Hi, I’m Iona

Throughout my career, I’ve built collaborations and coalitions that drive meaningful change—locally in the UK and globally—tackling some of the most challenging issues of our time. I love working at both the strategic, 10,000-foot level and rolling up my sleeves and diving deep into hands-on delivery.

Freelance Adventures (2019–2024)
Between 2019 and 2024, I worked as a freelancer with a wide range of charities and non-profits. I took on long- and short-term projects addressing loneliness, fostering relationships, and rethinking how endings might be delivered and supported in civil society.

Some highlights:

• Supporting The Linking Network’s incredible work bridging divides and building connections with young people for two years.

• Collaborating with The Relationships Project for four years, championing their work to redesign everything for and around human relationships.

• Developing and refining the practice of "better endings," which has since evolved into The Decelerator.

The Jo Cox Foundation (2016–2019)
In 2016, I co-founded the Jo Cox Foundation in honour of my friend Jo Cox MP, alongside her family. As the Foundation’s first Director, I established diverse coalitions and partnerships to advance the causes Jo had passionately championed. Together, we achieved:

• The world’s first Minister for Loneliness and £20 million in new funding to tackle the issue.

• The Jo Cox Memorial Grants, a £10 million program launched by the Department for International Development.

• The Great Get Together, which, in partnership with The Big Lunch in 2017, brought over 9 million people together to celebrate Jo’s belief that we have "more in common than that which divides us."

Earlier Experience
Before the Jo Cox Foundation, I worked in the Calais refugee camp—known as the "Jungle"—as Field Manager for the Safe Passage project. There, I co-led ground operations for a strategic litigation campaign that reunited the first child refugees with their families in the UK in nearly a decade.

Prior to that, I coordinated coalition campaigns at Save the Children, focusing on influencing the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the G8. I began my career in youth engagement with Restless Development and the International Citizen Service.

Beyond Work
Between 2019 and 2024, I proudly served as a trustee for the Rural Coffee Caravan in Suffolk, where I grew up. And long before my career in advocacy and campaigning began, I started my working life as a chef—a role that taught me the value of how to make inelegant mistakes and attempt to recover elegantly.