In this Spotlight, we meet Angela Bradbury, a Sheffield-based AI specialist and core team member at Trellis. Trellis is a new AI tool that’s helping teachers spend less time on paperwork and more time supporting students with additional support needs. With roots in the Scottish Government’s CivTech innovation programme, Trellis is a tech-for-good company committed to using AI to make a tangible difference in people’s lives. It does so however, with an extremely cautionary approach from Angela, who has followed the rise of AI for almost a decade and believes, “the world would be a better place if it hadn’t been developed.”
Building tech for good
Trellis (previously HelpFirst) was founded by Andy Bell, a product designer and “serial entrepreneur” with a background in social impact startups, including SIDE Labs. The company’s remote team of five includes members based in London, Glasgow, and Spain. Angela, who joined as the second employee, is Sheffield-based, having moved back to her home city in 2021, after more than a decade in London.
She was introduced to Andy by a mutual friend who recognised the startup needed some of the things Angela was good at, including strategy and organisational effectiveness. It was also clear that the duo had a shared passion for using tech to improve the lives of vulnerable people.
“Andy’s motivation stems from a very tragic personal loss, resulting from a lack of priorisation in hospital,” Angela explains. “He doesn’t want to see public services go through a slow decline due to lack of funding, where services worsen and these tragedies become more common. So he’s very motivated by using technology to try and combat that change.”
She adds, “I’ve bounced around various tech and public services environments. This has ranged from working with the criminal justice system, to an AI safety charity, and management consulting for the NHS. My background is varied, but it’s generally all about trying to make things better.”
Another key member of the team is machine learning engineer Harriet, who previously worked for a decade as a caseworker in different fields including learning disability and caring for the elderly.
“Harriet is incredible,” Angela emphasises. “She decided she wanted to use the skills she’d built over a decade in the care sector, and retrain in tech. She came to us via an apprenticeship and has been with us ever since. I’ve got so much respect for her.”
Trellis: making time for what matters
Trellis found its feet through the CivTech innovation programme, an initiative by the Scottish Government that connects public bodies with innovators to solve social challenges. Angela describes it as: “genuinely levelling the playing field for tech innovators. You can literally be an academic scientist operating solo, or a startup like us – you don’t have to be a big established company that’s been through government procurement before.”
Through CivTech, the Trellis team developed an AI system for Citizens Advice Scotland that prioritises vulnerable citizens – a project that Angela says has “massively improved safeguarding.” Building on that success, the team turned their attention to a new challenge and developed an AI-driven tool designed to help teachers manage their administrative workloads.
Now preparing for a pilot across Clackmannanshire, Falkirk, and Dumfries and Galloway, Trellis assists teachers with an intensely time-consuming task – writing up documentation after meetings with parents and students who have additional support needs.
By automatically transcribing discussions and generating the first draft of a child’s plan within minutes, Trellis can save teachers hours of administrative work. It creates a clear, accurate record for parents, carers and the student themselves, improving communication and accountability.
“The document will only be as good as the meeting,” explains Angela, “but the hope is that when a teacher isn’t having to take notes, they can do a better job of chairing the meeting, and therefore the overall plan that comes out of it will be better, leading to better outcomes for the child at the heart of it.”
Taking feedback from learners, parents and carers as well as teachers and government stakeholders during the product development phase, Angela and the team are confident that Trellis will alleviate some of the concerns that exist around these meetings.
“Parents have told me they sometimes feel teachers write down what they want recorded, and difficult conversations or questions they couldn’t answer aren’t included. We’re looking to tackle this by creating an AI-generated draft that records everything discussed in as unbiased a way as possible.”
Teacher response so far has also been overwhelmingly positive.
“We thought there’d be more pushback,” Angela admitted. “But I’ve been interviewing teachers in preparation for the pilot and they have been really enthusiastic, like, ‘Yeah sure, bring it on.’”
Whilst this enthusiasm is a good sign, Angela is wary about the amount of trust teachers may put into the product, with a risk of losing sight of the human in the loop.
“We have a responsibility to keep reminding them that AI outputs can’t be trusted 100% through careful UI design. They need to review the document with a critical eye and really make sure they stand by the final result. It’s a tool, not a replacement for judgement.”
The project has already earned strong endorsement from the Scottish Government, and Trellis has already started their pilot. The team is now starting to consider how it can expand Trellis across the UK.
Responsible AI and giving back to Sheffield
Despite leading an AI product, Angela is refreshingly candid about her concerns with the technology.
“I’m deeply sceptical about AI,” she says. “I actually think the world would be a better place if it hadn’t been developed. But I don’t think things will be any better if I’m not involved in how it gets deployed. I want to try to make sure we’re having the right conversations about how it’s used.
She continues, “I’ve been following the rise of AI for nearly a decade. I was worried about it back in 2016 when hardly anyone was talking about it – and I haven’t become less worried about it as time’s gone on. It’s very important that we don’t just talk about AI in terms of ‘how can we make money out of this?’ – but rather, how can we use it for good?”
This balanced, thoughtful approach not only underpins Trellis’ work, it is something Angela would like to contribute at a local level to conversations around AI. She reflects,
“I built my career in London and now I’ve come back to Sheffield, I don’t yet feel like I’ve contributed to the local economy in a way that makes life better for people who live here. I would love to utilise my skills and insight and the resources I have access to, to benefit South Yorkshire – I would absolutely love to do that.”
On returning to Sheffield in 2021, Angela immersed herself in local networks and community projects to get a feel for what was happening in the city. In doing this, she created a public Notion resource mapping the region’s social enterprise landscape, which enabled her to really tap into and understand the scene.
With her work for Trellis taking her on regular trips to London and Scotland however, she started to feel disconnected from the city. Angela decided to plug back in and reconnect with the community, by joining Sheffield Digital. She says,
“It began to feel a bit ridiculous, I’ve moved back to my hometown and I’ve got all this experience in tech but I’m not contributing or connecting with other people who have similar interests.”
Angela has already signed up to the Sheffield Digital Mentoring Scheme, where she’ll apply experience she’s amassed over the years, delivering informal coaching to friends and colleagues. She’s already tapped into Sheffield’s tech community to help local recruitment and hired Jasmine, a recent graduate.
She describes the community and networking scene in the city as ‘open’ and ‘friendly’.
“The difference between Sheffield and London is palpable,” she reflects. “People here are just happy to talk to you, it isn’t about ‘how useful are you going to be for me?’”. Remembering the last Senior Leaders Dinner, Angela shares, “Someone was pointed in my direction because we’re both working on LLMs. We had a really nerdy conversation and set up another meeting to share research methods… but I didn’t go into it thinking ‘what can I get out of this?’”
We’re looking forward to seeing Trellis rolled out through the pilot in Scotland, and hopefully closer to home in the not-too-distant future. Angela’s skills, insight and thoughts on AI are fascinating, so we’re excited to hear more from her on the subject and how we can truly make sure AI is used responsibly to change lives for the better.
You can learn more about Trellis and the team’s work on the website: https://trellis.scot/ and you can connect with Angela on LinkedIn.