Joshua Saffrin Betesh

Behavioural Science is a diverse and exciting field with many career paths to explore, from shaping policy in government units to applying research in corporate settings and advancing knowledge in academia. This series features insights from professionals and academics, highlighting both the opportunities in the field and their journeys to their roles. Today, we hear from Joshua Saffrin Betesh.

Joshua is a Behavioural Science Consultant at BVA Nudge Consulting, where he helps financial services, FMCG, and hospitality leaders create behavioural science-driven strategies for ranging consumer challenges. Joshua has a Bachelor's degree in Economics from the University of Nottingham and an MSc in Cognitive and Decision Sciences from UCL.

How would describe your work to friends and family?

Explaining behavioural science to people who aren’t familiar with it can be tricky. If you’re in the behavioural science space, or you have a relevant degree, “behavioural science consultancy” can seem more intuitive than it necessarily is. It often feels like you’re not only explaining what you do for a living, but also explaining an entire sector to someone. It’s a bit like telling someone who doesn’t drink protein shakes to try a particular brand. First, you first have to explain why people drink protein shakes before you advocate for your favourite brand.

Ultimately, I tailor how I describe my work to the audience. I’ll use an example from their area of expertise to ‘paint the picture’. For example, if I’m talking to someone in finance, I might use proactive retirement planning as an example; or if I’m talking to someone who works in hospitality, I might reference intervention strategies to reduce water usage, reuse towels, etc..

So, did you always plan on going into behavioural science? Or did you figure it out later down the line?

Yes, that’s correct. Despite my early interests in behavioural economics during A-levels and undergrad, I didn’t think to explore any careers opportunities. So, right out of university, I joined a multi-family office in 2020, where I learnt a lot about regulatory compliance, financial services, and developed foundational professional and consultancy skills.

Sometime in 2022, a close friend of mine told me they were considering a career pivot and were applying for postgraduate degrees in behavioural science. Admittedly, I was a bit hesitant as I hadn’t heard of any behavioural science consultancies or in-house behavioural science teams. To learn more, I connected with professionals in various spaces; insurance, consultancy, health, etc.. As someone who enjoys multi-layered nuanced problems, the appeal of taking a psychologically diagnostic approach to understanding pain-points was highly appealing. I eventually applied for MSc Cognitive & Decision Sciences at UCL and got in! Shortly after securing the spot, I left my job in search of work experience in the behavioural science space before starting my MSc.

Once you secured your spot at UCL and decided to pivot, how did you find the job market?

During that time, I thought it would be much easier to find a role in behavioural science – with some good professional experience under my belt, some relevant freelance projects here and there, etc....but it turned out to be a lot harder than expected.

I applied for a LOT of roles, faced a LOT of rejections, and networked more than I had ever done. I must have spoken to 60-70 people in the run-up to my MSc! There was one audacious application for a senior role in a company’s growing in-house BeSci team. After the rejection, I ended up connecting with someone in senior management for some feedback and advice. Although nothing came of that opportunity, that same person referred me to one of their connections who was hiring for a junior behavioural scientist...and I got the gig! I ended up working at this EdTech start-up until half-way through my MSc.

After my MSc, I joined BVA Nudge Consulting as an intern; joining as a full-time behavioural science consultant in January 2024. Looking back, the journey was a combination of good timing, generous professionals, and some luck that helped me get my foot in the BeSci door.

That’s a fascinating journey. So, what are the main components of your current role, and what does that look like for you day to day?

To give you some context, BVA Nudge Consulting is part of a larger group of market research companies – the BVA Family. My team therefore has both an internal and external consultancy function. Internally, we collaborate with our sister market research agencies to integrate behavioural science into their pre-existing and new services. Externally, we work directly with clients across different industries, often alongside our multi-sectoral, global sister agencies.

One prominent area of my current work is consumer duty - relatively new guidelines in the UK's financial services space that requires firms to account for consumer psychology at all stages of the product design and delivery process. This can involve anything from letters sent by your home insurer to how your banking app is designed. My role is increasingly growth-related. I’ve developed a particular interest in global regulatory developments in digital markets, the financial services space, particularly in the UK, EU, and US; probably because of my early professional experience in the multi-family office. This way, my team and our sister agencies can monitor regulatory developments which pertain to both current service delivery and growth opportunities.

Do you find yourself gravitating towards particular projects in particular sectors? Or do you generally enjoy most projects, regardless of sector?

I definitely feel that financial services and regulatory projects are my ‘comfort zone’; probably due to my academic background in economics and early career experience in the financial service space. That being said, working across different sectors is incredibly interesting and valuable (e.g. confectionary, luxury, hospitality, media, etc.). Cognitive heuristics and biases don’t disappear depending on whether people are buying deodorant at the pharmacy or a savings product in their banking app. You learn a surprising amount from working on different projects, or speaking with seasoned sectoral specialists who have particularly refined understandings of their respective sectors; insights that can directly apply to other domains too.

What skills have you found most useful in delivering on these responsibilities? Are there any that you developed outside of behavioural science?

Both behavioural science and ‘non’-behavioural skills have been crucial. From outside behavioural science, my early career experience taught me to navigate jargon-heavy, legal concepts and distil complex information into something accessible - a skill I now use daily. Especially when it comes to making academic insights ‘usable’; or reviewing regulatory publications for client implications and growth opportunities. Making behavioural insights useful is much more challenging than I anticipated – but naturally essential. It’s not just about ‘cracking the code’, and having a solution; it’s about presenting it in a way that can be implemented by the intended practitioners (i.e. your stakeholders).

From a behavioural science perspective, research experience has been key. Understanding experimental design and thinking statistically are critical when identifying biases or optimising interventions. But I’d argue that domain knowledge adds subtle yet significant value. It’s one thing to know 300 cognitive biases and 40 behavioural frameworks, but to genuinely solve domain-specific challenges, you need a foundational, nuanced understanding of how their world works.

What aspects of your work do you find the most enjoyable or meaningful? What energises you the most?

The most energising part for me is dissecting decision-making contexts. I love understanding the mechanisms of choice architecture - identifying the subtle, spoken or unspoken barriers at play.

I find it rewarding to think critically about how people interact with information, stimuli, and cues to arrive at a decision. It’s not just about coming up with intervention strategies that ‘sound’ good; it’s about understanding the cognitive processes underpinning people’s challenges, and designing solutions that actually solve them.

One example that comes to mind is the design of a chocolate bar. Take the classic Cadbury bar, the big ones with multiple columns and rows. Now, imagine if it was one, big chocolate tablet, with no columns or rows. How would consumers actually eat it? They’d have to bite off chunks of chocolate with their teeth instead of breaking off cubes with their hands. This doesn’t only make it harder to eat, but harder to portion control too. The current design gives you the chance to self-reflect: “Do I really want another piece of chocolate right now? I’ve had 1 row already...” Subtle design tweaks and ‘good’ frictions can completely change how we use products and services, even if the fundamentals remain the same.

For me, these subtle design intentions which transform user or consumer experience - the moments where theory meets practical application - are the most exciting part of the job.

From your perspective, what areas in your field do you feel are particularly growing or that you’re excited about?

Fundamentally, I view behavioural science as a lens to understand the factors underpinning human decision-making. As such, I imagine any behavioural science consultant or practitioner would say there are growth opportunities across any domain where someone has to perform some kind of action (i.e. basically everywhere).

The increasing role of behavioural science in the regulatory landscape is particularly intriguing. Many UK regulators have behavioural science functions; US, EU, and UK regulators reference behavioural science in publications or notices; etc.. As multi-sectoral regulators require firms to account for consumer psychology in the product design and positioning lifecycle, I imagine (and hope) more organisations will identify ways to use behavioural science as a competitive edge in addition to a regulatory must.

What piece of advice would you give to someone who’s in their early career today?

I’ve spoken to a few students about this over the last few years. they see their friends with a clear career plan and feel like they’re slacking because they couldn’t articulate exactly what they want to do after university. Something I definitely can relate to from my second and third year in undergrad.

If I had to offer a POV, I’d go with the following:

1. Everyone is at a different stage in the process: You can’t order a takeaway before you know which cuisine you’re in the mood for. Some people know they want to get Nandos for dinner; others have heard of Nandos, but don’t know much about it. Ditto, you can’t apply for jobs without knowing the sectors that interest you. Step #1: Be clear about where you are at in the career strategy process.

2. Considering your career path takes different shapes and sizes: Stay with the takeaway metaphor (i.e. let me cook). For some people, 'progress’ looks like ordering the food (i.e. applying for jobs). Others may not know which cuisines (sectors) appeal to them in the first place. For them, ‘progress’ looks like reviewing customer feedback to learn more about the cuisine (i.e. speaking with people in that space). You wouldn’t be angry at yourself for not ordering a takeaway before knowing what to order – keep the same mindset for when exploring your career path Step #2: Assign expectations for what to do next based on your current position; not everyone else’s.

3. Networking is the cure to uncertainty: It’s easy to look at networking as transactional or uncomfortable. But networking isn’t about justifying why people should speak to you; it’s about learning from people who have experiences and insights that you do not have. There is no way I could have pursued a career in behavioural science consultancy without having 15-30 min chats with generous, experienced professionals. I have found a lot of people are eager to ‘pay it forward’ in the behavioural science space, as long as you are genuinely interested in their background and the insight they can offer you. As an aside, you will likely be ignored if you open a conversation by asking for work experience or a job (I’m speaking from very humbling experiences and awkward LinkedIn conversations). Step #3: Be comfortable learning from people who know what you don’t.

Ultimately, uncertainty can be uncomfortable – but it is an unavoidable by-product of finding the right next step. Not knowing isn’t aimless or goalless - it’s a sign that you are simply in the information gathering stage. Don’t let the actions of your peers or the feeling that you have to ‘do’ something cloud your vision. Instead, focus on your learnings, and take each step as it comes.

Thank you so much, Joshua, for sharing your insights with us today