Co-founders
Lightful leadership
Vinay Nair
CEO and Co-founder
Vinay, the co-founder and CEO of Lightful, believes those doing the greatest good deserve the best technology. As CEO, Vinay focuses on setting and communicating Lightful’s vision and strategy, partnering with clients and stakeholders, and leading an exceptional 50+ team of charity sector and technology professionals.
Vinay is an early pioneer in the organisational alignment of profit with purpose, and is a highly-regarded champion of the power of impact investing. He was previously a director at Social and Sustainable Capital (SASC), one of the largest social investors in the UK, and at Acumen Fund, a pioneering nonprofit venture fund working in south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. He has contributed to various thought leadership pieces in the early days of the sector, including ‘From Blueprint to Scale’, and the World Economic Forum’s ‘Mainstreaming Impact Investing Initiative.’
Vinay has also worked in public health and lived in Mozambique, leading an effort with Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative and the Ministry of Health that raised $170 million from The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. He has founded two social enterprises, one in out of hours primary care, and the other supporting a group of HIV-positive women to make and sell jam, thereby generating income and finding dignity through their work.
Vinay is driven by his goal to achieve positive impact across the global community, which has seen him live and work across four continents, in countries including India, Canada and Ireland. He is also actively involved in his local community in south London, and proudly coaches the U7s Balham Foxes football team, and helps to organise his annual street party.
Vinay started his career at the investment bank J.P. Morgan, where he spent almost a decade, latterly as one of the firm’s youngest Executive Directors. He holds a BA from Trinity College Dublin and an MPA from the London School of Economics. Vinay is a speaker and writer across social, print and broadcast, and during the recovery from the pandemic has been publicly advocating for a dynamic, digital-first and community-led approach to tackle vaccine hesitancy in minority communities. He has been a keynote TEDx speaker and works with graduate students as an industry advisor at the Saïd Business School, Oxford University. Vinay is married to Devika, a primary-care doctor, and is a doting father to their two young and sports-loving children.
Johnny Murnane
CCIO and Co-founder
Johnny is co-founder and Chief Commercial and Impact Officer at Lightful. He leads on both revenue and impact, overseeing Lightful’s annual doubling of revenue, and ensuring that every Lightful product and service delivers demonstrable impact to its clients. He is Lightful’s resident numbers geek and is driven to enable clients to achieve impact above and beyond what they expect.
Starting out as a management consultant, Johnny worked at analytical advisory Novantas where he advised global brands such as American Express, Santander, Star Alliance and TD Ameritrade. He was then recruited by the Chief Operations Officer of the Bank of Ireland to centralise the bank's operations, change management and technology functions, covering 3,000 staff and £800m of costs. Johnny then moved to the UK to run Bank of Ireland’s customer service teams, managing 250 staff and successfully reducing costs while improving customer satisfaction scores. He was then appointed Head of UK Strategy, covering all retail products and securing a UK banking licence.
Alongside his professional career , however, he has always been passionate about volunteering with charities, especially grassroots organisations. In university he tutored disadvantaged youth to help them pass state exams and keep them within the education system. While living in New York he was both a volunteer for, and treasurer of, Harlem Lions, a youth development organisation that uses soccer to encourage community development and physical health.
In 2012, he joined the charity sector full time, relocating to Sierra Leone as a consultant for the Craig Bellamy Foundation, where he helped launch the country’s first female football league on International Women’s Day 2012. He was then appointed Director of Development for the Westminster Drug Project, Greater London’s largest provider of treatment and recovery services for those with substance misuse issues. Mixing his commercial experience with innovation, Johnny led the charity to start numerous new services supporting the return to work of service users, and increased revenue by 25% in just two years.
Johnny holds a BA in Economics from Trinity College Dublin and a MSc from the Saïd Business School, Oxford University. He is a keen fitness enthusiast, a veteran of the New York and Sierra Leone marathons, a daily swimmer and loves an epic walk. As a peer to peer fundraiser he has raised over €100,000 for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Street Child of Sierra Leone and the Irish Kidney Foundation. He is also a keen astronomer and claims a clearer view of the night sky is his primary reason for spending much of the year in rural Spain.
Carlos Miranda
Chairman and Co-founder
Carlos Miranda, co-founder and Chairman of Lightful, is an entrepreneur passionate about business with purpose. Over the past decade, he has founded three businesses that focus on helping both for-profit and nonprofit organisations realise their social impact ambitions - whether that’s through providing strategic advice or enabling them to make better use of technology.
Carlos started his career as a major gifts fundraiser at the New York Public Library. He then moved to the UK, founding I.G. Advisors to bridge the gap between fundraisers, businesses and philanthropists. Now a leader in the sector for over a decade, I.G. is an award-winning advisor and thought partner to some of the world’s biggest organisations focused on social and environmental impact.
Through his work with I.G.’s clients, Carlos realised that most non-profits were not using either social media or technology as well as they could be. His next two businesses addressed that issue specifically: in 2013 he founded Social Misfits Media, a digital agency that helps organisations design and deliver dynamic social media strategies. In 2020, Social Misfits Media was fully acquired by freuds Communications, and the agency is now a member of The Brewery Group. Carlos remains involved with Social Misfits as a Non-Executive Director.
In 2014 he co-founded Lightful, the technology company that helps purpose-focused organisations by providing them with reliable, robust, and practical digital support, tools, and expertise. All three businesses - I.G. Advisors, Social Misfits Media and Lightful - are proud B Corps.
In addition to his current roles, Carlos serves on the Board of Futuro Media Group. Based in Harlem, New York, Futuro Media is an independent non-profit organisation committed to producing ethical journalism from the perspective of people of colour. He also holds an MSc from the London School of Economics and a BA from New York University. A native Spanish speaker and an avid fan of ramen, coffee and sci-fi, he’s also father to very rambunctious boy-girl twins. Unfortunately, he failed to convince his wife Alisha of the benefits of naming them Luke and Leia.