Alright, I'm Jaiden.

I help communities and the people in charge actually hear each other.

Some problems are too big for any one organisation to fix. That's where I come in, bringing communities and decision-makers together to work it out side by side.

Get in touch What I do
Jaiden speaking into a microphone on a panel at a Youth Leads event
Youth Leads panel

What I do

Three things, all rooted in the same belief: the people closest to a problem should help build the answer.

Social innovation

Big, knotty social issues, worked through with communities from the very first conversation. I've done it all the way from small learning projects to programmes with £1M budgets.

  • Listening to people where they already are
  • Turning what communities say into policy and system recommendations
  • Facilitating with residents and with decision-makers
  • Leading projects from start to finish

Working across generations

Helping young people and adults lead together, properly, in how an organisation runs.

  • Seeing where you're at now
  • Building it into teams and governance
  • Training, using my two guidebooks

Backing social innovators

For people with an idea, and for people already doing the work who could do with someone in their corner.

  • One-to-one mentoring
  • Getting an idea to a first pilot
  • Talks and workshops for cohorts

How it usually goes

For the Positive Masculinities Project, we didn't send out a survey. We went to barbershops, gyms, pubs, churches, temples and retirement homes and asked men and boys what being a man means to them. Six thousand of them, across Greater Manchester.

That's how I like to work. Listen first, make sense of it together, then take it to the people who make decisions and stay in the room while it's talked through.

  • Listen before designing anythingGo to people. Hear it in their words, not ours.
  • Check we heard it rightThe community helps make sense of what came out.
  • Translate itInto recommendations that leaders can actually act on.
  • Get both sides in one roomAnd hold that conversation honestly.
  • Make it stickSo it keeps going after I've left.

Working across generations

Lots of organisations want young people involved. Far fewer have worked out how to actually share power with them. That's the bit I help with.

I was Ashoka UK's first young co-lead, and I've led the work of bringing intergenerational collaboration into organisations across the UK and beyond. Along the way I produced two guidebooks that organisations all over the world now use.

Making the case

Showing leaders what good intergenerational practice gives them: better decisions, more trust, and work that lands with the people it's meant for.

Building it in

Roles, governance, budgets and culture. The practical changes that stop it being a one-off pilot.

Training your people

Sessions for staff, boards and young leaders, built on the guidebooks.

Sticking with you

Support while it beds in, so it lasts.

Jaiden in a red cap hugging a teammate on a mountainside during a Strive challenge
Strive challenge with Big Change
Starting out?

Someone backed me at eleven. I'd like to do the same.

I was an angry, frustrated kid on an estate in Salford when Reclaim gave me the chance to find my voice. People kept opening doors after that, and I wouldn't be here without them. So part of what I do is back the next lot of social innovators, especially people who don't see themselves in this world yet.

  • People with an idea
  • Young changemakers
  • Early-stage founders
  • Leaders already in the work
MentoringRegular chats about your idea, your leadership and what's next.
Idea to pilotShaping it, testing it with communities and getting it going.
Funders and partnersHow funders think and who to talk to first.
Talks and workshopsFor fellowships, universities and youth programmes.

Ways we can work together

Everything gets shaped around what you need, but most things start in one of these three ways.

Spark Session

One focused session to get unstuck, test an idea or plan how to involve communities and young people properly.

Innovation Partnership

We do a project together, from listening right through to recommendations and the room where decisions get made.

Strategic Advisor

An ongoing thinking partner for leaders working on social innovation or across generations.

Some things I've worked on

The Positive Masculinities Project

Co-founder

6,000 men and boys across Greater Manchester on what being a man means, shaped into four lenses that could inform up to 13 areas of public policy.

Rekindle School

Co-founder

The UK's first youth-led supplementary school, built with young people from day one.

Mission 44

Inaugural Youth Board

Part of Mission 44's first youth board, helping co-design its early programmes.

Ashoka UK and Big Change

Co-lead and Youth Associate

Bringing intergenerational collaboration into how both organisations work, plus two global guidebooks.

Lads Lads Lads

Lead

A creative arts programme in collaboration with The Lowry, engaging young men and boys to tell real stories.

A bit about me

I grew up on an estate in Salford. At eleven, I found Reclaim, a charity backing working-class young people to lead, and it showed me what we can do when someone creates the right conditions. Later, a creative programme at The Lowry gave me space to breathe and try new things.

I started out as an activist and became a social entrepreneur. Over the years I've worked on masculinities, violence reduction, loneliness, community wealth and helping young people do well at school. The thread through all of it is the same.

Some problems are too big for any one organisation to fix. That's where I come in, bringing communities and decision-makers together to work it out side by side.

Some days I'm on an estate in the morning and in a boardroom in the afternoon. I'm comfortable in both, and honestly that's where I'm most useful.

People I've worked with include Ashoka UK, Big Change, Virgin, Mission 44, Google, KPMG, The Lowry, Co-op Foundation, Blagrave Trust, the University of Manchester, NSPCC, Global Fund for Children, Arts Council England and the National Lottery Community Fund.

A few things I'm proud of
  • Named one of the Top 150 Global Social Innovators (RSA and GALN)
  • Ashoka Young Changemaker, and Ashoka UK's first young co-lead
  • Virgin Fellow
  • Youngest ever trustee at The Lowry, at 21
  • Trustee at Co-op Foundation
  • Inaugural Youth Board at Mission 44
  • Trained in Deep Democracy facilitation

Fancy a chat?

Whether it's a project, building work across generations, mentoring or a talk, drop me a line and tell me what you're working on.

Find me on LinkedIn

Jaiden