The people shaping the movement

Originally from South Africa, David studied Business Science at the University of Cape Town before qualifying as a Chartered Accountant. He moved to the United Kingdom in 1977, where he became Treasurer of Marks & Spencer PLC. After leaving Marks & Spencer he co-founded a leasing company which he later sold in the late 1980s, before focusing increasingly on venture investment and social impact initiatives.

Over the past three decades David has founded and led a number of organisations addressing community health, trauma recovery, refugee inclusion and leadership development. He is the co-founder and Chair of One to One Children’s Fund and One to One Africa, organisations that have developed innovative community health, early childhood development and gender equity programmes in South Africa. These include the Enable Mentor Mothers programme, supporting families affected by HIV, and the Enable community health model and digital platform, designed to scale through cascaded training of community health workers.

David is also the co-founder and former long-standing Chair of the Paediatric and Adolescent AIDS Treatment for Africa (PATA) network, connecting hundreds of HIV clinics across Africa to share best practice and improve care for children and families.

In the refugee sector, David and his wife Dr Jenny Altschuler, a psychologist, co-founded One to One Kosova (now PEMA) and the Refugee Trauma Initiative (now AMNA), which provides trauma support and training for communities affected by displacement. He is also a founder of Future Leaders, a programme developing values-based leadership among young refugees and asylum seekers in the UK. At Humanity1st, David focuses on the long-term vision and development of the movement.

He holds a diverse portfolio of non-executive, funding and advisory roles across national charities, educational institutions and public bodies. This includes serving as a Trustee of the Mental Health Foundation, a member of BBC Children in Need’s North West Portfolio Committee and an Ambassador for the Institute of Directors. He also advises the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport on the National Youth Strategy.

Sami developed a non-extractive co-production framework through the UK Longitudinal Linkage Collaboration and now sits on the initiative’s Strategic Advisory Committee. He previously co-chaired the #iwill movement and now sits on the board of the #iwill Fund, which has leveraged more than £112 million in match funding to support youth social action. He also co-chaired the Anti-Racism Executive Committee at Safe Passage International, helping strengthen organisational accountability, governance and anti-racist practice.

His commitment to this work is grounded in lived experience, having spent more than a decade navigating the UK asylum system. At Humanity1st, Sami focuses on ensuring that ambitious ideas are supported by credible governance, intelligent risk management and partnerships capable of delivering sustained global impact, while ensuring the movement functions ethically and responsibly.

She spent a decade at Save the Children, most recently as Senior Advisor for Adolescent and Youth Empowerment. There she led the design of POWER4AY, a global framework for adolescent and youth empowerment implemented in Albania, Bolivia, Nepal and Uganda, and co-led the Adolescent Wellbeing Framework, A Critical Opportunity to Fulfil Human Rights and Drive Change, developed with more than a hundred experts worldwide. She also led the 2023 revision of the Life Skills for Success Toolkit, a guide to designing curricula and programmes that build the transferable skills young people need for work and life. More recently she led the multi country design of a youth skills certificate in the green, blue and circular economy for UNICEF across four Caribbean states.

She holds an MSc in Environment and Sustainable Development from University College London and completed executive training in Business Sustainability Management at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership.

Her commitment to this work is personal. She is raising children in a world she finds frightening, and she has chosen to spend her working life on the generation she believes can change it.

At Humanity1st, Alessandra is Strategic Partner, Systems and Learning. She designs the leadership pilots, develops the methodology and tools that allow partners to apply the principles in their own contexts, and turns what the pilots produce into learning the movement can reuse.