports key areas of national transport policy, including transport decarbonisation, new and emerging transport technologies and crisis response. During my six years as Head of Social and Behavioural Research at DfT I led a multi-disciplinary team delivering cross-cutting strategic research as well as policy-specific research, and delivered a step-change in the scale and influence of people-centred approaches in transport policy. I rose to the challenge of the pandemic by stepping up at pace an urgent large-scale multi-method social and behavioural science research programme that provided vital behavioural evidence and insight and supported government decision-making throughout the pandemic. I enjoy providing visible and insightful leadership to motivate and inspire multi-disciplinary teams to create new approaches to policy and delivery challenges. As well as new behavioural science approaches, I pioneered social and distributional impact analysis in appraisal, longitudinal and deliberative research methods and ethics in government social research. A champion of diversity and inclusion, I lead the DfT Government Social Research profession’s diversity and inclusion programme to find ways of increasing diversity in the profession.