Thread by @pollymackenzie

I want to tell you about my brilliant friend @RoseActon, who has died at just 28. She was a polymath, a pioneer and an inspiration to all who knew her. Here's a thread of just some of the things she accomplished. Most careers are much longer but few are as diverse or as brave.

I learned at her funeral yesterday that as a teenager she won best delegate at a Model UN competition in Paris.

She studied for her degree at Kings College London where she tutored disadvantaged kids at the weekend.

I met her when she was on @TheFCA graduate training scheme, working in the Chief Executive's office. She'd caught the eye of @martin_coppack as a real talent and he recommended her to me as a team member when I was founding @mmhpi

She joined us for nine months, helping set up this new charity to break the link between financial difficulties and mental health problems. She co-authored this paper which set the agenda on how fintech could help support customers.
moneyandmentalhealth.org/fintech-and-me…

She could have gone back to the FCA for an easy life. But she wanted to make a difference. So she joined the very first cohort at @zincvc - an incubator creating start-ups to solve the developed world's biggest problems. Mission one: women's mental health.

At Zinc, Rose helped launch Adia Health - now @MeetParla - a femtech company to help women manage their fertility.

Launching a startup is notoriously easy so Rose took on a side hustle: launching @10Today_ - a programme to get older people active via radio, podcasts and Youtube. This was with me again, at @Demos

Not the story for today, but running Demos at the time wasn't easy. And Rose kept me sane whenever I felt like I was at breaking point. She was the most reliable ally you could hope for. If you needed help, ask Rose. She'd never let you down.

And @10Today_ turned out to be exactly what the country needed come lockdown. This year we partnered with @BBCSounds and broadcast the whole series of exercise plans on 5 Live Extra. Rose's programme reached hundreds of thousands of people.

Is there a word for the side hustle from your side hustle? If so, this was Rose's. She co-authored a paper on another really small easy topic: the future of political advertising.
demos.co.uk/project/the-fu…

Oh, and I forgot to mention: she also qualified as a fitness instructor.

Then Rose went back to @zincvc to help run the programme and support a new generation of social entrepreneurs. She was so determined to do good, and to help others to do even more.

Then about 18 months ago, she started to experience some tingling. I'll let her share her story - she wrote this within hours of her diagnosis. Her *very first* instinct on getting this awful news was to put it to the service of others.
medium.com/@acton.rc/figh…

I was honoured to be asked to speak yesterday at Rose's funeral. Her family were so brave and proud of their brilliant daughter, and rightly so. I ended by saying this:

Most of us, in the end, are pretty self-involved. Rose wasn't. It came so naturally to her to think about others that I don't think she even knew how remarkable she was. We must all of us find a way, each day, to be a bit more Rose.

Her family are collecting donations for the Young Women's Trust and Brain Tumour Research in Rose's memory here:
justgiving.com/remember/82476…