The team.
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Zak Marks
Co-Founder & CEO
Zak, who has severe allergies to nuts, is a design graduate with multi-faceted creative experience including product marketing & brand building.
He originally came up with the idea of an Anaphylaxis Kitt whilst studying design at university.
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James Cohen
Co-Founder & COO
James is a commercial operations and financial strategist with a keen eye for detail, and a passion for making scalable, positive impact.
He’s worked across M&A, investment, consulting and sales at a high-growth EdTech start-up before co-founding Kitt.
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Simon Hanassab
Chief Technology Officer
Inspired by problem-solving, Simon has previous experience as a product manager for a large multinational corporation.
He is an author of several publications in AI for healthcare and is pursuing a PhD at Imperial College London.
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Jonny Byre
Head of Growth
Jonny is an ambitious and experienced growth specialist, having previously worked in enterprise partnerships across high-growth tech scale-ups.
Driven by making a real difference, he helps support and engage with schools nationwide.
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Olivia Sutton
Customer Success Executive
Olivia has a rich background with experience in healthcare, education and customer services.
Joining the Kitt team at the start of 2024, she is a key point of contact for the hundreds of schools with Anaphylaxis Kitts across the UK.
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Lara Melchiorre
Responsible Person (RP)
Lara is the CEO of Rosa Quality Consulting, specialising in quality assurance and medical compliance.
Through her guidance and support, we were granted our WDA(H) licence by the MHRA.
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Felix Jackson
Medical Director
Felix is a trained UK doctor, and the founder of medDigital.
He is a key part of Kitt Medical’s compliance team, supporting us in regulatory affairs and marketing communications.
Our advisors.
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Adam Fox
Clinical Advisor
Professor of Paediatric AllergyAdam (MA(Hons) Cantab., MSc, BS, DCH, FRCPCH, FHEAm Dip. Allergy.) is a Professor of Paediatric Allergy at St Thomas' Hospital & King’s College London and the ex-president of the BSACI.
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Jon Needham
Education Advisor
Director of Safeguarding at Oasis MATJon is an expert in education, working as the director of safeguarding for one of the UK’s largest multi-academy trusts with 52 academies across the country.
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Cherie White
Commerical Advisor
CEO of Think For The FutureCherie was awarded Forbes 30 Under 30 for Social Impact 2022 as her company Think For The Future provides behavior and learning support to 7,000 young people in schools across the UK.
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Jamie Ezekiel
Commercial Advisor
Co-founder of HelloFaceJamie has over 20 years of experience in leading sales across a wide range of industries including publishing, software and medical devices.
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Alex Margolin
Business Mentor
Director at Sioma InsuranceAlex is the founder of an award winning Insurance Broker (Sioma) and Chairman at Made With Hope, a small UK charity that helps disadvantaged children in rural Tanzania access education
*Our advisors and partners are not board members, equity holders or investors - they are experts with goals aligned to ours who provide advice, support, and resources where appropriate to their area of expertise.
A severe and often sudden allergic reaction is called anaphylaxis, which can be life-threatening within minutes. Administration of adrenaline can be lifesaving.
Anyone can develop an allergy to anything at any time in their lives… 20% of anaphylaxis in UK schools occurs in children who didn’t know they had allergies.
With ‘avoidable’ anaphylaxis deaths appearing in the news too regularly, it’s clear there’s a lack of awareness and preparedness for allergic conditions.
On average there are 2 children with an allergy in every classroom.
After a young student named Karanbir Cheema was tragically killed by a severe allergic reaction at his school in 2017, legislation in the UK changed - allowing schools to purchase spare adrenaline pens which can be used on anyone in an emergency.
But schools often struggle to purchase, keep up-to-date, and store adrenaline pens correctly, as well as struggling to access adequate training. And studies have found that almost half of those with allergies don’t carry their own adrenaline pens, as they’re either forgotten or out of date.
During his final year at university in 2020, our founder Zak - who lives with a severe nut allergy - decided to make something that could store, monitor, and provide training for emergency anaphylaxis medication in public places. Something just like a defibrillator, but for allergies.
Zak was joined by his co-founder James in 2021, and together they developed the idea through a pilot phase with a handful of schools. They then raised funding and partnered with industry professionals to build towards an official launch.
At the start of 2023, we launched our now multi-award-winning Anaphylaxis Kitt service.
Since then, we've installed 600+ Kitts in over 500 UK schools & businesses and trained more than 12,000 staff members.
But for us, this is only the beginning. In the future, our goal is to become every defibrillator’s next-door-neighbour.
Linked sources for statistics and studies used: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
Our multi award winning Kitt service:
A wall-mounted Anaphylaxis Kitt (just like a defibrillator, but for allergies).
Annual adrenaline pen supply, automatically restocked before expiry or when used.
Unlimited access to CPD-accredited online training course (30 minutes of videos & quiz questions).
Secure login to our online Kitt Portal for incident reporting, medication management, and more.