Most of my time is spent working with the Salt Business Network, working with Christian business leaders who want to use their business as a force for good in the world. That can be anything from analysing their supply chain and ensuring that there’s no modern-day slavery, to ensuring that tax is paid, to employing people on the margins of society.

I used to run a marketing and communications business. I was in Paris with the marketing team, in a building that was all brushed aluminium and steel. It felt good. The Managing Director of the company asked me to do a campaign for a product that was prohibitively expensive and might actually be bad for you. That was quite a moment. I’d thought a lot about running a business, but here I was faced with a dilemma. I said ‘yes’, and what was interesting was working to redeem the product.

Marketing can be hard-nosed, cut-throat and manipulative, but I’m not interested in that. I’m not sure that there was a right or wrong answer in that situation, but it’s about how your values impact the world through your faith.

What brings me alive now, is seeing people step into their fullness, that there is an opportunity within the ordinariness of life to step into something holy. There’s something extraordinary about bringing in a new hiring policy that levels up employment for people from the edges of society, as much as for those who went to Oxbridge. I’m passionate about that.

The pandemic has been a really hard time actually. I haven’t wanted to turn on the computer on Sunday for church, because I’ve been on it all week. But I take part on the Northumbria Community, which gets together to pray on Zoom three times a day. I’ve found that rhythm has been incredibly life-giving for my work. It’s not been dramatic, but it has been transformational to embed God into my day in a simple rhythm. I’m loathe to go back to the Sunday service as the everyday has been so valuable.

Find out more about Everyday Faith as part of Renewal and Reform, aimed at creating a growing church for all people and in all places.