Close to the product
Partner discovery, implementation design and evidence review stay next to the product roadmap, so what is promised in a briefing is what gets built.
Founder and leadership
Dr Yusuf Ben-Tarifite
Founder and Chief Executive
NHS doctor turned full-time founder, building AVA as the institutional infrastructure he wished existed for high-potential students without private networks.
Recognised with The Diana Award Legacy Award
Who is behind AVA
A founder who lived the problem
AVA is deliberately founder-led, so the people who run institutional partnerships are the people who can change the product.
Yusuf founded AVA from a state-school access mission to break down the barriers facing applicants without private networks, then built it into an admissions platform that has reached more than 350,000 students and worked with over 100 schools, trusts and access programmes.
The institutional offer is deliberately founder-led: partner discovery, implementation design, evidence review and senior stakeholder briefings stay close to the product roadmap. That keeps the work practical, fast and accountable.
Recognition
- The Diana Award Legacy Award (2024)
- UK Government Young Innovator Award, Innovate UK
- University of Oxford, Balliol College
Credentials
Oxford
Balliol College, medicine and access ambassador
NHS
practising resident doctor, Oxford University Hospitals
BCG
visiting associate, strategy and operations
Founder-led
One line of accountability
The institutional relationship is run by the person who can change the product, so what is promised in a briefing is what gets built.
NHS doctor
Clinically grounded
A practising resident doctor keeps the preparation honest about the values and judgement that selection actually tests, not just technique.
Lived it
Built from the inside
AVA began as a state-school applicant reaching a selective course without private networks. That experience still shapes every decision.
By default
Safeguarding-first
Everyone working on the platform builds for 16 to 18 year-olds first, so protective design is the starting point rather than an afterthought.
How leadership works
Deliberately founder-led
The institutional relationship stays close to the founder, so the work is practical, fast and accountable, with one clear line of responsibility.
Lived the problem
AVA began as a state-school applicant trying to reach a selective course without private networks. That experience still shapes every design decision.
Clinically grounded
A practising NHS doctor keeps the preparation honest about the values and judgement that selection actually tests, not just exam technique.
Accountable by design
Senior stakeholder briefings stay founder-led, so decisions are fast, the evidence language is precise, and there is a single line of accountability.
Experience
A track record across medicine, access and innovation
From founding a widening-participation movement at school age to practising as an NHS doctor, the experience behind AVA is broad and hands-on.
Resident Doctor
2024 - presentOxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Practising NHS doctor, keeping AVA grounded in clinical reality and the values medical schools actually select for.
Founder and Chief Executive
2018 - presentAVA
Built a widening-participation movement into an admissions platform reaching over 350,000 students and 100+ schools, trusts and access programmes.
Visiting Associate
2025Boston Consulting Group
Strategy and operations exposure with a leading global consultancy, sharpening AVA’s institutional and go-to-market thinking.
Young Innovator
2023 - 2024Innovate UK
UK Government Young Innovator Award, recognising AVA as a high-potential innovation in education and access.
Top 10 Future Leader
2024Future Leaders
Recognised nationally among the top ten future leaders for sustained social impact in widening access.
Fellow
2023 - 2024The Healthcare Leadership Academy
Leadership development focused on the future of healthcare, workforce and patient-centred system design.
Admissions and Access Ambassador
2019 - 2023University of Oxford, Balliol College
Outreach and admissions support for applicants from under-represented backgrounds, the lived experience AVA is built around.
Founder fellow
2022 - 2023Oxford Foundry, Saïd Business School
Venture support and entrepreneurship development through Oxford’s flagship innovation hub.
Where the reach sits
Schools and sixth forms partnered
Access and third-sector programmes engaged
Universities and medical schools in conversation
NHS and workforce routes, measured outcomesEvidence review
AVA and The Aspiring Medics engagement by audience, with workforce outcomes kept separate from current cohort and delivery evidence.
AVA students are 4x more likely to get into medical school (92% versus 22%), and 2x more likely to get into Oxbridge across subjects.
Reach to date
The footprint behind the institutional offer
AVA and The Aspiring Medics have grown from a single founder into a platform with a national footprint across schools, trusts and access programmes.
350,000+
students reached through AVA
100+
schools, trusts and access programmes engaged
13
specialist interview coaches
AVA students are 4x more likely to get into medical school (92% versus 22%), and 2x more likely to get into Oxbridge across subjects.
In the press
Coverage and recognition
Independent profiles and coverage of AVA and The Aspiring Medics, and the founder behind them.
BBC Morning Live
Widening access to medicine and selective admissions
Read moreThe Diana Award
Yusuf Ben-Tarifite, Legacy Award recipient
Read moreEnSpire Oxford
Founder profile
Read moreInnovate UK
Young Innovators programme profile
Read moreBalliol College, Oxford
Access and outreach in practice
Read moreUniversity of Oxford Medical Sciences
Student innovators in healthcare education
Read moreWorking principles
The values that hold across every partnership
Founder-led means these principles hold whatever the cohort or the sector. They are what the work is held to, on every partnership.
Access comes first
Widening participation is the default in every decision. Students who need it most always reach the platform free.
Safe for under-18s
Safeguarding is built into every input path, never bolted on, and the design follows children-first data and safety expectations.
Honest about evidence
Outcomes are reported with their comparators and caveats attached, and causal claims wait for the trial.
Why this team exists
The gap this team is built to close
The founder-led offer is a response to a documented problem. These are public figures on access to selective routes and the professions, each carrying its published source.
1.01m6
16 to 24 year-olds are not in education, employment or training, the first time the total has passed one million since 2013.
Explore£125bn7
the estimated cost to the UK each year of nearly one million young people not in education, employment or training.
Explore19.1 months8
the gap in learning between disadvantaged pupils and their peers by the end of secondary school, wider than before the pandemic.
Explore2x9
disadvantaged young people are twice as likely to be out of education, employment or training as their better-off peers.
Explore7x1
more likely to reach Oxbridge if you attend an independent school rather than a state school.
Explore36% vs 6%2
of senior professionals were privately educated, against six per cent of the population.
ExploreWho we are
More than one person, built around the same principles
Founder-led means a team that stays close to the product and the students, with one clear line of accountability.
A founder-led team
The institutional relationship is run by the people who can change the roadmap, supported by a wider team for delivery as partnerships grow.
Clinically and academically grounded
A practising NHS doctor and people who reached selective courses without private networks keep the work honest about what selection really tests.
Built around safeguarding
Everyone working on the platform builds for 16 to 18 year olds first, so protective design is the default and never an afterthought.
Evidence-literate
The team separates engagement, observational findings and causal claims by habit, so the language stays precise from a briefing to a board paper.
Working with a founder-led team
What partners say about working with us directly
“We were talking to the person who could actually change the product. A point we raised in the first call had shaped the roadmap by the next one.”
Widening participation lead
Medical school
“The clinical grounding showed. The preparation was honest about the judgement selection tests, not just interview drills, and that reassured our staff.”
Careers and futures coordinator
State sixth form
“They were precise about what the evidence could and could not say yet. For a funder, founder-led candour about the limits mattered as much as the ambition.”
Programme officer
Education foundation
Trusted alongside
The organisations the team works with
The founder-led offer runs alongside partners who share the same goal. This is the growing wall of organisations we genuinely work with, treated equally and named only where the relationship is real.
University of OxfordCrankstart
How we work with partners
From first conversation to a partnership you can defend
The way the team works is the same whatever the sector. Listen first, scope it in writing, and stay accountable to the people who run the programme.
01
We listen before we propose
Every partnership starts with your cohort, your constraints and the outcomes that matter to your board, not a template we are trying to fit you into.
02
We scope it in writing
Safeguarding, data protection and the evidence plan are written down at the start, so your risk assessment has something concrete to review rather than a promise.
03
We stay accountable
The strategic relationship stays with the founder, so when something needs to change in the product, the person who hears it can change it.
The arc
A documented problem the team is part of solving
Fair access has been named a problem and remained one for years. The founder-led offer is built to be the next, measurable step, with evidence language disciplined enough for institutional review.
2009
Fair access named a closed shop10
The Milburn panel found medicine and law the most socially exclusive professions, with doctors typically growing up in the best-off families of any profession.
2014
Selecting for Excellence4
UK medical schools commit to contextual admissions, outreach and alternative routes to widen who applies and who is selected.
2019
Elitist Britain11
The country's leading people remain five times more likely to have been privately educated than the population as a whole.
2025
Progress, not parity13
The independent-school share of medicine entrants has fallen, yet just 5 per cent of entrants are working-class and advantaged applicants are still around 1.5 times more likely to get an offer.
2026
One million not in education or work6
Youth disengagement passes one million for the first time since 2013, at an estimated cost of £125 billion a year.
Evidence review
The AVA evaluation design
Evaluation work tests whether structured preparation changes offer rates. Causal language requires comparator definitions, documented limits and formal review.
What a briefing means
A working session with the person who decides
A founder briefing is built around your decisions, not a script. Here is what you can expect from the conversation.
A working conversation
We map your cohort, current provision, delivery constraints and evidence goals. It is a working session, not a pitch, and you leave with a clear sense of fit.
Honest about fit
Where AVA is the wrong answer for your cohort, we say so. A partnership only works when it reaches the students who need it, so candour comes early.
Precise about evidence
We talk through what can be observed in a cohort and what needs formal evidence review, so expectations are set against the evidence, not the ambition.
Routed to the roadmap
What is agreed in a briefing can change the product, because the person across the table can change it. There is a single, fast line of accountability.
Who it is for
Partners the founder works with directly
The institutional offer is shaped for the organisations that support students, so the work reaches whole cohorts rather than the few who can find it alone.
Universities and medical schools
Admissions and outreach teams who want a defensible, evidence-led way to widen access, with reporting an evaluator can stand behind.
Schools, sixth forms and trusts
Staff who want a repeatable preparation routine for whole cohorts, so support no longer depends on which student finds it first.
Access and workforce programmes
Third-sector and NHS partners building a fairer route into selective courses and the professions students are working towards.
The honest version
Evidence language kept precise
The founder keeps reach, live capability, cohort findings and causal claims cleanly apart. Bold about the mission, careful about what each line actually says.
Evidence discipline
Reach and footprint figures, drawn from real engagement
Specialist preparation, live across every subject pipeline
Cohort findings, observable now and reported with caveats
Outcome claims reviewed against agreed comparator definitionsEvidence review
Each row is marked honestly. Causal claims require the agreed comparator and review standard behind them.
AVA students are 4x more likely to get into medical school (92% versus 22%), and 2x more likely to get into Oxbridge across subjects.
Working with the founder
Questions institutions ask first
What a founder-led partnership means in practice, how briefings work, and how the evidence is handled.
Explore more
About AVA
The mission, the model and how the platform is built.
OpenEvidence and due diligence
How outcomes are measured, with causal language kept precise.
OpenServices and partnership shapes
Product, platform and consultancy in one partnership.
OpenPolicy and standards
Safeguarding, AI governance and policy alignment.
OpenFounder briefing
Talk to the person who can change the product
Bring your cohort, current provision and evidence goals. We will talk through whether a pilot or partnership fits, before anything is scoped.
Book a 15-minute AI-readiness call
Tell us where your foundations stand and we will talk through whether the AI-readiness work is a fit. Pick a time below, or email us if you prefer.
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