About Lea Jovy

I’m a strategic advisor, senior executive, and founder working on the gap between what organisations say they value and what they actually do in practice.

The work

My day job is interim executive leadership — usually as a COO, sometimes as a transformation lead, occasionally as a CEO. I take on organisations that need to change quickly and credibly: ones in crisis, ones outgrowing their original model, and ones whose stated values and operational reality have drifted apart.

I started in global consulting at Accenture, where I learned how large organisations actually work — and how the gap between what they say and what they do gets institutionalised. Two decades later, that gap is still what I work on, in smaller and more mission-driven organisations, with a sharper view of what closes it.

Alongside the interim work I advise leaders and boards on operational design, equity and equality, governance, and the systems that bring stated values to life. And I write and speak about individual, collective and systemic ‘truth’ and integrity.

What I think

Most organisations have stated their core values…very few have built the operational, behavioural, and governance systems that actually live those values when the pressure is on. The gap between the two is where most of the harm in modern institutions happens — and where most of the work I deeply care about lives.

I’m not interested in leadership-as-personal-brand, change-as-optics, or equity-as-performance; I’m interested in what it actually takes to develop leaders and build organisations that hold up under stress — and in being clear, in public, about where they don’t.

What I’m building

Mission Equality CIC is a community interest company I founded to work on systemic approaches to equality in education and workplaces. We’re building a network of community learning hubs and a game as a learning platform. We also produce research, writing, and the Path to Equality newsletter.

Ethixly is a values-alignment and accountability platform I’m currently building. It exists because the diagnostic and operational work I’ve done across organisations for years deserves to be a product, not just a consulting engagement.

Equal Futures is my podcast — conversations on what comes next in business and in life.

Selected recent speaking

Progressive Education: Education Past, Present, Future, April 2026 — Closing presentation and evening session with Noah Heaton on building better pathways into the world of work and adulthood for young people, drawing on the POP Hove pilot.

Ashoka Changemaker Summit, Hamburg, 2024 — Moderated the panel “Building Ecosystems of Change from Within: How and Where do we Start?” with Stephanie Brobbey and Nani Jansen-Reventlow.

The rest

I’m based in Brighton & Hove, on the south coast of England. I’m a single parent to two home-educated teens. I’m neurodivergent, gay and from the global majority; all of which inform how I think about collective and systemic design. I play padel and beach volleyball for fun, though I take both incredibly seriously. My name is Lea Jovy. Jovy-Ford was my married name and is no longer used.

Get in touch

For interim, advisory, speaking, or media enquiries: lea@leajovy.com