Meet Our Team

Where would Harriet be without her volunteers?

Shared Passions would never have come to fruition without the support, skills and enthusiasm of volunteers and the organizations that decided to come onboard, it has truly been a shared passion.

Harriet Thomas

Founder Harriet Thomas is a young social entrepreneur

While studying Social Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, Harriet recognized the importance of individual empowerment in issues related to caring. After graduating, she went on to work in Childcare and elderly care, and acquired an in-depth understanding of the social care system in both the public and private sectors. In response to her awareness of the needs and concerns of parents, families, individuals and care workers in the UK, she established a small recruitment agency, Intelligent Caring, which offered a streamlined approach to matching people who needed care, with those who worked in the care sector. Harriet went on to build iCaring, which matched online cares service users to personal assistants and her most creative social project Shared Passions.

You can visit Hatty’s video blog here http://www.virginmediapioneers.com/members/harrietthomas/ for more information about how she has created this unique digital service especially for those with individual care needs across the UK. Share Passions is the culmination of this vision and experience in the care sector and is supported by UNLTD, Channel 4 (4iP) and Virgin Media Pioneers.

Ashish Kihor – Developer Graduated Summer 2010 The University of Sheffield, Masters Degree in Advanced Software Engineering (MSc-Eng),  Ashish was Harriet’s first key enthusiastic volunteer, was able to explain to her a bit more about coding through the website process and help Harriet maintain her passion of caring and technology which is an interesting combination.

Ollie Scheers – Graphic Designer:  Works for the online sales team for British Telecom and his passion is digital accessibility, optimising customer experience on websites. In his spare time he is starting up a social enterprise myself called Digital Paint Pot which offers free design resource from volunteers (students and professionals in the creative industry .

Rupy Kaur: Campaigner for Student Disability Rights. NUS Disabled Students’ Officer passionate about raising awareness of disabled student’s rights and access to Higher Education,