Saboohi Bukhari
Saboohi brings 23 years experience in the charitable sector amplifying the voices of the most marginalised and disadvantaged people and bringing them to the forefront of decision-makers. She is passionate about justice, equality and human rights having grown up as a young carer alongside her sister who has profound and multiple learning disabilities and complex health needs.
With 16 years of experience in leadership roles in business development, fundraising, strategy and comms and marketing, she has incubated and led a user-led social enterprise creating employment opportunities for 15 leaders with lived experience and managed a company rebrand and website following a merger. In the last 4 years, she led and secured multi-year contracts worth £6.7m in her role as Head of Business Development at The Advocacy Project, extending services across London with a national/international service and doubling the staff team. At the forefront of all service design and governance models have been Experts by Experience, Community Leadership and People in the Lead.
Saboohi believes that in order to address the power inequities inherent in our system, philanthropy has a unique and important role to play in embedding people-centred and community-led approaches like participatory grantmaking. She is particularly interested in seeking ways to make funding better and more accountable to the beneficiaries whose lives they set out to improve and manages an overseas charitable trust in her spare time.
Saboohi has a BSC in Sociology and Economics from City, University of London where she returned as an honorary lecturer facilitating user involvement in the speech and language therapy curriculum.
SKILLS: user-led leadership, business development, business incubation, partnership development, marketing and communications.
INTERESTS: co-production, community-led approaches, innovation, social justice, equality, human rights, philanthropy, international development.