“Charity is where justice goes to die” someone argued during a panel discussion at an retreat that I was a part of over the summer. A damning indictment, met with applause, and which somehow sums up feelings I’ve had marinating for my whole working life. It’s a sentiment that drew me towards social enterprise as a route to change, ten years ago (after ten years before that in the charity sector) and which I’ve made space to reflect on more deeply as I’ve settled into a freelance rhythm in recent years.
My 2023 ‘year-note’ marked my first full year of freelancing – a marker that was already wildly under-ambitious given some people seem capable of producing week-notes! In 2024, I didn’t even write one at all. Life, work, the world; other things took priority.
But here I am again. Three years into this experiment of working independently. And while I’m not doing a neat round-up of client work or highlights (you can read all about my latest work on my portfolio page), I am pausing to reflect on something that’s been quietly threading its way through it all: voice.
More specifically, what it means to find your voice in social justice work, when you’re not speaking through an institution, when you’re not playing by someone else’s rules.
Belonging (and not)
Truthfully, I was never that good at keeping my mouth shut during the 20 years I spent working inside organisations! From the outside, a middle-class white woman, I’ve often looked like I fit in. Just about polished enough. Confident enough. Comfortable enough in rooms where power sits. But I’ve never been very good at playing the game.
At 22, in a very junior role, I blurted out to my then-CEO, “It’s not all about you” as he regaled our team with a story of how inconvenient a significant flooding event in Pakistan had been to him during his visit (to be fair he took it very well).
At 29, I burnt my bridges giving brutally honest exit interview feedback about a manipulative boss, and was excruciatingly forced to style it out when I bumped into said ex-boss at a sector conference just weeks later.
At 38, I had my fingers burnt as I took my organisation on an anti-racism journey; Board members stood by as I was attacked for insisting on doing this work, quietly texting to say that they supported me but never saying so out loud.
And throughout my working life, I’ve tried my best to recognise my privilege and speak up alongside people and teams whose voices were being ignored or erased.
Whilst I might cringe at some of these moments, I don’t regret any it and I would do it again. But sometimes I wonder if I “got away with it” because I looked and sounded like I belonged. Was it safer for me to call out certain behaviours than it was for others? Almost certainly.
And yet. Like so many women…
At 27, an older male colleague cornered me in a dark basement corridor in our offices and informed me that I only got my new job because he advocated for my appointment. The implication, that I owed him a favour, was clear.
At 37, I was told my dream job was mine if I wanted it. In sharing this news with me, someone who should have known better told me he felt the Board were not being ambitious enough and advised me against accepting the role as I wasn’t up to the job.
At 41, the gender pay gap reared its head, as a male successor to me in a senior leadership role was offered a significantly highly salary than I had been paid to do the same job.
And throughout my working life, despite immense privilege, I’ve been patronised, interrupted and talked over. Watched the usual suspects take up more than their share of the space.
These experiences – some long ago and some more recent – shaped me in ways that I’m only recently recognising, not least in the way my gut reacts to these patterns of behaviour when I see them repeated towards me or towards others. My body now recognises the shape of those patterns before my brain catches up. I’m learning to trust that knowing.
Freedom (and responsibility)
It is now shaping the work I choose to do and the people I choose to work with. It’s also helped me ask better questions:
What’s mine to do? Where am I most in alignment with my values? How can I bring my best self—in service of something bigger than me?
The name Pragmatic Radicals still feels like a good container for those questions. It seems to have resonated with others who yearn to build bridges between old worlds and new ones, centring justice in place of charity, helping to seed new ideas in unexpected places, weaving, guiding and building. And I particularly love the way that Building Movement’s Social Change Ecosystem Map has helped give language to these roles.
This way of thinking about my work builds on a blog I wrote early in my freelance journey, challenging myself to develop my practice at Pragmatic Radicals through just and regenerative organisational design. How did I do so far? I think I have stayed true to all of the principles I set out, but one is still challenging me. It’s that tension between advocating for the boldest and most transformative actions we can imagine and settling for marginal changes that feel easier or more likely to get sign-off. Work that may be more comfortable but will not lead to the deep, systemic changes we urgently need to see in the world.
Because finding your voice in this work, for me, isn’t about getting comfy, nor is it getting louder, or more certain. In these darkening times, it’s about tuning into the signals and uncertainties. It’s about noticing where your values feel out of sync with your actions. It’s about choosing, again and again, to listen, to speak, to be in right relationship with others.
Especially when you have benefitted from the systems that are tearing us apart. Especially when you hold privilege that others do not. Especially when your actions are yours to own.
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Well, that was cathartic to write. And if you’ve made it to the end of this blog, thank you. I appreciate it. In the months ahead, I’m still working primarily with CIVIC SQUARE and the Climate Migration Collaborative, but I also have a limited amount of additional capacity for new collaborations. If my reflections on what it is to show up in this world haven’t put you off – do connect with me and my work. Maybe there’s something we can weave together.