26. Dr Rachel Carey (1 of 2), Chief Scientist at Zinc VC

Send us a text

Dr Rachel Carey is this episode’s guest - and this is the first of two podcasts with Rachel, which were previously recorded back in 2021 - hosted by Stuart King and Dr Tiago Moutela.

This fascinating conversation covers Rachels career; from academia into the world of applied behavioral science in the field of science-based, mission-driven, tech start-ups.

We explore how Rachel utilizes behavioural science frameworks in her work, the importance of behavioural science at the beginning of the start-up journey, and how we can promote the adoption of mission-driven behavioural science in public health.


Dr Rachel Carey is a behavioral scientist with a background in health psychology. Following the competition of her PHD at the National University of Ireland in Gallway, Rachel took up a post at UCL in 2014 working with Profession Susan Michie on the theories and techniques of beahviour change project.

In 2016, Rachel joined BUPA, as a senior behavior change research advisor where she led a collaborative programme of work with UCL.


Over the past 5 years as Zinc VC's Chief Scientist, Rachel has built an ever-growing inter-disciplinary research & development team who work with start-ups founders to create new, scalable and impact driven innovations.

Rachel describes the way she uses behavior change frameworks including COM-B, the behavior change wheel, and the behavior change techniques taxonomy, as an objective and structured way to challenge assumptions, and make the product development process more efficient.

She advocates for the need to incentivise and support the involvement of behavioral science in a start-up environment for big impact, but also the cross fertilization, learning and networking of applied behavioral scientists for all sectors.