How a pair of pants turned a cleaner into an entrepreneur supporting women!

My Duvet Flip

Impact leadership

Spark innovation

Foster inclusion

Summary

Meet Sarah Jordan, CEO at Y.O.U Underwear.

Sarah Jordan is a recognised industry leader with over 20 years’ digital and business experience across not for profit, commercial and publishing sectors. She originally trained in Geography (meteorology and IT) wanting to be a weather forecaster, but after building a website to teach kids about the weather she moved into technology and worked for many years in the ‘tech for good’ space.

Following several high-profile client-side roles, including as Head of Digital Strategy at Oxfam and Digital Director at the MS Society, Sarah set up her own strategic consultancy focusing on business transformation, strategy and organisational change. She remains an active speaker and judge at UK and international events and mentors on a number of industry programmes. Sarah never expected to end up running an underwear business! Everything changed on a trip to Uganda in 2016, where she took part in the Uganda Marathon. While volunteering in local villages she came face-to-face with the problems associated with not having underwear. In some communities 1 in 10 girls miss school on their periods due to a lack of underwear and sanitary products – up to 12 weeks a year! This inspired Sarah to found Y.O.U Underwear on a buy-one-give-two model with the charity Smalls for All.

In addition to her work with Y.O.U Underwear, Sarah is a trustee of the Beam Foundation, a charity and crowdfunding platform that supports homeless people by getting them into employment and training. For the past 7 years she has also run a positive change agency called BOLD which helps women achieve success in all areas of their lives.

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