Lee Campbell

Hi, I'm Lee, a 24-year-old from Ireland, passionate about the intersection of technology, product and policy.

I'm currently a George Moore Scholar and MPA candidate at the University College London (UCL), Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. At IIPP, I'm studying a variety of topics, including digital technology policy, strategic design, systems thinking and the economics of innovation, learning from a faculty of world-leading figures such as Mariana Mazzucato, Rainer Kattel and Mike Bracken. Most recently, as part of the programme I have been consulting for the Chief Economist Unit in New Zealand Government’s Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment (MBIE), to research and explore intergenerational investment policy approaches to deliver systems change in transport and biodiversity.

I have a first-class honors degree in Computer Science from Trinity College Dublin, where for my dissertation, I designed a simulator to aid in the teaching of electoral systems. Most recently, I worked on Web Summit's website team, rapidly adapting the company's sites in response to the need to move the Web Summit's 70,000+ person events online due to Covid 19. I've also previously interned as a product manager on Microsoft's Office Modernization Experiences (OMEX) team.

In 2019/20, I was Chair of the Central Societies Committee (CSC), managing a 12 person committee and three permanent staff to oversee a €365,000+ budget and 127+ student societies across Trinity College Dublin. As part of this role, I led the organisation's digital transformation, the development of a multi-million euro student centre, and its response to the Covid-19 pandemic. I also represented the CSC's interests across multiple university committees of board, including the Capitations Committee, the Student Life Committee and the Covid-19 emergency working group.

Some highlights

UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose                             

Profile outling my current research interests as part of the MPA programme I'm undertaking at the University College London, Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose.

Electoral Simulator                             

Developed as part of my final year project: a simulator to aid in the teaching of electoral vote counting and constituency configuration. Utilises modern data visualisation techniques and technologies (such as D3.js) underpinned by pedagogical and human-computer interaction theory.

In numbers Web Summit website redesign

Over the course of 3 months at Web Summit in 2018, I had the amazing opportunity to work as part of the core team tasked with re-imagining the Web Summit website experience. Check out the story behind the design from one of my colleagues.


TEDxTrinityCollegeDublin                             

In 2017 I co-founded the TEDxTrinityCollegeDublin society. Over the course of the my 3 years with TEDx we grew to the largest 'young' society on campus and produced 25+ talks featuring internationally renowned speakers - some of which have been viewed over 500,000 times and featured by TED global.


Going digital: 43,500 plastic membership cards

43,500 plastic membership cards were being produced by TCD societies each year. As CSC Chair, I led the switch to digital cards to cut down on waste. This was an interesting challenge from a product point of view; getting a solution which both worked for our 128 different societies and didn’t introduce any barriers (installation of apps etc.) to students.

CSC 50th Anniversary                             

During my tenure as Chair of the CSC, I led a series of celebrations to mark to the 50th anniversary of the CSC and highlight the impact of societies in TCD over that time. As part of this we produced a video to tell the story of TCD societies through the lens of some of our alumni whose lives have been heavily influenced by their time involved with societies.

In the media