10 years of the Social Justice Collective:

Ten years ago, in the clarity that came with having my second child, I started what is now the Social Justice Collective. SJC is the same age as my son, and it was born out of a fierce desire to work differently and to spend my time focusing on the people and priorities that mattered most to me. 

In those early years, it was just me, feeling incredibly lucky to land deep consultancy work with organisations like NUS, Stonewall and UK Black Pride. My earliest experience of collaboration was with Evelyn Asante-Mensah and Phyll Opoku-Gyimah, who showed me how to ask incisive and loving questions to get teams past the BS and straight to the heart of the challenge. And then Yasmeen Akhtar and Chaka Bachmann led a group of us into a year-long learning programme for Citizens Advice, which included me singing Whitney Houston’s ‘How Will I Know?’ while senior executives figured out how they would know if their actions created real change. 

From those early freelance days, two things became really clear:

• Systems that are built to resist change can make you feel like your ideas are too radical and too risky. Working alone on social and racial justice is exhausting and oftentimes quite frightening. Working in collectives with women, non-binary folks and people of colour is where I found my joy and my courage to keep it real in those early days. We knew our imaginings of social change were not only possible but necessary.

• Scarcity mindsets can undermine everything we are trying to achieve. If I saw myself as being in competition with other brilliant people doing this work, we all lost and the system won. Instead, we collaborated and moved aside for each other, we shared our resources, and we gave each other support to process the harms we experienced in the work.

None of this is to say it was always sunshine and samosas. We had messy situations and painful moments. Through them, I learned that care, healing practices, and community are far greater than any growth goal could ever be. I also came to realise that I had needed to step outside of white supremacy culture entirely to tackle it in ways I never could from within organisations, even when holding the title of CEO. I don’t share that to discourage those fighting from the inside but to acknowledge the weight of that work. SJC plays a vital role as an external partner who can speak clearly of what liberation looks like and offer accountability alongside support to create it.

Now, we are a team of three, and I am blessed with the best teammates I could have dreamed of.

Shivani Mahida is a perfect blend of razor-sharp intelligence and golden retriever energy. She wrangles complex project and client requirements into coherence with an ease and joyfulness I can only aspire to. Her writing and communications skill has given us the voice to project dreams out into the world that would otherwise stay stuck in our internal chats. Shivani’s natural focus on improving what we do and how we work has acted as a vital counterbalance to my dreaming mind.

And then there’s Hannah Kibirige, who was the first to join me at SJC. We figured out what working together would look like over poached eggs and tea in a west London café. Hannah is undoubtedly the most talented, unassuming leader I’ve ever worked with: casually speaking multiple languages, referencing Fanon without sounding academic, designing our best learning programmes, and acting as a profound agent of change through her coaching, all while fiercely advocating for healthy boundaries and somatic practice. And she sings like an angel.

We are also part of a wider collective of change makers in racial and social justice work, including Chaka Bachmann, Martha Awojobi, Sophia Moreau and Bhavika Patel. Together we have run learning programmes, delivered coaching and built movements of change. Our Somatic Anti-Racism Group Coaching and the Power, Justice and Accountability programmes have changed so much about how I see our work and purpose.

Over the past 10 years we have worked with hundreds of organisations, from hyper-local teams to global household names, all working toward one shared goal: putting justice at the heart of purpose, power, and practice. Right now, we are lucky to work alongside brilliant teams like Pregnant Then Screwed, Gendered Intelligence, and QueerCircle. 

There are so many more associates, partners, participants and friends who have shaped SJC than I could ever name here. If you have walked any part of this path with us, this celebration is yours too.

SJC continues to be shaped by the choices we make about how to live and work differently, as a team and with the people we love. For me, that's my wife Denise and our kids, who have helped me redefine what a joyous life looks like. 

And as for the future? Well, the SJC team have been working on what a joyful, liberated, anti-oppressive future looks like, and figuring out our active path towards that. We may never complete that path, but we intend to build on what our ancestors left us and leave something hopeful for those who come next.

Celebrate with us 

Over the next couple of months we are celebrating in a few ways, and we'd love for you to join us.

• Hope and Joy (11th November 11am to 1pm): We are holding a completely FREE online celebration of social and racial justice. I am being joined by four keynote speakers who are stand-out favourites from our SJC Circle (headliners announced this week!) [Book your free ticket here].

• A Gift for You: All ticket holders will get a 10% voucher valid for a year across our growing library of e-learning courses for your staff and trustees.

• A Library of Hope. We want to gather examples of racially and socially just futures that already exist, and we'd love yours. Send us an email (sjccircle@socialjusticecollective.co.uk) or DM with any ideas of:

  • Organisations putting racial and social justice into their purpose, like Pregnant Then Screwed's new strategy

  • Signs that racially just futures already exist, like QueerCircle and Healing Justice London's Re-wilding democracy & making sanctuary

  • Everyday cultural practice, like Elect Her building somatic practice and deep care into their meetings

  • Ways of challenging racist narratives in the media and politics, like the work of Reframing Race

  • Movements and coalitions leading the way, like BLM UK, Migrants Organise and the Anti-Racist Movement (ARM)

As for Hannah, Shivani and me? We’ll be celebrating our way: spicy food, chocolate, lounging, and an activity (suggestions welcome: we’ve already done Regent’s Park pedalos and pottery wheel throwing).