Jo has worked with local authorities and charities to use systems thinking to inform strategy and operational delivery, primarily in relation to tackling child criminal exploitation. She has worked with the Board and Senior Leadership Team of SHiFT, a national charity seeking to break cycles of children caught up in and affected by crime, helping them to define and structure their ambitions for systems change across children’s social services, youth justice, education, health and housing services.
She previously spent nearly a decade working in central government. Her previous roles include Criminal Justice Evidence and Change Lead at the Youth Endowment Fund, Head of the Serious and Organised Crime Unit in His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service, Senior Adviser in the Prime Minister’s Implementation Unit, Head of Performance and Planning at the Legal Aid Agency, and Public Affairs Adviser to the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Jo is passionate about developing long-term, sustainable, community-led solutions to complex social issues. To better understand how to use systems thinking approaches in complex policy and operational delivery spaces she has undertaken Policy Fellowships with the Royal Academy of Engineering (applying engineering and systems thinking to tackling child criminal exploitation); Cambridge University’s Centre for Science and Policy (applying an ecological lens to Serious and Organised Crime); and a Churchill Fellowship (looking at how best practice developed in New Zealand to support individuals affected by sexual violence might be applied in the UK). In 2024 she was also a Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University’s Centre for the Future of Intelligence, thinking about what AI might mean for crime ecosystems.