Future events

Our 2026 March event will take place on Tuesday 10 March online from 16.15 – 17.45. The topic will be ‘Founders - the good, the bad and the ugly” and our speakers will be Iona Lawrence, the founder of the Jo Cox Foundation and Dr Nicola Sharp-Jeffs OBE, the founder of Surviving Economic Abuse (SEA).

Iona Lawrence is Chief Deceleration Officer at The Decelerator. She leads a small team helping civil society navigate endings, from closing programmes, to winding up organisations, to supporting leadership transitions, with a focus on impact, legacy and care. Previously, she co-founded The Jo Cox Foundation, she helped secure the UK’s first Minister for Loneliness, and shaped refugee policy as a community organiser in Calais with Safe Passage.

Dr Nicola Sharp-Jeffs OBE founded the UK charity Surviving Economic Abuse (SEA) in 2017 which she led as CEO until May 2024. During this time, she pioneered practice, policy, regulatory and legislative responses to economic abuse transforming the national landscape for victim-survivors. Nicola is now bringing about change on the global stage as an Expert Advisor to the Empower Finance Initiative in Asia and the Pacific led by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and as co-founder of the International Coalition Against Economic Abuse (ICAEA). In September 2025 Nicola was appointed to the Domestic Homicide Review Quality Assurance Board by the Home Office.

Our June event will take place in-person on Tuesday 9 June from 16.15 – 17.45 at Bates Wells, 10 Queen Street Place, London, EC4R 1BE.

Our speaker will be Professor Lynne Berry CBE. Lynne chairs the Human Tissue Authority and is Chair of the Court of Governors and Pro Chancellor of the University of Westminster. She is Patron of the Wollstonecraft Society. She has chaired, been a Senior Independent Director (SID) and on the Board of many public sector and not for profit bodies including Breast Cancer Now, Welsh National Opera, Cambridge University Hospitals Trust, the Canal and River Trust, Sustrans, NCVO, CPAG and Glandŵr Cymru.

Lynne has held several Chief Executive posts in public bodies including the Charity Commission; the Equal Opportunities Commission; the General Social Care Council and in charities such as RVS and the Family Welfare Association. She has been a Board member of many governmental better regulation initiatives and was on the Advisory Board for Civil Society in the Cabinet Office.

She is Visiting Professor in Leadership at Bayes Business School, City, University of London; a Fellow Commoner of Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge and an Honorary Fellow of Cardiff University. She has received many national awards and has been appointed CBE.