I started full-time work with five years at the Rose Castle Foundation, a faith-based org with a mission to equip a generation of 'reconciling leaders' capable of crossing society's deepest divides.

We worked with hundreds of people from around the world on summer camps, retreats, dialogues, and trainings — people who often came from fundamentally opposing worlds.

As communications and fundraising lead I made partnerships, built websites, wrote strategies, managed projects, and raised funds. When I started we were just getting WiFi in the office. When I left we were getting ready to receive a £1.36 million grant.

I met lots of people whose lives had been affected by wars, colonialism, and other systems of injustice and extraction, so I studied a masters in Conflict, Security and Development at King's College London, where I learned more and wrote a thesis on the role of religious groups as actors for peace in Ethiopia, working with some extraordinary changemakers.

Alongside this, I’ve been a board member for an international development charity during its final years, helping steer through a period of CEO transition and closure.

For more than 160 years, Banfields was the go-to place for knowing people in the building trade in the heart of Brighton, as much a community as a business.

From village blacksmiths to Victorian emporium, through two World Wars and becoming locksmithing specialists, discover the story of five generations of Banfields here.