I was delighted to join the Impactathon and simply blown away by the calibre of what the teams had worked up during the event. Truly impressive.
Julia Gillard, Chair of the King's Global Institute for Women's Leadership
07 April 2025
Julia Gillard joins forces with Adobe and King's Business School to mark International Women's Day at charity 'Impactathon'
In honour of International Women’s Day, King’s Business School students and Adobe employees used their skills for good to support The Baytree Centre, a Brixton-based charity empowering women and girls. The volunteers were joined by Julia Gillard, the only woman to have served as Prime Minister for Australia, and Chair of the King’s Global Institute for Women’s Leadership.
The 35 volunteers collectively contributed over 200 hours of skilled support to one of King’s College London’s charity partners, The Baytree Centre, which offers a safe space for women and girls in and around Brixton. Established in 1991, their service users, often refugees and immigrants, come to them in challenging circumstances, and through Baytree’s educational and community empowerment, learn to thrive in life, work and family.
Volunteer teams, formed based on their skill sets, were each assigned a real-world challenge faced by The Baytree Centre. These included developing training for Baytree’s volunteer mentors and club leaders, creating a social impact measurement framework for improved reporting to funders and stakeholders, animations to communicate the journey of their beneficiaries, and a PR strategy to enhance the charity’s outreach. Throughout the day, they ideated, collaborated, designed, and delivered practical deliverables. A key element of the day was the use of Adobe Express, a tool that enabled teams bring their ideas to life with creative solutions.
Julia Gillard highlighted the significance of initiatives like the Impactathon in promoting social responsibility and meaningful collaboration:
This initiative comes from an innovative partnership between King’s Business School’s I-LEAD (Centre for Innovation, Leadership, Education, and Development) and Impactic, a social enterprise specialising in corporate skills-based volunteering workshops, ‘Impactathons’, which adapts the traditional hackathon concept to focus on social impact. Together, they have furthered the model, integrating students to volunteer alongside corporate professionals to support a charity, providing them with hands-on experience of applying their academic skills to real-world problems.
Professor Sally Everett, Vice Dean Education of King’s Business School and Director of I-LEAD, emphasised the multi-dimensional benefits of the initiative:
This Impactathon was a three-way win. Our students had an incredible opportunity to apply their academic knowledge to real-world challenges while gaining valuable insights from their Adobe team-mates. Adobe employees, in turn, benefited from the fresh thinking and energy of our students, collaborating in a dynamic, open environment. Most importantly, The Baytree Centre - an organisation doing vital work - gained new perspectives and innovative solutions to support its mission
Professor Sally Everett
Molly Bevan, Founder of Impactic, praised the unique collaboration:
The partnership between Impactic, King’s Business School, Adobe, and The Baytree Centre, shows the power of bringing diverse talents together. The Impactathon created a dynamic space where corporate and student volunteers aligned their skills with their core values to drive meaningful, long-term societal impact for a worthy cause. It’s inspiring to be a part of empowering the next generation of changemakers!
Molly Bevan
Fiona Camino, Head of Education for UK and Ireland at Adobe, added
It was incredible to see our team working alongside such passionate students from King’s Business School, and The Baytree Centre. Initiatives like this highlight the power of both skills-based volunteering and collaboration. With tools like Adobe Express, we can easily turn creative ideas into stunning content that can drive meaningful change.
Fiona Camino
Communications and Fundraising Lead at The Baytree Centre, Ksenia Gorenstein, shared her enthusiasm:
It was so inspiring to work with such talented individuals from King’s College London and Adobe. We rarely get a chance to have so many people working on problem-solving and innovative solutions for The Baytree Centre! The outputs generated through the Impactathon will make a real difference to our work - a huge thank you to all involved!
Ksenia Gorenstein
Working alongside Adobe and The Baytree Centre gave me hands-on experience in tackling real challenges. It showed me that no matter where you are in your career, you can use your skills to give back.
- student participant
This International Women’s Day Impactathon exemplifies the potential of cross-sector collaboration in addressing pressing challenges for charities, whilst equipping students with practical experience, and reinforcing the role of corporate social responsibility in business.
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Vice Dean, Education
Chair