Jon Sparkes is currently Chief Executive of UNICEF UK. 

Jon has considerable experience at an executive level across the charity sector, particularly homelessness. Prior to his role with UNICEF UK, Jon was Chief Executive of Crisis, the national charity for people facing homelessness, from 2014 to 2021, and has been at the forefront of many ground-breaking bodies of work linked to homelessness. 

While at Crisis, Jon also held leadership roles on government projects including Chair of the Scottish Government’s Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Advisory Group, Chair of the Welsh Government’s Homelessness Action Group and a member of the UK Government’s Rough Sleeping Advisory Panel. He also acted as a Trustee at the Centre for Homelessness Impact and a Non-Executive Director at South Yorkshire Housing Association.

Jon lives with his family in Cornwall, just outside of St Austell and has long been a supporter of St Petrocs, contributing to our campaigns and enabling our work to feed into national projects.

Earlier in his career, Jon served as Chief Executive of Scope, the national disability charity and also led Human Resources and organisational development in both the public and private sectors, including as Director of Organisational Development at NHS Cornwall.

“In his time at Crisis, Jon was a leading player in the new approach to ending homelessness, putting evidence at the heart of the effort, and calling for policy change at a national and international level. We are delighted to be able to welcome Jon as a trustee of St Petrocs. His experience will be hugely valuable in support of our mission of ending homelessness in Cornwall.” 
Henry Meacock, Chief Executive of St Petrocs