Rebecca graduated in 1990 and spent twelve years in The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. After leaving she combined raising her family with charity work working as a trustee and fundraiser for a number of charities focused on education both in the UK and in Nepal before co- founding Network, a registered charity and social inclusion initiative with the aim of providing young people with inspiring work placement and mentoring opportunities otherwise not available to them.
Since 2022, Rebecca has been working to support Ukraine and she has travelled extensively in country personally delivering essential supplies and humanitarian aid. She has established networks of volunteers and experts to fundraise and to co-operate and she is an advisor to The World Extreme Medicine Fund providing support for the supply of medical supplies and medical training to communities and front line medics in Ukraine.
Rebecca’s interest for her time at Cambridge on the Better Futures Programme is to examine the impact and contribution of civil society in crisis, whatever that crisis might be. Her work in Ukraine has demonstrated the power of “unconventional statecraft” where volunteers have had to step in to supply communities who lack resources. She draws on her deep knowledge and experience of working in Ukraine, often close to the frontline, for a range of voluntary initiatives in the country, working not only to achieve the specific practical tasks in demanding and dangerous circumstances, but also to connect the various initiatives to each other; to local Ukrainian officials, military personnel and citizens; and to sources of funding.
The question is how can we “bottle” the initiative, courage and commitment of volunteers and roll this capability out much more widely, without introducing rigidity and bureaucracy and what benefits does this voluntary work have on societies more generally? What is the role of civil society when governments are not trusted and/or are unable to meet need? In Ukraine, given the very demanding and sometimes dangerous circumstances of the work, the voluntary nature of the tasks, and the requirement to respond very flexibly to the situation on the ground at a political, strategic and tactical level while remaining safe and ethical is a significant intellectual challenge that goes beyond normal management questions, and she believes will require imaginative study across psychology, economics, politics and perhaps many other subjects.
