Sarah Jane O'Neill
Specialisms: Domestic Abuse, Lived Experience, Intergenerational Trauma, Philanthropy for 'unpopular causes'
Sarah Jane is a senior philanthropy consultant and writer who specialises in connecting high net worth individuals to social justice causes.
Her entrepreneurial and emotionally intelligent approach has provided her with a track record of delivering tangible results for high profile charities and campaigns for over 15 years, in areas such as homelessness, early years education, mental health and LGBT rights.
In addition to her experience as a practitioner, she has a Masters in Philanthropic Studies where she received a distinction for her dissertation - the UK’s first primary research study into why major donors are not making transformational gifts to female domestic abuse services and what might unlock these opportunities. As a child survivor of domestic abuse, she brings lived experience to this subject and is particularly interested in the roles of shame, othering, personal responsibility and patriarchal control.
Sarah Jane trained as an actor at the Oxford School of Drama and her knowledge and interest in theatre and performance have been influential throughout her career. She regularly writes and speaks about philanthropy, and blogs at The Flâneuse Diaries, which is dedicated to her other passions of travel and memoir.
