Eli joined Blagrave as CEO in 2022. Eli has overall oversight over all funding partnerships and sets our strategic direction, ensuring we are true to our mission and living our values.

He joined us from the philanthropy advisory and social change organisation Ten Years’ Time where he served as the Head of Social Justice and led on several powerful research reports focused on the need for the British funding landscape to be honest, ambitious, and authentic in their commitments to address racial injustice and the climate crisis among many other publications. He also worked to connect a new generation of philanthropists to ambitious changemakers transforming the world.

Eli has over 10 years’ experience in policy, research and strategy roles covering connecting issue areas such as the empowerment of young campaigners, LGBTQIA+ rights, climate justice, racial justice and much more. A running commitment in all of Eli’s work is to listen deeply to people with experience of an issue and enable them to lead when it comes to decisions on how to address an issue.

He is deeply passionate about disrupting traditional power dynamics between funders and the communities they wish to serve as well as seeking to transform the relationship between charitable giving and the investment practices behind the scenes. Eli is also extremely passionate about how we develop working cultures of care and centre joy in work that can often be hard to sustain ourselves through.

Eli now makes London his home but wants everyone to know he is a very proud Northerner and is not afraid to say that he thinks Manchester is (one of) the best cities in the world.

Email: ea@blagravetrust.org