Ellie Thompson

Head of Communications

Pronouns: she/her

As our Head of Communications, Ellie loves that her role allows her to spend her days advocating for disability inclusion and social justice, with a particular focus on how inclusive communications are the key to ensuring everyone feels welcomed, heard, and valued. With her own experiences of disabling barriers shaping her experiences in education and the workplace, she brings comms expertise and lived experience to D&A’s communications, both internal and external. Her passions and knowledge areas span across multiple areas of social justice and diversity and inclusion, with her role allowing a particular focus on intersectional disability justice, accessible and inclusive communications, and mental health.

At D&A, Ellie oversees our communications efforts, managing the Comms team to ensure all of our web and social media content is representative of D&A’s value and missions. She loves that her role allows her to share her learnings with the world, whether it’s through speaking on global platforms, producing journal articles, or delivering training and resources to support the D&A team. Ellie enjoys speaking at events on behalf of Diversity and Ability. She hosted and facilitated the first ever panel at D&A’s inaugural inclusion conference in December 2022, spoke to an audience of over 10,000 at Neurodiversity Celebration Week in March 2024, and joined the House of Commons multiple times, promoting her favourite topics like student mental health and intersectional neurodiversity.

She grew up in Brighton and was so pleased to get to return to her hometown some years ago to study an MSc in Experimental Psychology. She self-identifies as a domain authority on all things Brighton, and loves to spend her free time hunting for the best local pub quiz, running on Brighton seafront, or in the balcony seats of the Duke of York’s (the UK’s oldest cinema!).