Maya Bhardwaj (she/they) is a queer South Indian American scholar-activist, community organizer, consultant to social movements, writer, musician and artist, currently based in London.
Maya’s consulting supports organising projects that seek to dismantle racial capitalism, caste apartheid, and cisheteropatriarchy through strengthening movement resources around structure, strategy, and narrative change. Their research explores queer of color politics and culture in diaspora, with specific focus on South Asian diasporic leftism and the possibility of Black and Brown solidarities. This draws on fifteen years of lived experience within social movements across the US, Europe, Latin America, South Asia, and Southern Africa.
Maya is also a practicing violinist and visual artist with various collectives. Maya holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Pretoria, a MSc from SOAS, University of London, and a BA from Northwestern University. Maya has been working with us here at PIRC since 2020, with narrative research, facilitation, strategic guidance and mentorship.
Mark Banfield is the founding director of The Black Boy Joy Club, an organisation advancing the health and wellbeing of Black and Global Majority LGBTQI+ Londoners. He champions advocacy around Black men’s health and its intersecting determinants, supporting communities and stakeholders to create social and economic opportunities that build stronger, more sustainable neighbourhoods.
Mark brings experience in social development project management, having delivered public health programmes across the UK and internationally, working in partnership with organisations including the Terrence Higgins Trust, the British Council, Médecins Sans Frontières, and UNICEF.
In his free time, Mark enjoys being in nature, reading, cooking and has recently taken an interest in filmmaking.
Selina is an award winning writer, researcher and strategic advisor, who has worked extensively across the civic sector.
She is the founder and director of Echi, a strategic change consultancy that helps groups, organisations and movements evolve amid complex change. She has also been a voice for climate justice for over 10 years, working with a number of grassroots, charity and arts organisations to strengthen narratives around the gaps between race, justice and the climate crisis.
Her latest book Black Climates is an exploration of Blackness and climate breakdown within the bigger context of polycrisis.
Tamara-Jade is a PIRC associate, freelance trainer and facilitator with a decade of experience working with social change-focused groups.
She specialises in developing bespoke programmes and workshops that challenge groups to reflect on strategy, structural power, group culture and relationships. Her background also includes working in and organising around gendered violence prevention from a Black feminist, abolitionist perspective.
She is an associate trainer with the training collective, Resist + Renew, and on the board of directors for Good Night Out Campaign. She is also a visual notetaker and illustrator in movement spaces.
Olga is Executive Director at WeMove Europe, leading strategy, campaigns, and fundraising to power people-driven change across Europe. She specialises in digital campaigning and grassroots fundraising, helping grow and mobilise a community of hundreds of thousands of Europeans while building sustainable, member-led funding.
A strategic communicator at heart, she sees storytelling and narrative as essential tools for winning progressive change. Originally from Montenegro, she has lived in London and Toronto, and now calls Bologna home, where she lives with her family.
Olivia Blocker is a communications strategist, researcher and movement worker with over a decade of experience. She currently works as a Communications Strategist at Migrant Democracy Project, building and implementing the communications strategy for their campaign for residence-based voting rights in the UK.
Prior to her tenure in the UK, she lived in Chicago for 10 years where she worked developing narrative and communications strategies for clean energy and climate justice campaigns across the United States, while staying active in local police and prison abolition – organising with Liberation Library and the Final 5 Campaign to close youth prisons in Illinois.
She is a co-author in the anthology, Liberation Stories: Building Narrative Power for 21st Century Social Movements, and in December 2025 she graduated with a Masters in Strategic Communications from the University of Liverpool. She currently lives in Liverpool with her partner.
Carrie is co-Executive Director for Development and Impact at People’s Economy and has a background in organisational and leadership development, coaching, facilitation and mediation – Carrie is interested in what helps organisations and people work together for social change.
Carrie previously headed up coaching programmes in organisational and leadership development at the New Economy Organisers Network. In her free time, you can find her riding her bike, planning long cycling adventures, and desperately trying to keep her houseplants alive.
Chiara is a Senior Programme Manager at Heard where she leads programmes at the intersection of narrative change, lived experience, and popular culture – supporting people, organisations, and the media to shift perceptions through the stories they tell. Particularly, her work focused on sexual abuse and children’s palliative care.
Chiara brings expertise in designing collective impact approaches to achieve system change. She also holds a BA in Philosophy, an MSc in Violence, Conflict and Development from SOAS and a certificate in Cross-functional Leadership from the London Interdisciplinary School.
I joined PIRC in 2025 as Head of Operations, responsible for strategic leadership, people and culture and operational infrastructure.
I bring 15+ years of experience working across ‘for social good’ sectors as a community builder, facilitator, fundraiser and consultant — with a focus on building anti-oppressive cultures, redistributing power and resources, and growing liberatory practices from the inside out.
My work is rooted in lineages of deep connection to land and collective care. I’m passionate about creating spaces where radical imagination can flourish, and building the cultures, processes, relationships, skills and capacities needed to transform our boldest visions into reality.
#CommunityOrganising #GenerativeCulture #Facilitation #Somatics #OperationalDesign #CollectiveCare #DisabilityJustice #CreativeExpression #Lego #GooglyEyes
Nathan is a writer, campaigner, and strategic communications adviser. He works with organisations from grassroots campaigns to international NGOs communicating on migration and border violence, climate justice, peace, and human rights.
He has previously worked in media and communications on local and national election campaigns, for emergency services and public bodies, and in the humanitarian sector. He holds a bachelor’s degree in History and Politics from the University of Oxford and a joint MSc in Global Development Policy from three European universities.
Alexander Leon (he/him) is an internationally recognised facilitator, educator, speaker, and writer.
Throughout his career, Alexander’s work has spanned a variety of industries and topics, focusing primarily on advocacy / communications strategy, and anti-oppression. Whether training government ministers on LGBTQ+ inclusion, upskilling grassroots activists on how to integrate race and class into their campaign messages, or educating businesses on the importance of understanding systemic oppression, Alexander’s approach is anchored in a strong sense of justice, an avid curiosity, and an openness to play. He has co-designed and delivered trainings for NEON, Greenpeace, Ulex, Stonewall, LinkedIn, and others. His writing has been featured in The Guardian, BBC, Huffington Post, 14poems, and more.
Tamsyn is Director of Evidence at FrameWorks UK. She works to understand how people think about social issues – and what changes those things. An expert in narrative and strategic communications, Tamsyn works with mission-driven organisations across Europe to translate framing research into practice on such issues as health inequality, homelessness, child welfare and access to justice.
Before joining FrameWorks, Tamsyn was a consultant at the FrameWorks Institute, and headed digital and strategic communications at Equally Ours, a network of organisations working to advance equality and human rights. She holds a bachelor’s degree in history and an MA from the University of Cambridge, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Kennedy (they/he) is a facilitator and strategic campaigns and communications specialist with 10 years of experience.
They’re currently a senior organiser campaigning around energy justice and they recently worked with NEON to develop their messaging and framing training.
Mina Jack (neutral or masc pronouns) is a trans and non-binary activist, politician, consultant, thinker, and artist from the Mediterranean.
They’ve been working on developing campaigns, raising awareness, and doing communications on LGBTQI rights, green politics, electoral campaigns, and roller derby for just over a decade.
Want to have a chat about media ethics with regards to LGBTQI representation, and non-binary, fluid and liminal framing in communications? Just get in touch, MJ loves distractions.
Sho is a freelance communications coach for activists. He has advised groups from anti-corporate farmer collectives in the Philippines, to abortion rights campaigners in Mexico, to trans groups in Eastern Europe – with everything from messaging to media relations.
Originally from London, based in Amsterdam, his side-projects focus on demystifying comms: like a “Bluffer’s Guide to Framing” and a YouTube channel about communications for activists.
