Crafting a legacy
As our inspirational leader and founder, Dr Emma Egging, steps back from her role as CEO, we take the opportunity to celebrate the ‘JET engine’ whose vision and determination has turned personal tragedy into a story of hope and resilience.
“If I had to send a message to the me of thirteen years ago, it would be that the journey is going to be harder that I could ever have imagined, but that it will all be worth it.”
Fitting words for someone who, since 2011, has transitioned from academic to CEO, has learnt on the job, and who has built from scratch one of the highest potential youth charities in the UK in the field of social and emotional learning, according to the charity group Impetus.
JET’s founding story is well-documented, but perhaps less well-known is the story of how the charity came into being in the wake of Flt Lt Jon Egging’s tragic accident at the Bournemouth Air Festival on 20th Aug 2011. Within days, Jon’s widow Emma was already having conversations with Jon’s many friends and colleagues across the RAF and beyond, in her determination to bring to life her and Jon’s shared vision to “lift young people up and help them see what they’re capable of.”
This vision, to offer long-term support to young people who were struggling to engage at school, was borne from a combination of Emma’s own experiences within the Community Partnerships Team at the British Museum, and the “inequality and lack of opportunity in local rural communities” that Jon had witnessed throughout his Royal Air Force career.
“When Jon was a Red Arrows pilot, he started doing what he could to reach out to young people and bring them onto base at RAF Scampton, and had also started to have conversations about what it might look like to more actively engage young people with aviation to develop their core competencies,” says Emma.
“In his diary, just a few months before he died, he wrote that ‘with the right support at the right time, everyone is capable of achieving the best version of themselves’. He was very much thinking about how aviation and STEM could be used in a different way to bring people together and remove barriers.
“When he died, because of all of these conversations and because the groundwork had been done, it felt then like a natural progression for me to focus my future on bringing this vision to life.”
But transitioning from concept to reality proved harder than Emma could have imagined: “I massively underestimated what it would take to set up a charity,” she admits, explaining that in the first six months after Jon’s accident she worked “from 7am until 11pm most days” around her full-time job at the museum.
The juggle came with an upside though; the experiences Emma continued to gain from her day job proved invaluable in designing JET’s flagship Blue Skies programme, which remains the charity’s main delivery vehicle today.
“At the British Museum, I delivered a one-week programme called Talking Objects, and my major frustration was seeing these young people develop so much over a week but then saying goodbye to them and not knowing what they went on to next,” Emma says. “I was determined to set something up that took young people on a journey that really did support them to go from disengagement at school, to reengagement, and then to progress in the right way over time.”
It was at this point that Emma was introduced to a likeminded champion of young people in the shape of Lincolnshire teacher, John Wiles, who now serves on JET’s Board of Trustees. Together, they sat down in John’s living room to chart out what a three-year Blue Skies programme could look like around the core pillars of teamwork, leadership and employability.
With support from across the RAF network, including from then Chief of the Air Staff, Sir Stephen Dalton (“..when I told him what I wanted to set up in Jon’s name, he said ‘please go ahead’ and that really opened the door for me…”), Emma then set about delivering JET’s very first Blue Skies programme to just ten young people in Lincolnshire in partnership with local RAF bases. The programme she and John Wiles had created involved working with young people to build their confidence and leadership and communication skills whilst also broadening their horizons and aspirations by taking them on regular out-of-school visits to local RAF bases, and – in time – to exceptional workplaces and corporate sites linked to the worlds of aviation and space.
By 2014, with the support of a ground-swell of RAF champions and corporate volunteers, Emma was also delivering programmes in Dorset, North Wales and Yorkshire, whilst continuing to work at the British Museum.
“It was at this point I realised that I could no longer continue to do this on a voluntary basis, and that I needed to leave my job in order to grow JET at the rate it deserved,” says Emma. Following a complex legal process and a formal interview with Trustees, Emma was appointed CEO and was able to employ her first paid member of staff.
Today, leading a team of 30 staff across England and Wales and delivering programmes which have now supported over 45,000 young people across 14 counties, it’s easy to gloss over the bits in between, but Emma is keen to pay credit to some of the remarkable people who’ve stood beside her and JET on her journey.
Firstly Jon’s mum, Dawn, who remains an active and much-cherished JET trustee and has been at Emma’s side throughout the past 13 years. Emma says: “There was always the feeling that we wanted to do this together, and Dawn really helped to shape JET through her expertise of working with young people at Birmingham University and her understanding of the power of teamwork and leadership and what this meant to Jon.”
Then there was the former Red Arrows and BBMF pilot, Dunc Mason, about whom Emma says: “He stepped forward as soon as Jon died wanting to champion what we were doing.” As JET’s first Chair of Trustees and now the brains behind the charity’s annual JETRide event, Emma also credits Dunc with roping her into three epic cycle rides in the wake of Jon’s accident which kept her motivated and energised, including – she says with a wry smile – “doing the coast-to-coast ride on a mountain bike – which nearly killed me!”.
It was Dunc who introduced Emma to Professor Brian Cox in 2014 who Emma says, “wanted to back something innovative and a bit different.” After agreeing to become JET’s Patron, Brian has become an instrumental figurehead for the charity and for the past decade has done everything from running half-marathons and donating vital funds from public tours, to co-chairing JET’s Space Forum in London in 2021 when the charity made its first foray into the space sector.
In terms of Emma’s standout moments, she lists seeing students grow and thrive as her biggest motivation, and mentions the pride she felt when JET graduate, Josh Dale received a spontaneous round of applause at 10 Downing Street after speaking about the impact of Blue Skies. Meanwhile, being invited to the official RAF Centenary Ceremony in 2018 was a moment of affirmation (“…knowing the part that we were playing as a charity in the context of the wider RAF was amazing.”), while Emma was “chuffed to bits” to be awarded an OBE for services to young people in 2021.
There have been challenges too, not least Covid which caused the temporary closure of all JET’s schools and programmes at a time when students needed Blue Skies support more than ever. While the responsibility of being CEO has sometimes weighed heavy. “I’ve learned that no-one is born a great leader, you need to constantly grow and adapt into the role” says Emma. “If anyone thinks that they’re a great leader at the beginning of something, they’ve got a lot to learn!”
Emma is nothing if not self-reflective, which shines through in the final question we ask: What’s motivated her decision to step back as CEO?
“It’s been a privilege to have worked alongside every colleague, every partner and every funder, and I am incredibly proud of what we have built together. But I always knew, instinctively, that the time would come when JET could thrive without me. The team is doing amazingly, and our new CEO, Alex, brings a whole new set of skills to take JET into its next chapter. I am excited about where else I can make a difference, whilst continuing to champion JET and all that it stands for as a trustee!”
As we look forward to welcoming Emma to our Trustee Board in the coming months, we couldn’t let her step away as CEO without giving the final word to one of our brilliant JET Youth Ambassadors, Izzy Eaton.
“Emma has made everything possible for me, and I would not be where I am today without her!” says Izzy. “I cannot thank her enough for the impact she has made on my life, and I know I speak for many when I say her dedication has helped so many of us reach our full potential and achieve more than we ever thought possible.”
ENDS
