Koby grew up in Leicester and, as a young teenager navigating complex state systems, faced precarious circumstances while transitioning out of care. Many of the peers he grew up alongside experienced child sexual and criminal exploitation, experiences that also shaped the realities of his teenage years. Some of these peers have since become entrenched in serious organised crime and cycles of poverty; Koby recognises that his own path was shaped not by luck alone, but by the support of a wider community. Key individuals, community figures, grassroots organisations and the communities he found offered safety and an alternative route. These relationships helped him recognise and draw on networks of social and cultural capital that opened doors to university and to a life beyond the destructive cycles and intergenerational trauma experienced by many around him.
Koby began his career as a leaving-care adviser and youth justice case manager at Leicestershire County Council, alongside working in children's residential care. These roles gave him a close understanding of the pressures facing frontline practitioners and the young people they support. Through later roles across central and local government, including at the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Koby saw how policy can become disconnected from the lives it is intended to improve. His work is committed to helping bridge that gap.
Koby consults across central and local government, children's social care, youth justice and education, and speaks nationally and internationally to senior leaders on social mobility, lived experience and the ethics of public service.
His lived experience informs his work, shaping how he approaches policy, listens to young people, communities and practitioners, and understands the points where systems, communities and young people's lives intersect most consequentially.