James

About the blogger:
James was born and brought up in Tufnell Park in North London, and lives there to this day. He studied English in Nottingham which he loved, and graduated knowing only that he wanted to work in something charity or human rights related, but knew little about the how or what.

He ended up getting a job through a guy he played football with – he had started an innovations company called ?What If!,  that needed a runner, and he thought it would be a good short term option.

?What If! invents new products and services for clients, trains their people to be more creative, and increase the innovation capacity of their organisations. They also launch commercial businesses and support social entrepreneurs to develop their ventures. They are about 120 people, based largely in London, with offices in NY, Sydney and Manchester. It has been named the FT’s best place to work for the last two years!

After about a year at this company, James found that they also had social aspirations, so together they crafted what that might look like and then launched a social responsibility team called Footprint. His role now is coordinating Footprint. He finds social entrepreneurs to work with, and then organise for the right ?What If! skill resources to be given.

He also looks after their overall Corporate Social Responsibility programme; managing their ethical and environmental performance, fundraising, volunteering, and co-ordinating their reporting process. Current projects include getting ?What If! creativity IP into schools, taking teams to work on enterprises in the developing world, and writing a book telling the stories of 20 social entrepreneurs.

James loves what he does and believes in what his team is trying to create. Plus he gets the added bonus of being responsible for the ‘nice bit’ of a commercial company. He also fundamentally believes that ?What if! has some very smart people who given the opportunity to work with social entrepreneurs can do great things.

So why does he want to go on the Learning Journey? Firstly to see how relevant ?What If! skills would be to social enterprises in the developing world, and whether there would be a cultural fit if they were to take teams overseas. Secondly he is also looking for a bit of personal inspiration; having been at ?What If! 5 years a fresh experience in a totally different environment, the front line you could say, will be really valuable for him.

On a personal front, he gets most excited by great food (especially farmers markets), live music, getting his backpack out for a trip, and playing Sunday league football!

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