Laura Mountain
Strategic Relationships Manager
“Law-rah Moun-tain” | she/her
Laura focuses on how the City & Guilds Foundation can help address some of the most pressing issues faced by society today.
She leads our overall strategy for grant-giving, advocacy, and awards, and looking at ways we can deliver the highest impact possible in partnership with those that share our purpose.
Laura is very solutions-focused, loves joining the dots and making new connections.
Laura loves spending time with friends, family (especially her toddler), reading and eating!
positivity | empathy | strategic | arranger | maximizer
The latest stories from Laura Mountain on the City & Guilds Foundation website:
Princess Royal Training Award recipients change lives by investing in mental health training for staff
Did you know more than 1 in 7 people have mental health problems in the workplace? As part of the UK’s Mental Health Awareness Week (9-15 May 2022), we’re spotlighting some recent Princess Royal Training Award winners who are seeing huge results from investing in staff wellbeing training. Using well-being to improve performance Eyres Monsell Primary School, Leicester This primary school, based in an area with significant deprivation, created the Spotlight Programme to develop teacher...
From prison to lockdown: how to make peer-mentoring work in the crisis
The best ideas are born out of necessity, and for St Giles that was finding a way to deliver the Peer Advisor programme during Covid-19. The programme trains people with lived experience of social exclusion, including many prisoners and prison-leavers, to become Level 3 qualified Peer Advisors who then go on to support others from similar backgrounds. It plays a significant role in helping people overcome barriers and move towards employment; research from Cranfield University found that...
Shifting Skills
There’s no doubt that coronavirus has hit the workforce hard; around 4 million people across the UK expected to be unemployed by the end of the year. And our Recovery and Resilience research found that people in lower socio-economic groups are most at risk. Skills Bridges To help people without a job, or those working in sectors that are suffering from major cutbacks, City & Guilds has partnered with leading social learning platform FutureLearn to create a Skills Bridge programme....
New skills fund to unlock £500m per year employment potential of UK prison population supporting efforts to rebuild after Covid
Unlocking the skills potential of the UK’s prison population could put £500million a year back into the economy in lowering reoffending rates alone[1], a much-needed boost as we seek to rebuild the economy following Covid, new analysis from the City & Guilds Foundation suggests. The findings come as City & Guilds, the leading skills development provider, launches an ambitious new Future Skills Commission for Prisons to use jobs and training to help divert prisoners from committing...
Junior Smart: Meaningful work will keep ex-offenders like me out of prison
The Foundation’s Big Idea Fund wants to experiment, to find out what really works so that it can be scaled up and used elsewhere. It is going out to brilliant charities and innovative prison projects that want to partner up and find practical solutions to one of our society’s biggest problems. I believe a big idea like this has never been needed more. View this post on Instagram Meaningful work will keep ex-offenders like me out of prison, writes Junior Smart a member of our Future...
Recovery and Resilience report: reskilling our way back into work
The City & Guilds Group's most recent research Recovery and resilience: Reskilling our way back into work surveyed 2,000 working and non-working adults in the UK and found that people from lower socio-economic groups were less likely to believe that they have the support needed to get a new job in several critical areas: Using support from my personal contacts: 24% C2DE vs 35% ABC1 Using support from previous employer: 18% C2DE vs 28% ABC1 Using support from a recruitment consultant: 18%...
Bridging the gap between employer and employee with MyKindaFuture’s Will Akerman
City & Guilds has been a strategic partner of MyKindaFuture for a long time. We’ve always been closely aligned with their belief that everyone should have equal power and opportunity to shape their future – wherever they come from, whatever their experience, and whoever they are. In particular, MyKindaFuture has focused on bridging the gap between employer and employee and helping them feel better connected and invested in each other. With businesses facing a huge variety of challenges...
The City & Guilds Foundation supporting communities throughout Covid-19
No one is untouched by Covid-19, and we are humbled by seeing so many of our communities and partners responding with such energy and grace to what is a difficult time for people and societies all over the world. We know that people need support now, to help them get the food, medicine and essential supplies to survive. We also know that many people are concerned about their work and employment prospects as the economic impact unfolds and people face losing their jobs and livelihoods. The City...
City & Guilds Foundation launches groundbreaking new skills fund for prisons
The City & Guilds Foundation is inviting bids to a new £1m fund to help provide skills training and employment for prisoners and ex-offenders. The Big Idea Fund is now inviting expressions of interest from charities, prison governors and other potential providers, with awards to be made from April 2020. It is seeking bids that aim to meaningfully reduce reoffending through personalised training and sustained employment support in innovative new ways that can be rapidly scaled up if...
