Steven Lacey Named EDI Changemaker of the Year at the MRS Excellence Awards
Our co-founder Steven Lacey was named Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Changemaker of the Year at the MRS Excellence Awards 2026 — recognition for a career built around getting seldom-heard people into the room where research and policy actually get made.
The award, initiated and sponsored by Truth and judged by a panel chaired by Dr Mark Thorpe, recognises individuals across the research, insight and data analytics sector who have led meaningful action on equality, diversity and inclusion — either inside their own organisations or in the wider communities they work with. Steven was shortlisted alongside two other finalists, Charlotte Jones of RNIB and James Lewis of The Good Side, with Rachel Ayeh-Datey of The Mix Global named one to watch.
Warm congratulations to Charlotte, James and Rachel as well. Charlotte's work embedding accessibility into RNIB's research from the ground up, James's efforts building ED&I into The Good Side's culture and into the ethics of insight filmmaking, and Rachel's work platforming under-heard communities and shaping more empathetic commercial research are each doing exactly the kind of work this award exists to recognise. This was never a competition in any real sense — everyone shortlisted is pulling in the same direction, and the sector is stronger for having all of them in it.
Steven founded The Outsiders specifically to do better research with the people mainstream studies tend to miss — working class, disabled and neurodiverse audiences among them, shaped by his own experience of being someone brands and government weren't used to trying to understand. That founding purpose has run through everything since: research into marginalised groups, policy advice, high-profile EDI projects, training programmes and thought leadership that the judges credited with genuinely shifting both policy and practice across the sector.
The judging panel singled out the sustained nature of his contribution — not a single campaign or initiative, but a career-long commitment to advocacy, education and building institutions, like The Outsiders itself and Resilience & Reconstruction, that put that commitment into lasting practice.
Thank you to everyone who has taken part in, supported and argued with that work along the way.
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