Jonathan Harper

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

SKILLS

ABOUT JONATHAN HARPER

Jonathan Harper is an award-winning social entrepreneur with over 20 years’ experience building programmes that help young people develop leadership, wellbeing and real-world skills through action in their own communities.He has partnered with organisations including Vodafone, McKinsey and Amazon Web Services, created youth leadership initiatives for the UK Government, and worked with the LEGO Foundation to promote playful learning and youth voice. He has also partnered with Global Action Plan and Persil to pilot and scale a UK schools programme focused on compassionate values and everyday behaviour change.Following the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, Jonathan created the Legacy Careers Programme, supporting young people into employment and further training. From 2012 to 2019, he led the delivery and scaling of the National Citizen Service (NCS) across nine cities in England and delivered the Leaders programme in partnership with central government. Following the Grenfell Tower tragedy in 2017, Jonathan helped establish a West London summer programme to support local children and families.In 2013, Jonathan co-founded Global Social Leaders (GSL), which has supported more than young people to deliver over 3,500 social action projects across 100 countries, responding to the UN Global Goals. GSL uses project-based learning to help students move from ideas to action, building skills in teamwork, planning, partnerships, communication and impact.In 2025, Jonathan worked with Purposeful Ventures to develop and scale Maths Camps, providing residential learning experiences that build confidence, belonging and aspiration for young people from under-represented backgrounds.Jonathan founded CanTeam in 2023, a community-dining model that transforms school canteens into welcoming spaces for families and local residents, tackling barriers to healthy eating while strengthening school–community connections. CanTeam was recognised as a Gamechanger in the Big Education Challenge by Big Change in 2023, named Co-Winner in 2024, and is now being scaled across schools in England.He is a Global Alumnus of Enactus, a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts (RSA), and a recipient of an RSA Catalyst Award for Global Social Leaders. He serves on advisory boards including The Divergent School Group, Future Solutions, DISHED (a UK research project exploring state-subsidised “public restaurants”), and the British International School of Ukraine, and is a Trustee of Svitlo Education Ukraine.