Supporting Pioneers
Building compassionate communities and organisations
Operations leader, strategist, and facilitator — at home from the halls of parliament to the science lab, building community and responsible leadership.
Parliament · Science and Research · Healthcare · Civil society · Hospitality · SMEs
I've spent years building leaders, increasing organisational capacity and supporting communities across an unusual range of environments. What that's taught me: the challenges of leadership are remarkably universal. Solutions are not.
I'm a systems thinker. This means that I find the connections between things that others treat as separate, and use those connections to design people-centred programmes, more resilient and accountable organisations, and more coherent strategies. Over my career, that's taken me from winning historic political elections in the UK and Australia, to a pollinator conservation citizen science laboratory at the University of Sussex, to nine years working at the frontier of medicine and wellness — medicinal cannabis advocacy, then supporting researchers, regulators, clinicians and patients navigate contested science — to a live-in incubator for creatives and experimenters, and most recently to end-of-life care and Death Doula training, because I've always wanted to understand what happens to consciousness when everything else falls away.
I spent nine years as Managing Director at United Patients Alliance, building a national patient advocacy charity's organisational capacity and standing, and sustaining relationships with NHS representatives, government ministers, and parliamentary committees. More recently, as Chief Operations Officer/Chief of Staff at the Garden — an 11-hectare site in northern Portugal hosting up to 600 guests — I led the full operational and cultural transformation of the organisation — 17 staff and 70 volunteers across six departments — building governance, HR, and systems infrastructure from scratch, and holding the organisation together through a period of serious founder conflict. Both roles taught me the same thing: building a genuine community and leading it responsibly are the same discipline. Today I run that discipline as a service, through CoCreate Change, my consultancy, where I'm embedded inside values-led organisations doing leadership coaching, organisational development, governance design, and change programmes that actually stick.
Underneath all of it is a long-standing love of facilitation. After graduation, I trained to teach language, and ended up regularly using those same skills to help boards, teams, and rooms full of strangers find a shared way forward. From facilitating co-founder mediation sessions to workshops and conferences of 800+ participants, I have inspired teams and individuals towards values-based alignment, and given them the tools and motivation to implement changes.
That same curiosity is what led me to start The Reveries, an initiatory project exploring what the Eleusinian Mysteries and other ancient death-and-consciousness traditions might look like reimagined for a modern context. It's currently on hold, but it's a good introduction to how I think.
I don't just support people to be better leaders — I have direct experience of leadership in many different environments. Teams of staff and/or volunteers consistently feedback that I provide the tools, the inspiration and the support for them to function at their highest level. This leads directly to robust teams, and resilient organisations. And happy and fulfilled people — a fundamental foundation of high-performing teams.
Team/staff management and development
Since 2023, designing and delivering strategy, OD, and change programmes for values-led organisations across the UK and Portugal. Recent clients span community organisations, NGOs, and SMEs, including Madeira Friends, Ingredient Communications, and Aura Funerals.
I've worked within politics to help establish safe seats for progressive voices in the UK and Australia, and lobbied for evidence-based policy including championing patient voices being left behind by the system, and contributing to environmental research and community engagement on biodiversity loss. These high-stakes, high-pressure campaigns changed hearts, minds, and national policy. I have also organised lobbying of elected representatives from external groups around specific policy change.
Actively organising for: General Election UK 2011 (won) · Federal Election Australia 2013 (won) · General Election UK 2015 (won) · ACT Assembly Election 2015 (doubled representation) · Federal Election 2016 (significant increase in vote share). Rescheduling medical cannabis in UK (won), advocating for holistic and evidence-driven policy around healthcare, science and research (ongoing).
My project management and business development skills were honed while leading 70+ social enterprises through a £1.3m business accelerator, designing and delivering innovative programmes in collaboration with the European Commission, universities, and other hubs across multiple European regions. This experience forms the backbone of the business development services I deliver through CoCreate Change, and I have directly supported the growth of:
I see connections where others don't, and thrive in unfamiliar environments — designing bespoke, highly targeted solutions for the leaders, organisations, and communities I work with. As Lead Organiser in Canberra, I designed and delivered training that increased the rate of persuasion of undecided voters from 50% to 80%. As Innovation Director, I designed and delivered interactive training for 800+ enforcement officers so they were equipped to remove dangerous medicinal products from shelves. From pioneering alternative policy in state and federal governments, to cutting-edge research on environmental issues, medicines and health, to my most recent fascination with end-of-life services and consciousness studies — I've designed communities, platforms, and even a TED talk with full audience engagement and participation.
"Working with Leila has been a game-changer for our organisation. We now stand on the precipice of great things and I feel confident." — Clark French, Founder, United Patients Alliance
"Leila accelerated our growth, enabling us to safely host large-scale events. Issues were addressed with patience and empathy." — Andre Ornish, Founder, The Garden Cultural Centre
"Leila truly understands the complexities of organisational change for SMEs. Highly recommended." — Richard Clarke, Founder and Managing Director, Ingredient Communications
"Leila was instrumental in making client meetings efficient, focussed and productive. We learned how to manage client expectations." — Bill Griffin, Founder, GriffCliff
"Leila has outstanding project and people management skills." — Caroline Lucas, former MP for Brighton, former leader of the Green Party of England & Wales
Here's my theoretical foundation:
I focus on three tenets of leadership — inspiration, facilitation, and accountability. Inspiration provides direction, unity and motivation, facilitation provides the tools and support for success and help navigating obstacles, and accountability ensures trust in leadership, fair treatment, clear communication and loyalty.
All groups of people develop an existing culture based on shared values, even if this has never been discussed or articulated. This group culture sets the parameters of engagement for contributors, which can significantly promote or restrict group aims. Through consciously exploring underlying values and consistently building an accountable culture, individuals, teams and groups are unlocked and supported to strategically build towards shared aims. Communications, systems, and processes are essential foundations built downstream to support culture.
To support communication, one needs to be vulnerable. To be vulnerable, one needs to feel safe and build trust. A sense of safety and trust is something great leaders can, and should foster for productive and communicative teams. I work closely with psychological theories of motivation and identity, enmeshing the individual with the collective to develop more resilient communities, teams, and organisations.
I use science, research, and data wherever possible to support decision-making and solution-design. However, I am not a dogmatist, and understand that every individual, group, community, or team is unique. My own unique history working within and pushing the envelope of our scientific understanding of the world has given me a knowledge and respect for science, along with its limitations. I work from an integrated interdisciplinary perspective.
People are most productive when they are happy, safe, and feel a sense of belonging and ownership.
The majority of people are mostly driven by intrinsic values (such as peace and unity), but our culture often requires acting in a way that conflicts with this.
Most conflict is due to insufficient or careless communication.
We are living through a significant shift in how people find meaning and purpose at work and in life, as technology takes on more of what used to be distinctly human skill. Organisations that plan for and adapt to this will be the ones whose people stay engaged.
If you're a founder, leader, NGO, or public-sector body looking for governance support, responsible leadership, or a steady hand through change for your community, I'd love to hear from you.
Start a conversationIf you're exploring an OD engagement, governance redesign, or change programme through CoCreate Change, let's talk about what you need.
Enquire about consultancyOr email me directly at leilagasimpson@gmail.com.