For nearly fifteen years, I’ve worked at the intersection of campaign communications, political storytelling, journalism and movement organising, helping those affected by injustice and working for change to tell powerful stories, build public support and put pressure on those in power.
Over that time, I’ve been honoured to work alongside survivors, migrant workers, refugees and human rights defenders from across the UK and the Global South, supporting people directly affected by injustice to tell their own stories and build campaigns for change. My approach is rooted in a deep conviction: communications should be about more than publicity for the sake of publicity. At its best, storytelling shifts power and gives voice to the world we want to win by making injustice impossible to ignore and strengthening grassroots leadership.
I’ve led communications strategies and campaigns across workers’ rights, migration and refugee rights, climate justice, international and economic justice, public services, gender and survivor justice and state accountability. I have worked with organisations including War on Want, Right to Remain, Refugee Week, Rape Crisis, INQUEST, Mothers Rise Up and the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB), where I led the Media & Communications team until 2023.
Today I continue this work as a strategist, writer and trainer, including strategic communications consultancy for climate campaign Mothers Rise Up. I’m particularly interested in approaches that embed communications into campaigning from the beginning, develop lived-experience leadership rather than treating people as “case studies”, and leave organisations with stronger skills, systems and relationships after the work is finished.
As a writer, I’m represented by the fantastic folks at OWN IT! literary agency and since 2024 I’ve been authoring The State of Britain is Killing Us, a narrative nonfiction book forthcoming with Orion Publishing. Told through the lives of six people who died before their time and the loved ones who fought for answers afterwards, the book explores preventable death, institutional power and the political choices that shape whose lives are protected. As a journalist, I have written opinion and analysis on social policy, inequality and justice for the Guardian, the Independent, the i, Al Jazeera, Red Pepper, New Internationalist and others.
My approach is also deeply informed by lived experience. After the death of my cousin Gaia Pope, a survivor of child sexual exploitation who was badly failed by police and health services, I led the grassroots Justice for Gaia campaign for five years. An historic inquest into Gaia’s death later identified more than 50 failings in her care and the search for her. Alongside civil-society partners and other bereaved families, I have continued campaigning for accountability and change, including through the Gemini Project.
That experience transformed how I think about public storytelling. I know first-hand both its power and its costs, which is why much of my training and communications practice focuses on trauma-informed storytelling, spokesperson wellbeing and lived-experience leadership: supporting people not simply to tell a compelling story, but to retain agency over it and build their confidence and power through the process.
I hold an MA in Creative Writing with Distinction from Birkbeck, University of London, and a first-class BA in Politics & Development Studies from SOAS, where I studied during the peak of the student movement and became involved in organising against austerity.
I’m now based in Heidelberg, Germany, working primarily with progressive organisations and movements across Europe and the UK.
I hold two degrees from the University of London, a 1:1 Creative Writing MA from Birkbeck College and 1:1 Politics & Development Studies BA from my time at SOAS where I studied during the peak of the student movement.
My name is Danish and pronounced My-enna, so I’m known as Mya for short. People do sometimes get confused and think I’m either two completely different people (untrue) or one person with a secretive alter ego (if true, incidental).
For more about my work, browse the rest of the site or get in touch.
You can also find me on LinkedIn and, more recently, Bluesky. I’m on Instagram too, but that’s mostly photos from walks and portraits of my cats.
