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YEFJon Yates — no licensed photograph is available, so the sector leader plate is shown instead.

Sector leader

Jon Yates

Executive Director, Youth Endowment Fund

Youth Endowment Fund is based in Hackney South and Shoreditch (London) — the organisation’s base, not a personal address.

Press citations

1

Topic

1

Hospital discharge / bed-blocking

Last quoted

Aug 2026

Jon Yates: key facts

Kind of voice
Sector leader
Role
Executive Director
Organisation
Youth Endowment Fund
Organisation based in
Hackney South and Shoreditch
Quoted on
Hospital discharge / bed-blocking
Tracked press citations
1
Most recently quoted
27 Aug 2026

Who Jon Yates is

Jon Yates is the founding Executive Director of the Youth Endowment Fund (YEF), a £200 million independent charitable trust established in 2019 with a mandate from the Home Office to prevent children and young people becoming involved in violence. In this role he advises government, schools, police forces, youth charities and the youth justice system on evidence-based approaches to keeping young people safe. Before joining YEF, he served as Chief Policy Adviser to the Secretary of State for Education from 2018 to 2019, overseeing the Department for Education's policy on schools, colleges, children's services and universities. He co-founded a series of charities and programmes including The Challenge, National Citizen Service and HeadStart, which collectively reach 1 in 6 people in the UK over their lifetime. He is the author of 'Fractured: Why our societies are coming apart and how we put them back together' (HarperCollins) and has been featured across BBC News, Sky News, ITV News, Radio 4, the Guardian, the Telegraph and the Independent.

“Too many young people are struggling with their mental health and can't get the support they need. It's no surprise that some are turning to technology for help. We have to do better for our children, especially those most at risk. They need a human not a bot.”

References for this biography

  1. 1.Welcoming Jon Yates, our new Executive Director | Youth Endowment Fund — Establishes Jon Yates as first Executive Director of YEF, his career background, policy adviser role at DfE, and co-founding of National Citizen Service
  2. 2.Contact | Youth Endowment Fund — Establishes YEF's head office address: 1st Floor, 64 Great Eastern Street, London, EC2A 3QR
  3. 3.Jon Yates – The RSA — Confirms role as Executive Director of YEF, £200m fund, and X/Twitter handle @jonpayates
  4. 4.Jon Yates – Aevitas Creative Management — Confirms media appearances across BBC News, Sky News, ITV News, Radio 4, Guardian, Telegraph and Daily Mail; and role designing the National Citizen Service
  5. 5.What have the Youth Endowment Fund been doing over the past five years? | Youth Endowment Fund — Establishes YEF's achievements under Yates including the YEF Library and YEF Toolkit, and data on children affected by violence
  6. 6.Impetus | Youth Endowment Fund — Confirms YEF was established in March 2019 by Impetus with a £200m endowment and ten-year mandate from the Home Office
  7. 7.Jon Yates – HarperCollins Publishers UK — Confirms authorship of Fractured and co-founding of The Challenge and More in Common
  8. 8.About Me – Jon Yates — Jon Yates's personal website confirming his leadership of YEF and co-founding of National Citizen Service, HeadStart and More in Common

Notable achievements

  • Appointed as first Executive Director of the Youth Endowment Fund in 2021, leading a £200 million endowment to reduce youth violence across England and Wales. Source ↗
  • Co-founded and helped scale the National Citizen Service, which became the fastest growing youth programme in Europe, working with over half a million young people over a decade. Source ↗
  • Published 'Fractured: Why our societies are coming apart and how we put them back together' with HarperCollins, receiving endorsements from David Lammy MP and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Source ↗
  • Built the YEF Library, described as the largest evidence base in the world on what helps and hurts children in relation to violence, and the free YEF Toolkit making that evidence publicly accessible. Source ↗

Recent social activity

  • This was another highlight of the last year for me

    x.com ↗

  • This was such a highlight for me of last year “Children’s Commissioners’ ambassadors chat with Jon Yates”. We chatted about crime and how we keep children safe.

    x.com ↗

Where Jon Yates has been quoted

  1. ‘I feel it’s a friend’: quarter of teenagers turn to AI chatbots for mental health supporttheguardian.com · 27 Aug 2026

Related media coverage

Recent UK press coverage of their topics — not necessarily citing them directly.

Contact & links

Organisational contact points only, each taken from a page the organisation publishes itself. No personal or direct contact details are held or shown.

Chief executives, directors and spokespeople of trade bodies, representative associations and charities speaking for the sector. Citations are counted by an automated scan of UK press coverage and may be incomplete. Roles, biographies and contact details are researched and human-reviewed before they appear here; anything not yet reviewed is simply absent rather than shown unverified. This profile was last updated on 5 Oct 2026. See the methodology for how this page is built, or email contact@bridgeheadcommunications.com to correct anything on it.