Cat Hobbs
Cat is the founder and director of We Own It. Cat ran a successful local rail campaign in Bristol before working at Campaign for Better Transport for three years where she lobbied nationally on behalf of bus and train passengers. She has also worked for a credit union and a sustainability consultancy. Cat studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University. Cat is on twitter here, and you can find out more about her in this interview with the New Statesman.
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.
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.
Imogen Thomas
Imogen is the Press and Communications Lead at We Own It. She has a background in housing activism, campaigning for landlord licensing and against DSS discrimination. Having worked in libraries and the NHS, she believes that our public services should be in public hands.
Kate Linnegar
Kate is the Office Manager at We Own It. From 2013 she set up a branch of the Peoples Assembly in Swindon, campaigning against austerity cuts to our communities and public services. After that, she set up and was the secretary of ACORN Swindon, fighting for the rights of renters and community services.
John Kay
John is the Communications and Campaigns Support at We Own It. He has a background as a communications specialist working for a national Industrial and Provident Society and, latterly, at Oxford University Press, and as a Board Member at West Oxfordshire Citizen's Advice advising on marketing and public relations. Having retired in 2022 after a 25-year career he felt compelled to join We Own It on the strength of its cause, campaigning, and reputation.
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.
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.
Kamaljeet Gill
Kamaljeet is on our Board. He is a policy officer focussing on public services at the Trades Union Congress (TUC). He has been at the TUC for four years, and has previously worked as a policy officer at the Electoral Commission and a research and policy analyst at the Runnymede Trust. He also serves on the board of Jubilee Debt Campaign and StopWatch.
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.
Our Advisors
Sampson Low
Sampson Low is Head of Policy at UNISON where he has supported members fighting privatisation. He previously worked for the Office for National Statistics as a researcher and was the local Branch Secretary for the IPMS (now Prospect) union branch.
Satoko Kishimoto
Satoko Kishimoto is a researcher with the Transnational Institute, and was an environmental activist in Japan in the 1990s. She advocates for the public ownership of water, and has co-authored books on reclaiming public water and remunicipalisation.
George Woods
George advises us on campaign strategy and media. He works at the New Economics Foundation think tank, helping campaigners for social and economic justice to develop their knowledge and skills. Previously he worked as a trade union officer and community organiser, building popular support for public ownership of the railways and against cuts to local train and bus services.
Neal Lawson
Neal Lawson is chair of the pressure group Compass and author of the book All Consuming. He serves on the Board of UK Feminista and is an associate member of the Bauman Institute at the University of Leeds.
Colenzo Jarrett-Thorpe
Colenzo Jarrett-Thorpe is a National Officer (Health) for Unite the Union. He also sits on the NHS Staff Council Executive and NHS Pensions board on behalf of the Union. He was previously seconded to work on behalf of the EU via ACAS as a pre accession social dialogue adviser in Romania between 2004 and 2006 and has served his community as a school governor and chair of a community centre trust. He holds degrees from the University of Manchester and the London School of Economics.
Dan Gregory
Dan Gregory is an independent advisor on the funding and finance of mutual and social enterprise, working both on policy at a national level and in practice at a grassroots, local level. He is currently Director of the Social Economy Alliance.
Clifford Singer
Clifford is director of progressive design agency Social Spark, and has founded or co-founded a series of online campaigns including MyDavidCameron, False Economy and Who Funds You.
Hilary Wainwright
Hilary Wainwright is a fellow of the Transnational Institute, and co-editor of Red Pepper magazine. She is a leading researcher and writer on how to strengthen democracy in the face of corporate power and on democracy - rather than market - driven strategies for public service reform and the positive role that trade unions and public service users can play in this process.
We're also lucky to have Rich Lott from Artful Robot stitching together the technology that runs the website.