Jonathan Smith (he/him)

Former Advocacy and Campaign Director

Jonathan has worked in campaigning and comms for quite a while now. Most recently he was Head of Campaigns at Shelter and before that the Fairtrade Foundation. He has also worked for Save the Children, Comic Relief and Christian Aid in his time.

He’s particularly interested in how to help communities co-create strategies and build power to win policy and political change, and at Shelter led the development of their now extensive housing rights community organising programme.

At the Fairtrade Foundation he worked to connect consumers and small holder farmers to drive more just trading relationships in global supply chains, particularly around bananas and cocoa.

He also has a background in youth education and participation, mainly at Comic Relief, where he helped build the Global Campaign For Education in the UK: a global movement of educators, students, civil society and unions fighting for the right to education for all.

As well as winning change, he’s fascinated by the power of storytelling and creative comms to reframe complex issues, enable new thinking and drive impactful action.

Hello, and welcome to the first Data Policy Digest from Connected by Data!

With such a lot going on in data policy world at the moment – including the return of the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill to parliament, the parliamentary progress of the Online Safety Bill, the expected Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Bill, the AI White Paper and a select committee inquiry into AI Governance – we thought it was the perfect time to start a regular summary of everything going on.

If we’ve missed anything, you’d like to add something for next time, you have a view on whether this is useful or not, or you’d like to get more involved with our activities (especially around the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill), please get in touch on jonathan@connectedbydata.org

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So these are my last set (of very irregular) weeknotes. I’m heading off to be Head Campaigns at UNICEF UK. I’ll be particularly focusing over the next year on highlighting the issues around child poverty in the UK around the coming election and with a potential new government. It’s an exciting opportunity and one that gets me working on a very tangible social justice issue again (I came from Shelter) which I’m looking forward to.

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Weeknotes are a combination of updates and personal reflection written on a routine basis

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