Ariel has over a decade of experience as a community organiser focused on social justice issues, primarily with environmental and land justice. Before joining Act Build Change, she was the Senior Director of Community Organising and Education at TreePeople, a leading Los Angeles-based NGO, where she led a team of 40 organisers and educators supporting communities impacted by climate change and environmental injustice. Prior to TreePeople, she ran major advocacy campaigns at Ten Strands, securing significant legislative and funding victories for climate literacy. Ariel is passionate about healing the violent separation of land and people through organising.

Chris is a Chartered Governance Professional with business management and strategic finance experience across the public, co-operative and third sectors. He has a deep commitment to the health of not-for-profit organisations, having held trustee and Chair roles for several charities. He also has a background as an organiser, building and achieving recognition of a union during the COVID-19 pandemic and leading on the union’s first collective bargaining with the employer.

Corinne is a project manager at Act Build Change. She has a decade of experience overseeing projects within institutions and local communities including the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, T A P E Collective, Really Local Group and Crisis UK. She is a co-founder and land worker at a food growing cooperative, Thyme Tu, that works to decolonise access to land for people of colour.

Ezimma is a writer, healer and creative facilitator with a background in youth work. She specialises in working with young women exploring issues such as healthy relationships, labels and identity and has worked mainly with young women involved in the criminal justice system.

Imani has over a decade of experience in youth justice and education, she has successfully led leadership development programmes, supporting change makers - including young leaders to take action on issues they care about. She is an experienced youth and community practitioner with skills in coaching, leadership development and strategic partnerships.

Jemima is a freelance journalist, organiser and communicator. She works predominantly on climate justice issues such as fast fashion, oil and gas, and workers' rights. As a student she led campaigns that successfully banned fossil fuel recruitment and fast fashion advertising at her students' union. She has since supported and mentored other student fashion activists as University Community Organiser at Remake. She has written for publications including Sunday Times Ireland, Shado, Remake and Naked Politics, and hosts the video series What Can You Do? with Shado where she unpacks how viewers can take action on issues they care about.

Kate McIntosh has organised people who are sharply affected by injustice to act together, exercise power and win change. She has trained hundreds of campaigners and equipped people to lead in their communities to secure rent cuts, pay rises, and policy change. Before Act Build Change, Kate was a community organiser based at a food bank where she organised people on very low incomes to win service charge cuts and build support for social security reform. She has roots organising in students’ unions, ACORN, and grassroots neighbourhood campaigns on issues ranging from disability rights in higher education to dangerous tower block cladding.

Kennedy has supported individuals, groups and organisations move through conflict, build power, cultivate knowledge and strengthen skills for over ten years. They’ve trained with the Gestalt Centre in London, Navigate and Training for Change in counselling skills, group facilitation, coaching and more. Alongside this they have campaigned and organised towards food, land and climate justice. In 2017, Kennedy co-founded Kinfolk Network, a network for black organisers and campaigners to learn from each other and build power. Kennedy holds a master's degree in Human Rights, Culture and Social Justice and is currently a trainee therapeutic counsellor.

Latifa has over a decade of experience working and organising with communities around social justice issues and on arts-based community projects. Latifa is interested in transformative approaches to safety and justice and produced and co-wrote The Radical Safeguarding Workbook in her former role as Director of Education at Maslaha. Latifa approaches organising with the belief that collective action is all we have and that only by building solidarity across struggles and oppressions can liberation truly be a possibility. Latifa is a trustee at the Inclusive Mosque Initiative and was co-director of the 2021 MFest at the British Library. She holds an LLM in Human Rights Law and before moving to London in 2012, she worked for two years as a journalist in Istanbul.

Ricky is a designer and developer specialising in building brands, websites and systems. Over the past 15 years he has collaborated with many organisations, from local companies to international institutions, on hundreds of projects varying in scope and complexity. Projects such as branding Southend-on-Sea Borough Council's sustainable transport campaign and developing digital tools for the Wellcome Sanger Institute's genome sequencing programmes for malaria and COVID-19. He co-founded Act Build Change with Stephanie in 2018, combining organising skills with technology at a time when community organising training was niche and exclusive in the UK. Together, they set out to make organising more accessible to all.

Son is a Community Organiser at Act Build Change. He brings years of experience working with migrant, racialised, queer and working class communities, having organised with Migrants Organise, ACORN, POMOC as well as local groups of friends and neighbours.

Stephanie is a community organiser, facilitator and collective care practitioner. She has won with many others on issues from citizenship for young people, securing better wages for 1000s of staff and winning housing for those seeking asylum. She has trained hundreds of community leaders who have gone on to win local and national policy change and political elections. She has taught at Stanford, Harvard, UCL and LSE University. She built Act Build Change with her husband Ricky in 2018 in response to some of the inaccessible ways organising was taught in the UK. Together, they hoped to give a contribution to the field of organising that would allow more of us to get great organising training in accessible, dignified and transformative ways.

Alex is Director at A B Charitable Trust. He was previously Director of Grants at Trust for London and Head of the Migration Programme at Paul Hamlyn Foundation. Alex started his career as a youth worker, before working in the areas of homelessness and community development. He then moved into the migration sector working with Praxis, based in London, for over nine years starting as a youth and community development worker before going on to become their Deputy Chief Executive.

Dami Makinde is Director of Justice Together, a collaborative initiative working to strengthen the migration and refugee sector in the UK. With over a decade of experience in community organising and systems change, she supports organisations to build collective power, influence policy, and create the conditions for a healthier and more equitable society. Drawing on a background in psychology, Dami brings a relational and systems-focused approach to her work, centring collaboration, lived experience, and long-term change.

In addition to her role at Justice Together, Dami runs a consultancy focused on strategic planning, facilitation, and leadership development, supporting organisations to navigate complexity and strengthen their impact. She is also the co-founder of We Belong, a youth-led organisation advocating for the rights of young migrants, where she led campaigns that contributed to national policy change. An Eisenhower Youth Fellow and recognised voice in the migration and social justice space, her work focuses on building the infrastructure, leadership, and partnerships needed to drive meaningful and lasting systems change.

Ian is a retired Chartered Accountant, who spent most of his career working at a large firm of accountants. He worked principally with a wide variety of charities and not-for-profit organisations and spent his final five years there leading the firm's relationship with the charity sector. Ian brings experience of working with not-for-profit organisations, as well as finance, governance and commercial knowledge. Since retiring in 2019, Ian has been keen to use his experience to support organisations looking to address areas of social injustice. He is proud to be a Board member at Act Build Change.

Dr Kathryn Perera is a Senior Consultant in Leadership and Organisational Development at The King’s Fund and an Associate with Cultivating Leadership, working with leaders, teams and systems on complex change. She leads the Nexus and Leading Through Complexity programmes at The King’s Fund – both of which incorporate community organising and movement-based practice.

Previously, Kathryn served as Director of NHS Horizons and as the Director of Improvement at NHS England. With Helen Bevan, she co-led the NHS School for Change Agents. Her career has included community organising and roles in politics, and practice as a barrister.

Lianne has more years of HR experience than she is happy to admit! Having started her career at Deloitte, she moved through various in-house HR roles until setting up her own HR consultancy, LighterHR, in 2010. Outside of her professional life, she serves as Chair of Trustees for a large secondary school in her local area, a role that has given her additional skills to bring to the Act Build Change Board.

Shingai is a community organiser, international coach and facilitator with a proven record of organising and training community leaders. Shingai has helped spearhead campaigns on a issues like housing rights, migrant rights, climate justice, human rights and UK electoral campaigns. She has coached organising workshops delivered by Harvard Professor Marshall Ganz and worked with partners like the Labour Party, Amnesty, Friends of the Earth, the NUS, Trussell Trust and POMOC.

Tahmid is a Senior Associate for the Centre of Public Impact. He received a full scholarship as an Urban Scholar Fellow from the Harvard Graduate School of Education for Learning Design, Innovation and Technology. Tahmid worked as a Programme Manager for Peace First, supporting young people to create community social action projects across Europe. Finally, Tahmid worked for Citizens UK, representing marginalised people and communities from across London and nationally, where he led campaigns for policy change.