Rushanara Ali is a Director and is responsible for the strategic direction of our international work and external relations.

Since joining the Young Foundation, Rushanara has established the organisation's research and action research programme which focuses on contemporary life and changing needs in urban and rural communities, drawing on direct observation and ethnography.

These include a major workstream on transforming neighbourhoods - which has paved the way for the Young Foundation's work on local innovation and empowering local communities across the UK. Other significant work streams include a major research programme on Mapping Needs in the UK which is backed by 11 leading Foundations, the ESRC and the Big Lottery Fund; research programmes in the fields of social innovation; youth crime; civil and political engagement; and belonging.

She has also initiated three new practical projects: UpRising programme of leadership development for young people which has been backed by the three main party leaders and went into action in 2008; Maslaha - an innovative project working with young Muslims to support them in dealing with the everyday dilemmas of living in Western secular societies; and Fastlaners - a 21st Century finishing school model to help unemployed graduates into work. Rushanara has also led the Young Foundation's international work programme - overseeing the establishment of the Social Innovation eXchange (SIX) which brings together a network of some two hundred organisations from around the world to help build the field of social innovation. She also has responsibility for the Young Foundation's external relations activities.

More about Rushanara

Before joining the Young Foundation, Rushanara worked at the Communities Directorate of the Home Office taking forward a work programme in response to the 2001 riots in the north of England. She has also worked at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office; as a Research Fellow for the centre left think tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research and as a Parliamentary Assistant.

She worked for Michael Young helping to develop a telephone interpreting company called Language Line and helped set up Tower Hamlets Summer University, a pioneering model which has cut youth crime in the area and has been successfully replicated around London. She is the Chair of Tower Hamlets Summer University and SummerUni London, a Trustee of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and a member of the Tate Britain Council.

She was a Commissioner for the London Child Poverty Commission; a Board Member of Tower Hamlets College; a Trustee of the Environment Trust; and a member of the Home office Working Group on Preventing Extremism established after the 7/7 London bombings. Rushanara studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University.

Recent publications (other than those published directly by the Young Foundation):

• Systemic Innovation in Vocational Education and Training (with Julie Caulier-Grice, OECD, 2008)

• Tacking Social Exclusion: Community Organisations in Civil Dialogue (IPPR, 2001)

• English Language for those entering school (Home Office, 2003)

• Mono-cultural schools and cohesion (Home Office,2003)

• Our House? Race and Representation in British Politics (with Colm O'Cinneide, IPPR 2002)

• Swell ideas (The Guardian 24 September 2008)

• Let power reflect the people (The Guardian, 20 February 2008)

• One year later...(with Geoff Mulgan, Prospect Magazine July 2006)

• Our riots ( with Geoff Mulgan, Prospect Magazine May 2006)

• The Angry East End (with Kate Gavron Prospect Magazine April 2006)

Contact

PA, Dawn Joseph: dawn.joseph@youngfoundation.org or call 020 8980 6263