Lily Lin is CEO of Excellence First Enterprise Consultancy (EFEC) and Founder of CognateUK. With nearly two decades of UK–China partnership leadership, spanning the public sector, international education, and cross-ecosystem facilitation, her work has consistently focused on how complex systems, cultures, and disciplines can work together responsibly and effectively. She is also Founder of the EFEC UK–China Life Sciences Innovation Hub, and serves as Vice Chair of the Harlow College Board of Governors, Mentor on the Homerton College Changemaker Programme at the University of Cambridge, and Adviser to Cambridge Network on Shanghai partnerships.
At CognateUK, Lily provides overall strategic direction and vision. She founded CognateUK on a conviction shaped by long experience: that subject knowledge alone is no longer enough for the next generation of life sciences leaders. Students need scientific judgement, cross-cultural confidence, and AI literacy, developed deliberately, not accidentally. CognateUK is her answer to what responsible, evidence-led, future-facing talent development can look like when it is designed from the ground up rather than retrofitted into existing systems.