Cat Hobbs
Cat is the founder and director of We Own It, which she set up in 2013 to be a voice for public service users. We Own It makes the case for public ownership and has won many campaign victories for people not profit. Cat previously ran a successful local rail campaign in Bristol before lobbying nationally on behalf of bus and train passengers at Campaign for Better Transport. She has also worked in communications at a sustainability consultancy. Cat studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University. Find her on X here.
Matthew Topham
Matthew works as a Lead Campaigner for Better Buses in West Yorkshire alongside a diverse coalition, including trade unions and civil society groups. Before joining We Own It, he helped campaign for a green and socially just recovery to the coronavirus crisis and for racial and gender equality in science education and academia.
Johnbosco Nwogbo
Johnbosco Nwogbo works as Lead Campaigner at We Own It. He got his start in campaigning in the mid-2010s at the University of Fort Hare, South Africa, as part of the Fees Must Fall and Decolonise the Curriculum movements. For the three years before joining We Own It, he has been a campaigner for renters and community rights as part of ACORN the community union. You can follow Johnbosco on Twitter here.
Hugo Fearnley
Hugo is the Press and Communications Lead at We Own It. Hugo ran his family business for many years before standing for Parliament in his home town of Whitby in 2019. He has recently worked as a Political Adviser to Jamie Driscoll, the former North of Tyne Metro Mayor. Hugo lives in the North East of England and is a member of the Common Sense Policy Group, based at Northumbria University.
John Kay
John is the Communications and Campaigns Support at We Own It. He worked in communications with a national Industrial and Provident Society providing housing and support for people with learning disabilities or mental health problems, and also at Oxford University Press. He has also served as a Board Member for West Oxfordshire Citizen's Advice, advising on marketing and public relations, and a Committee Member for the Institute of Internal Communications.
Liz Peretz
Liz is on our Board. She has campaigned against privatisation in health and social care for over 20 years. She is also a long term campaigner against the unjust system of detaining migrants, indefinitely, without trial. This system has been largely privatised and has become yet another vehicle for private profit. A lifetime socialist, she has witnessed the dismantling of our public services, and is passionate in her fight to get them back into our own hands. She is a retired public services manager, a historian of social policy, and is an associate fellow at the University of Oxford's Department of Social Policy and Intervention.
Fran Bury
Fran is the Treasurer on our Board. She is a Public Health Registrar in London, and has previously worked in the voluntary sector, local government and for a small consulting firm. She has been a Green Party member and activist for some years and has particular interests in climate change, social justice and making public services as effective as possible.
Tom Schuller
Tom Schuller is the newest member of our Board. His professional life has been mainly in adult education, as Dean of
Continuing Education at Birkbeck and before that as professor of lifelong learning at
the University of Edinburgh. He chaired the Governing Board of the Working Men’s
College in London from 2008-2018, and recently stepped down after six years as
chair of the Prisoner Learning Alliance. Tom’s latest book - The Paula Principle: how
and why women work below their competence level - was published in 2017.
David Hall
David Hall is on our Board. He is Founder and former Director of the Public Services International Research Unit (PSIRU) at the University of Greenwich, which researches privatisation and public services worldwide. He works internationally with trade unions and civil society on the problems of privatisation and ways of returning services to the public sector.