Steven is a social justice activist and was appointed Executive Director of the Validity Foundation in 2022, having previously served as Co-Executive Director (2018-2022), and originally joining the team in 2013. Steven holds a law degree from the University of London and has a postgraduate research interest in legal institutions that deny autonomy of marginalised populations.

Steven’s interest in access to justice comes from his experience of supporting his mother with a psychosocial disability who died whilst detained in a closed British psychiatric hospital. The litigation that followed established the presumption that deaths in mental health institutions must be investigated in the same way as other deaths in detention, triggering expanded inquests in compliance with Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights.