In 2006, on the walk home from playgroup, a neighbour asked if I could write a newsletter for a small community development finance initiative. I said yes without thinking much of it. What I didn’t realise was that I’d stumbled into what would become my life’s work: finding stories that move minds – and shaping them so the whole thing holds. Though if I’m honest, the English and Psychology degree I chose at seventeen suggests I’d been heading here all along.
Someone at Microsoft UK picked up that newsletter and asked who’d written the stories. At the time, I was working as a European technology correspondent – not someone you’d expect a Head of CSR to call. But they wanted me to find examples of how the company actually lived its societal values, and shape them into a book of 30 one-minute stories showcasing their social impact. What I discovered, buried across teams and projects, were stories that nobody had thought to tell, because nobody had recognised their worth.
That project led to a two-year retainer as Microsoft’s CSR ‘newshound’, and it crystallised something I’ve carried through every piece of work since: Organisations doing remarkable work almost always have everything they need to prove it; They just haven’t found the whole story yet – the version that makes people believe, care, and act.