Dr Ana Attlee (A.C. Evely) is an internationally experienced researcher, systems thinker, and entrepreneur specialising in impact, complexity, and purpose-led enterprise.

She works at the intersection of research, business, and real-world change — helping people and institutions turn insight into action, without burnout or ethical compromise.

Academic and Research Leadership

Ana began her career in academia, lecturing from the age of 21 and later completing a PhD focused on public participation, knowledge exchange, and decision-making in complex social-ecological systems.

Her research has been published in peer-reviewed journals and funded by the UK Government’s Research Councils. She has worked closely with leading figures in sustainability and impact, including Mark Reed and Ioan Fazey, contributing to foundational work on research impact and knowledge exchange.

Since 2013, Ana has designed and delivered impact training for researchers, entrepreneurs, research managers, funders, NGOs, and government bodies, supporting institutions across the UK and internationally.

Her work helped shape one of the earliest formalised approaches to Research Impact training, later spun out into a commercial venture - Fast Track Impact.

From Research to Real-World Systems

Alongside her academic career, Ana is a serial founder and systems builder.

She is the founder and co-founder of multiple organisations spanning:

  • environmental enterprise and conservation

  • ethical consumer brands

  • property and housing systems (including emergency and social housing)

  • education and training

Most notably, she co-founded Seedball, a multi-award-winning environmental business now stocked widely across UK garden centres, and Project Maya, an initiative focused on creating permaculture-based nature reserves funded through enterprise rather than charity. Ana has already helped purchase and steward a Maya Reserve, making the model tangible rather than theoretical.

Across her ventures, she has led or contributed to hundreds of projects and over 200 property deals, consistently applying systems thinking to build income streams that support long-term social and ecological outcomes.

How Ana Trains

Ana’s training is known for being:

  • Intellectually rigorous but accessible

  • Grounded in real systems, not abstract theory

  • Honest about constraints, power, money, and trade-offs

  • Designed to increase confidence, clarity, and agency

She is particularly skilled at working with people who are:

  • highly capable but overwhelmed by complexity

  • values-driven yet blocked by institutional or financial realities

  • seeking impact without self-sacrifice

Current Training Areas

Ana now delivers training across four interconnected domains:

1. Applied Impact & Knowledge Exchange

For researchers, universities, funders, and policy-adjacent organisations
Focus:

  • designing credible impact pathways

  • influencing systems without losing integrity

  • moving from publication to real-world change

2. Impact Entrepreneurship

For founders and leaders building businesses for purpose
Focus:

  • turning values into viable business models

  • funding impact through enterprise

  • designing organisations that can last

3. Moral Ambition & Leadership

Inspired by systems thinking and moral ambition
Focus:

  • leading responsibly in a fractured world

  • holding power, money, and ethics together

  • building ambition that serves something larger than ego

4. Financial Independence for Impact

For people who want freedom in order to do meaningful work
Focus:

  • building scalable, passive income systems with low emotional cost

  • extracting income from systems you already understand

  • funding long-term missions without burnout

Why Train with Ana

Ana is not a motivational speaker, influencer, or consultant selling shortcuts.

She is a Systems Architect who has:

  • built ideas into institutions

  • turned research into training adopted globally

  • created financial freedom income from nothing and converted that income into land, housing, and ecological assets

  • lived the tension between ideals and reality — and learned to navigate it

Her work is for people and organisations who want serious impact, built on clarity, credibility, and courage.