Sonja Graham, Creative Development Manager

Name & job title?
Sonja Graham, Creative Development Manager.

What does your role involve?
Loads of crazy ideas, crayons and flipcharts… I work with our partners to design fun, engaging behaviour change initiatives to inspire their target audience to make lifestyle changes.

So one day I could be working with a utility company to create an exciting new school programme to get the kids using (and nagging their parents to use) less bottled and more tap water; and the next day I could be designing a community based social marketing campaign to engage 100,000 staff to help a FTSE 100 company meet its carbon reduction targets (both of which I actually did last month!).

What recent green habit/activity have you recently taken up?
A year ago I did a bit of research into what a city based, flat dwelling, non car owning, fine weather composting, mostly recycling and “stay-cationing” lass could best do to reduce her worldly impact. I looked at the resulting list and didn’t like the headliner so proceeded to alleviate my conscience by doing options two through ten instead.

A year on, having dangled from ladders to hang curtains over draughty doors, switched to a green energy provider, hidden the thermostat remote from my seemingly reptilian flat-mates and completed a number of other rather easy activities, I was back facing that big ‘un …. meat. So this year I decided to tackle my very British dinner-must-include-meat attitude and chose to only eat (farm assured and local) meat once or twice a week to save pennies, lbs, carbon and cows.

Top green tip?
Carry around a piggy bank, fine people 50p every time they misuse the adverb “literally” and then donate the proceeds to our youth programme. Feel free to take this tip literally.

Beyond working at Global Action Plan, what else do you do to help create a more sustainable world?
In addition to my personal crusade to persuade my father that Climate Change is not something that the family has “covered” through me, I am a big believer in being part of local community initiatives. Luckily, living in Brixton means that there's lots to get involved in so I am part of the Transition Town group - food growing and permaculture design projects in particular.

Which green leader/group do you admire most?
He probably doesn’t see himself as a “green leader” but I think David Mitchell does a brilliant job of communicating the absurdity of not acting on climate change and other sustainability issues such as built-to-break type product consumption through his Soapboxes. They are all on the Guardian website and Youtube so I’d really recommend looking through them.

Favourite biscuit?
Shortbread. No debate.