Hello you.
I’m in love with brilliant ideas. I’m Hannah Lewis, founder of Behave London. I believe that brilliant ideas, backed by science, can change the world. Whether you’re a pension scheme helping your members save, or a marketing manager who wants copy that kicks competitors to the curb, I'm totally with you.
I set up Behave London to indulge my passion for problem solving using behavioural science.
There are two things I found accidentally in life - financial services, and behavioural science. A rogue temp job in my early twenties landed me working in the city, alongside economists and fund managers. Now, I'd been driving my parents mad for years with my endless questions. Well, not just my parents. So the fund managers and economists got the same treatment, as I asked "But WHY does that happen?" about, well, everything.
I didn't realise it at the time, but I was learning to translate. To take financial jargon and turn it into English. At some point in the early 2000's I became fascinated by consumer psychology and why people buy. Once I'd read all the popular books on behavioural economics and psychology, and eaten a heap of textbooks on how people make decisions, I was still thirsty for more. I found a small group of behavioural geeks via a meetup - and we'd talk about how we wanted to APPLY these theories in the real world, rather than keeping the secrets locked up in academic journals. I tried to innovate from the inside, but it was hard to get buy-in to those early projects.
In 2014, I couldn't ignore it anymore - I had a burning desire to USE what I'd learned. Frustrated at the lack of innovation in financial services, I quit the city to work on applying behavioural science to written communication, and promptly scored my first client...a financial powerhouse. In the early days I thought I'd be a writer using psychology, but it turns out that having worked with the financial sector for 20 years, I'm in a unique position to help solve some of the problems we've long been aware of. I'm constantly humbled by what we've managed to achieve in such a short space of time, and excited about the research we're doing and it's potential impact to improve people's lives.
Behavioural economics, or as I prefer to think of it, applied psychology, can be used to help almost any process which involves humans and how they interact with the world. It's the perfect set of tools for solving problems. For fixing things. For making things better.
I implore you - go find something to make better, and have a crack at it. It's fun.
HANNAH
PS I still maintain that if you want to learn what derivatives are, your best bet is to watch Eddie Murphy in Trading Places!
PPS I also run a monthly network for Women in Pensions
PPPS I won a Highly Commended for Role Model of The Year at Professional Pensions inaugural Women In Pensions awards in June 2018. Despite the Behave team voting me most like to Win A Hangover.
