The Team
We are a small, primarily part-time core team with a steadfast commitment to remain small in size, but with vast ambitions for transformative impact.
Surrounding our core team is a broad network of partners, allies, and collaborators each playing a crucial role in our collective mission. Together, we are dedicated to enhancing the capacity of civil society to navigate endings and transitions.
If you are interested in joining our team, we are currently hiring two Deceleration Hotline Navigators. You can find the full job description here. The deadline for application is 17 February 2025.
Iona Lawrence, Co-Founder and Chief Deceleration Officer
Iona spends most of her working week overseeing The Decelerator’s day-to-day operations and works with the team and our wider networks to steward our vision and strategy. Her passion for bringing endings out of the shadows and putting them on the table emerged gradually over a decade working in civil society organisations. Over this time Iona was part of some suboptimal endings, some better ones, and even some pretty good ones. Iona brings with her experience across civil society, from being founding Director of the Jo Cox Foundation, to being a community organiser in the refugee camps in Northern France, to being a trustee of the Rural Coffee Caravan, and many other things in between.
Louise Armstrong, Co-Founder
Louise plays a strategic role in The Decelerator, bringing her expertise from across civil society and philanthropy to our work. She dedicates approximately one day a month to our work. In her current 10 year cycle she’s wanting to make a contribution to reframing the culture and practices around how we view and value loss, grief, death and closures as part of the natural cycles of life and the overlooked part of transformation. Louise plays multiple roles in different parts of the change ecosystem - including Thirty Percy Foundation and School For Systems Change - and sees herself as a change maker, facilitator, systems change designer, coach and process doula.
Linda Craig, Hotline Deceleration Navigator
Linda is part of The Decelerator Hotline team fielding and providing calls to members of civil society considering organisational endings. Linda works for The Decelerator on an ad hoc, flexible basis and this enables The Decelerator to best meet the needs and requests of hotline callers. She is an experienced long-term and interim manager in the voluntary sector, having covered senior positions in a variety of organisations such as Vauxhall City Farm, Suzy Lamplugh Trust, Doteveryone, the International Longevity Centre and Switchback. Her permanent roles have included Co-Director at Drugscope, General Secretary of Quaker Peace and Social Witness and Director of Pesticide Action Network.
Josephine Knowles, Hotline Deceleration Navigator
Josephine is part of The Decelerator Hotline team fielding and providing calls to members of civil society considering and planning organisational endings. Josephine works for The Decelerator on an ad hoc, flexible basis and this enables The Decelerator to best meet the needs and requests of hotline callers. She has previously been involved in setting up a phone support service for women in the sex industry. Josephine is an accredited coach (ACC) and has her own experience of transitioning out of an organisation she co-founded and led for 26 years, and feels a call to support others through their 'endings'.
Lily Piachaud, Operations and Strategy Adviser
Lily leads on developing organisational systems and processes for The Decelerator and running day-to-day finance and operations. Lily works for The Decelerator on a flexible basis enabling us to draw on her skills and expertise as needed. She has been working for the past decade in a range of roles in the social change space. Her particular expertise and passion lies in helping people to birth things - ideas, organisations, processes, projects and systems - that have a goal to change our world for the better. Her most recent job was at New Constellations where she ran day-to-day operations and explored new forms of organisation and governance.
Max St John, Supervisor
Max provides the team with professional supervision both individually and as a unit. This gives everyone space to reflect on their practice (given the often challenging nature of the work) and to surface collective learning for constant improvement and course correction. Max works for The Decelerator for 1-2 days, flexibly over the month. While running - and closing - his own businesses and creative projects, over the past 20 years he has been working in organisational development, specialising in interpersonal communication and conflict, providing training and support for leaders and teams that are trying to turn the tide on some of society's trickiest issues.
Sieske Valk, Operations and Project Manager
Sieske is one of our small, largely part-time team's organised, efficient, and creative beating hearts. She brings extensive experience to The Decelerator, including her work supporting people through endings and transitions. This led her to establish (and later close) a social business focused on end-of-life care for animals.
The Council of Elders
The Council of Elders is a group of experienced advisors who are committed to supporting the impact of The Decelerator by providing strategic guidance, oversight, constructive challenge, and support both on a one-to-one and group basis.
Dame Julia Unwin is an experienced non-executive director, speaker, consultant, and mentor. Formerly the Chief Executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (2007–2016), she has chaired major initiatives such as the 2017-2018 Independent Inquiry into the Future of Civil Society and held a Carnegie UK Trust fellowship on kindness in public policy the same year.
A writer and speaker on philanthropy, governance, and civil society, her extensive publications include Why Fight Poverty? and Kindness, Emotions and Relationships. She currently serves as a non-executive director at Mears Group PLC and Yorkshire Water, Inaugural Chair of Smart Data Foundry, and Chair of Governors at York St John University.
Dame Julia has been honoured with the Charity Awards Outstanding Leadership Award (2010), three honorary doctorates, and a DBE in 2020. Learn more at www.juliaunwin.com.
John Hitchin
John Hitchin is a strategist, facilitator and researcher who has worked across the social sector for over fifteen years. He was previously CEO of Renaisi and developed influential thinking on place-based and systems change there. In a new partnership, Stories of Change, he supports organisations on questions of impact, collaboration and efficacy and how social change is understood and achieved. He is a single parent and poet.
Poppy Mardall
Poppy Mardall founded Poppy’s Funerals in 2012 to bring a fresh approach to an outdated and unregulated trade. Poppy has helped thousands of people to create a funeral that works for them and, in 2021, appointed a CEO to lead ambitious growth plans to normalise great care when someone dies. As Founder/Chair, Poppy guides the direction of Poppy’s and also has time for life, parenting and important projects like this one.
Sabrina Jones
Sabrina Jones works in the governance team of one of England’s largest multi-academy trusts, bringing extensive experience in education and the charity sector, focused on supporting children and young people. Her previous roles include Programme Manager for a careers charity, Session Support Worker for age-disputed asylum seekers, Behaviour Mentor and Deputy Safeguarding Lead at a secondary school, and Assistant Director for a tuition centre. She also founded and led Say It With Your Chest for five years, supporting young people at risk of school exclusion through workshops, mentoring, and training for schools and local authorities. Sabrina first connected with The Decelerator during the process of closing this organisation.