Octavia is currently Interim Lead at the Ada Lovelace Institute, covering Director Carly Kind’s maternity leave. In her role as an Associate Director she has an organisation-wide remit to connect project planning and strategy to external outputs, impact and evaluation, ensuring that the Institute fulfils its commitment to make data and AI work for people and society.

Before joining Ada, Octavia worked in the creative and cultural industries as a gallerist and artist studio manager, in publishing as a commissioning editor, and in the technology sector as a product manager. Most recently, she worked in higher education, leading on strategic content and impact at postgraduate UK art and design university the Royal College of Art .

Octavia has an MA in Digital Media Culture, with a subject specialism in cultural studies of tech workers. She is an advisory board member of the AHRC-funded project Patterns in practice: cultures of data mining in science, education and the arts at the University of Sheffield.