Hasan Bakhshi MBE leads Nesta's creative and digital economy policy and research. His work includes co-authoring the Next Gen Skills Review (2011) of the video games and visual effects industries which led to wholesale reforms of the ICT and computing curriculum in England's schools and The Future of Skills (2017) which gave policymakers and educators quantitative guidance on skills needs of the future workforce. In 2018, he set up a new research centre for the creative industries funded by the Government’s Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund.

Prior to Nesta, Hasan worked as Executive Director and Senior International Economist at Lehman Brothers, and as Deputy Chief Economist at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He has eight years' experience as an economist at the Bank of England. Hasan has a BA in Economics from Cambridge and an MPhil in Economics from the University of Oxford. He is also Adjunct Professor at the ARC Centre for Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation at the Queensland University of Technology. Hasan is a founding member of the government's Creative Industries Council and in 2017 was elected to the Royal Economic Society Council. He was awarded an MBE for services to the creative industries in the New Year's Honours List for 2015.