Welcoming Gabriella, our new Youth and Community Engagement Officer

Gabriella will be working closely with young people aged 13-27 and 18-25, as well as parents and carers affected by allergies, to develop supportive and purposeful engagement programmes. Her role will focus on creating spaces in which members of the allergy community feel listened to, represented and empowered to share their experiences and connect with others.

Through discussion and co-production, Gabriella will encourage participants to help shape Allergy UK’s initiatives, resources and campaigns. She will also support young people and families to raise awareness of the practical, social and emotional challenges that can accompany allergic disease, ensuring that their experiences help guide Allergy UK’s future work and drive meaningful change.

Gabriella’s background and experience

A Cambridge History graduate, Gabriella brings over three years’ experience working with young people as a professional humanities tutor and mentor, specialising in History, English and Drama.

Working both independently and through a range of education agencies, she has provided one-to-one tuition to more than 40 students aged 11–19 across the UK and internationally. This has included tutoring young people with a range of additional needs, such as dyslexia, ADHD, autism and narcolepsy, some of whom have found that traditional school environments do not always accommodate the way they learn best.

At the heart of her work has been building trusted, long-term relationships with young people and their families, adapting her approach to individual students, helping them to grow in confidence, develop their own academic voice and build a genuine love of the subject. She has supported students in achieving a variety of academic goals, from reaching target grades in examinations, to successfully navigating admission to leading universities.

Alongside tutoring, Gabriella has experience in mentoring, creative project coordination and public engagement. As a volunteer at the Churchill War Rooms, she helped bring history to life for visitors from a wide range of backgrounds through accessible and engaging interpretation. As History Representative at Newnham College, Gabriella supported younger students with academic, social and wellbeing concerns. Through her involvement in theatre, she has also gained experience in performance, direction and production, including taking university productions from development through to the Edinburgh Fringe, shadowing a professional director on a production placement, and helping to develop educational materials for schools.

Gabriella also brings personal insight to the role through her own experience of living with multiple severe allergies, asthma and eczema. Having navigated the everyday practical, social and emotional effects of allergies from a young age, she understands the importance of ensuring that young people feel safe, included and confident in advocating for their needs.

Her role and future focus

Gabriella’s focus is to build welcoming, trusted and sustainable communities where every member can gain something meaningful, whether that is emotional support, practical advice, opportunities to contribute to advocacy, or a chance to help shape wider change. In her first few months, she will focus on strengthening the existing 18-25 group and launching a 13-17 group and a parent/carer group, establishing a consistent programme of activity, gathering insight into members’ needs, and creating clear pathways for participation and leadership.

Her approach is built around the principles of Connect, Empower and Influence: creating opportunities for people to build meaningful peer connections, develop confidence and practical skills, and have a genuine voice in shaping change. She is passionate about ensuring these groups are genuinely co-produced, with the voices, experiences and ideas of young people and families fundamental to their development and direction. Members will be encouraged not only to access support, but also to contribute to projects, resources, campaigns and wider organisational conversations.

A key priority will be increasing engagement and recruitment through social media, peer-led outreach and partnerships with schools, universities and healthcare providers. She is also keen to expand opportunities for in-person events, recognising their importance in strengthening relationships and building a genuine sense of belonging for young people.

Looking ahead, Gabriella hopes to develop new leadership opportunities, particularly for 18–25-year-olds, including mentoring younger members and taking on project leads in areas such as social media or event planning. Ultimately, her goal is to create a reliable, inclusive network that empowers people to feel heard, build confidence and play an active role in shaping the future of the allergy community.

I’m thrilled to be joining Allergy UK at such an exciting time in the allergy landscape. The launch of the National Allergy Strategy and the implementation of Benedict’s Law this year demonstrate just how far awareness and campaigning have come in recent years. I look forward to placing young people and families living with allergies at the heart of the next stage of that progress.

Allergy UK’s work feels deeply personal to me, and my own lived experience has made me passionate about helping other young people feel less alone, less embarrassed and more confident in advocating for themselves. Key to that is amplifying youth and patient voice. I truly believe that young people and their families are experts in their own experiences and that their perspectives are just as essential to understanding the realities of living with allergy as clinical expertise. I’m excited to help create communities where those experiences, ideas and insights can be shared and where they can help shape the future of the allergy community.