The People Powering the Project: YPIP Core Team Introductions

Uncategorized Monday 13 April 2026

Written by Lauren Cox, Holly Ingram and Lizzie Bonsor

We have often been referred to as the ‘backbone’ or the ‘beating heart at the centre of YPIP’, so we thought we’d take this opportunity to tell our networks a little more about us as individuals.

Lizzie Bonsor, Project Administrator 

Prior to YPIP, I taught elementary students in Asia for three years. I have also worked for a wide range of refugee-facing organisations since my time as a student at the University of Leeds, including smaller CIC’s and larger national charities. I have delivered conversation classes and youth group sessions at Leeds Refugee Forum and currently volunteer as a Teaching Consultant with Conversation Over Borders where I’ve supported volunteers over the past six years.

This experience drew me to YPIP as the project has special focus on bringing marginalised and spatially isolated communities into the policy equation. YPIP is rooted in a commitment to empowering communities, by researching ‘with’ rather than ‘on’ people. I felt this was aligned with my values and experience within the Refugee Involvement team at the Refugee Council of emphasising active participation from clients in designing programs, ensuring their voices were listened to and their needs directly addressed.

Being situated in the YPIP core team and being responsible for coordination of a project with varying focuses spread out across separate Yorkshire institutions and regions has meant that supporting the logistical and secretarial function has been complicated at times. This has meant that opportunities to meet up in person to share successes and challenges has been all the more important to offer for stakeholders across the project. Organising in-person events and meetings across Yorkshire has been a highlight for me.

Delivering the Communities Innovating Yorkshire (CIY) Fund has been particularly rewarding as we are starting to see the impact that community groups can achieve when receiving upfront funding and illustrates the importance of grassroots projects being primarily driven by community and not merely retrospectively embedding the community aspect within academic outputs. Ultimately, my experience with YPIP has reinforced the importance of championing the empowerment of communities to spread benefits across the region.

Holly Ingram, Project Manager 

My background is rooted in modern languages, having studied French, Spanish and Portuguese to Master’s level. As a student, to hone these skills I volunteered on a community development programme in a favela of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and I studied on the Erasmus programme in vibrant Granada, Spain. After university, I was a Schuman Trainee for half a year at the European Parliament in Luxembourg City. Through these early experiences I realised my versatility to work with a variety of people and organisations on purpose-driven initiatives.

My career at the University of Leeds has entailed coordinating projects, timelines, people, events, budgets and resources towards meaningful goals. This included international student support initiatives such as the Intercultural Ambassador programme and the international 10,000 Women online courses for female business owners across the world, to large scale change programmes, both internal (the first major investment in research culture in my previous role) and external to the university (policy engagement and societal change in my current role).

Outside of work, I have always undertaken a range of voluntary work: for eight years I have been a qualified Brownie Leader in Leeds, I volunteer annually with Crisis at Christmas alongside people experiencing homelessness, and in 2023 I was a humanitarian aid volunteer with Roots, a charity for displaced people in Northern France. In 2024, the opportunity to combine my project coordination skills with community engagement is what then drew me to YPIP.

On YPIP, I have valued working on a cross-sector, externally-facing project, designing and bringing to life a regional commissioning fund, seeing YPIP’s ethos in action via the community projects and workstreams, and adding structure to a complex regional project where possible. Looking forward, I’m interested in taking my transferable skillset to explore roles in a different sector, while always continuing to enhance my skills, connect with people meaningfully and drive projects forward with impact.

Lauren Cox, Communications and Engagement Manager 

When starting my post in November 2024, I brought over 5 years of experience working with the voluntary, community, faith, and social enterprise (VCFSE) sector across Luton and Bedfordshire in roles with the local authority and within a criminal justice charity.

My career saw a natural progression firstly by leading a signposting service for ex-offenders, funded by the Bedfordshire Police and Crime Commissioner. This role involved creating networks, relationships, and partnerships amongst cross-sector partners to provide a holistic approach for an individual’s needs. This role gave me great awareness and understanding of challenges and service gaps in the area. When a role within the Social Justice Unit at Luton Council arose, I recognised this as an opportunity to bring this knowledge and importance of community voice to local decision makers.

When planning a personal relocation to Leeds, the Yorkshire Policy Innovation Partnership (YPIP) presented a way to expand this ingrained way of working to a regional level – a new geographical challenge and my first experience of working on a research project and in higher education. Over the course of the project there has also been the evolving context of devolution and changes to central government funding initiatives.

This role has given me the opportunity to co-lead the strategic and operational direction of the YPIP project, as well as exploring my own interests around embedding relational practice across our diverse stakeholders and building a better understanding and confidence within these groups on ‘what is policy’. I have broadened my skills in creating a podcast series and am working with colleagues across the established academic-policy engagement infrastructure in the region to further align and develop this work. Going forward, I am keen to continue utilising and developing my skills of navigating different organisational and institutional cultures to bring together diverse knowledge and insight for real societal impact.

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