Anna harris, co-chair

Anna Harris was a UK delegate to the Y7 in 2019 and is beyond excited to bring the Y7 to life in the UK. She wants to make it an opportunity for all young people to feed into international decision making, have their voices heard and ultimately to create change. She has experience of empowering young people to do so, having created the Welsh branch of the Future Leaders Network, led the training of future changemakers for social enterprise Unloc and by representing young people on various youth forums (including heading up the fight against ‘corrugated carrots’ in her junior school council).

megan doherty, co-chair

Megan Doherty is a final year Politics and International Relations student at the University of Dundee. She has acted as the UK Young Ambassador to EU Youth Dialogue for Northern Ireland. Completing a national consultation on young peoples' views on Future of Work and Rural Youth. She is a trustee of Dundee Sustainability Group; working to make Dundee a more sustainable city. She was previously a member of the Y7 Design Working group. She is passionate about youth representation and wishes to ensure that young people are a critical component of national and devolved policy making.

anna saunders

programme and delegtates

Anna currently works at the the Home Office where she is engaged in youth intervention and community resilience initiatives, having joined the Civil Service as an Apprentice. Previously, she has worked with the Sutton Trust’s Widening Participation Programme, worked for a homelessness charity, coached young people in debate skills, taught Latin at a secondary school, and even worked as a professional chef for a year.

Anna believes that projects such as the Youth Summit have the ability to change negative attitudes towards politics among young people, as well as alter who young people believe policy is for, and who they think can, and should, make it. She is therefore incredibly excited to be part of the G7 Youth Summit’s Taskforce on the Programme and Delegates team, where she hopes to assist the inspiring young delegates in achieving their current political goals, as well as equip the next generation of policy makers and activists with the confidence and skills that they will need to make positive change in the future.

leah sier

programme and delegates

Leah’s passions involve helping people, through developing young people to achieve what they want to achieve and improving resilience among communities. Her main role for the last 5 years has been as a Trustee for ScoutsCymru, ensuring Scouting delivers a high-quality programme to all young people across Wales. She has a particular interest in environmentalism, mental health, and development.

Leah has a Masters in Geology and has an interest in the natural hazards, she is currently working as Youth and Volunteering Development Officer for St John Ambulance.

Leah is really excited to be part of the Taskforce and the Programme and Delegates Subgroup she gets to use her years of experience in youth empowerment and development to support young people on their journey to represent their countries at the Y7. Giving young people the tools and knowledge they need to succeed is a great opportunity, and Leah cannot wait to get started!

annie williams

programme and delegates

Currently working for the UK Government as a Civil Servant, Annie has also worked in consultancy and political advocacy. Annie has experience working with youth activist groups, particularly on the issue of Brexit, aiming to increase youth participation in politics and raise the profile of youth activists and issues within the UK Parliament. In her spare time, she enjoys being active, cooking and travelling.

Annie is excited to be taking part in the Y7 as a member of the Programme and Delegates sub-group. She is particularly enthusiastic about working with a talented group of taskforce members and delegates and is looking forward to working with other young people from around the world on major global issues such as climate change and the impact of Covid-19. She hopes that the Y7 will increase youth engagement and empowerment, allowing young people to influence international decision-making and create lasting change. Annie hopes that the Y7 will be an interesting and exciting event, increasing global cooperation at a time when the youth voice has never been more important.

michael ojetunde

comms, media and outreach

Michael is a penultimate year French and Economics student from the University of Warwick, currently on a placement abroad in Paris where he spent the first 3 months studying at the Sorbonne and is now completing a 6 month internship at Babylangues. Whilst studying, he is also a part-time student consultant for 180 Degrees Consulting, the world’s largest consultancy for non-profits and social enterprises. He is also Editor-in-Chief of More Life Magazine, a seasonal publication dedicated to interviewing successful young people from every industry who give guidance and advice to other young people trying to enter the same fields. He is also Managing Director for More Life group, a youth multimedia platform that hosts virtual and physical events ranging from networking events to day and night parties. He hopes to use his position as a Task Force member in the Media, Communication and Outreach team to destigmatise and remove the red-tape that surrounds youth engagement in political affairs. He is excited to be able to use mediums and platforms that the youth of today thrive upon to make political engagement much easier and more attractive to youths across all G7 countries.

shwetal shah

comms, media and outreach

Shwetal currently works at MediaCom Global as an International Technology Partnerships Manager, she is a Trustee at Volunteer Centre Camden and a Grants Committee Member at Youth Futures Foundation.

She has made documentaries on women in tech and young changemakers in the UK to address the lack of role model representation in the mainstream media and is currently establishing a scheme that gives mini-grants to young people in the UK to work on social action projects.

Shwetal has previously been part of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting 2018 Youth Forum Taskforce and is now part of the Y7 2021 Taskforce team. She is very excited to be part of this Taskforce because of the opportunity it presents to make the 2021 Y7 as inclusive and accessible as possible to young people from all corners of the UK by undertaking outreach activities aimed towards under-represented young people.

akanshya gurung

comms, media and outreach

Akanshya is currently the Campaigns and Advocacy Officer at a human rights NGO. She is also studying part-time at King’s College London towards a Master’s Degree in Environment, Politics and Globalisation.

Akanshya graduated from the University of Surrey with a Politics degree in 2019. During her time there, she was President of the Politics Society and an elected student officer in the Students’ Union. She also undertook internships in journalism and at the Houses of Parliament. 

Having had lots of previous experience in campaigning and journalism, Akanshya is thrilled to be part of the Comms, Media and Outreach team to contribute her skills and to develop new ones. She is keen to work with her team, as well as the other members of the Taskforce, in order to deliver an exciting and accessible Y7 2021 summit. Akanshya is especially looking forward to working with other like-minded young people. She is passionate about diversity and amplifying young people’s voices in politics and believes this opportunity will help foster this passion.

ayesha farah

COMMS, MEDIA AND OUTREACH

Ayesha Farah has qualifications in History and is a Queen Mary alumnus having recently graduated obtaining a post graduate degree in Public Policy. She is currently a campaigns officer for Send My Friend to School a UK civil society coalition of international development NGO’s, teachers’ unions and charities bringing together young people, politicians, teachers, civil society and media in joint campaigning to demand quality education for all children across the globe. Previously she was the Vice President of Somali Youth for Integrity, a youth group that is dedicated to helping the Somali community both in the UK and back home she supported and led a committee of 23 members in mobilising 45 University and youth institutions to help fundraise £151,000 on maternal health care in Somalia. Ayesha is very passionate on working with youth-on-youth issues which has been very central to her work – having previously volunteered in Tanzania at an orphanage, worked with Three Faiths Forum as a Parliamentor working with her fellow youth peers on raising awareness on Female Genital Mutilation to name a few. In 2016, Ayesha was shortlisted on to a UN programme in New York where she led and prepared presentations, negotiated and projected managed to deliver in front of senior former UN officials. Ayesha is very proud of her Somali heritage in which she feels a strong sense of duty to her community and a passion to help raise awareness and participate in making changes to the many issues they face. Ayesha is excited to be working with the Future Leadership Network as part of the implementation task force and is most excited to learn new abilities, develop leadership skills and work with like-minded individuals in what will be a big year for the UK as G7 and Y7 hosts.

stephen tutin

logistics

Stephen Tutin has been a long-term advocate for young people. He joined the #iwill campaign in 2016, a campaign which encourages all forms of youth social action. Since 2018, he has chaired the #iwill Evidence & Insights Collective, which convenes researchers and evaluators from across the youth sector to share, understand, and evaluate evidence, with the aim of improving the quality and quantity of youth social action across the whole UK.   

In his day job he works for EDF, initially joining as an apprentice. He now works as a Reactor Analysis & Criticality engineer, while also providing Project Management support to multiple other teams. Since 2019, he also has chaired EDF’s UK Young Professionals’ Network, which has over 800 members. In this capacity, he has organised many successful events and conferences for the network, and grown the influence of young professionals within the business.  

On the opposite side of the age spectrum, Stephen is also a trustee for Age UK Gloucestershire. Notably, he has played a key role in Age UK Gloucestershire’s “Raise your Voice” survey, in addition to his normal trustee duties.   

Stephen was interested in helping the Taskforce, attracted by the great ambition of 2021 Y7. The Future Leader Network has a clear focus on impact and engagement with young people across the UK, with the aim of leaving a lasting legacy. Stephen can bring both his evaluation and project management experience to the Taskforce, joining the Logistics team to help the 2021 deliver its ambitious goals.

marco contini

logistics

Marco is Italian, studied Physics in the UK and is now working in Malta! He loves hackathons, debates, startups - and generally having bit of a party.

Young people are literally the future. The Y7 should be more than just a high-powered meetup. We can galvanise the ambitions and dreams of us youth around the world, and channel those into practical proposals - so that real change can happen.

As a kid, he grew up outside of Europe. It made him passionate about geopolitics, and Africa. One day he’d like to go back there. We (the G7) need to forge real partnerships with growing nations and show that multilateral diplomacy can work for everyone.

His passion grew outside his studies, in his free time. Listening to talks, debating and eventually through a scholarship in Washington DC. Being involved in the Y7 taskforce is part of a longer, personal journey. He hopes other young people try what they’re passionate about, even if they don’t quite fit the mould. 

At uni, he liked making stuff happen. Students were interested in Finance, but there wasn’t a Finance society. So, he launched one with a few friends. That’s the can-do attitude we should inspire in every young person - that they too can make a difference in their community.

Perspective, is a big word for him. “Why not?” is his favourite question. So if at any point you think we’re lacking on either, tell him.