If, as Tolstoy maintains, all happy families are alike, then by extrapolation the career path of many would surely follow that of Saskia Jones, head of communications engagement for Oxfam, the global antipoverty charity. It’s rare to find someone so effusive of the joys of family life; both the family of her own childhood and the family she and her husband have created with their young boy. Yet in interviewing Jones, references to her family framed the conversation of her career. Centred, however, was a picture of a driven communications professional.

Jones was the daughter of a psychotherapist mother and an architect father. Both parents were Dutch by descent, and Jones would still fail Tebbit’s cricket test, saying she never fully felt herself to be totally British. The youngest of four siblings, with an extended family of artists and academics, she excelled in school. Head girl and with straight As, she found it hard to decide on her degree subject, finally settling on English and art history, securing a place at Edinburgh University.

A few weeks in, and she realised she’d made a mistake. “I thought this is going to take all my passion out of both English and art. I had to read so many books per week, study so many different artists and I realised it was sucking my enjoyment out of those subjects.” An inspiration for change, however, was close at hand. Her grandfather had been a professor of linguistics at Edinburgh. Jones had no prior interest in the subject, but out of curiosity went to visit the linguistics department. Straightaway Jones was hooked and changed her course.

Jones’ degree was a four year course. However, she won a one-year placement on a prestigious exchange course with the University of California in Los Angeles. Jones had worked in bars and restaurants to fund her time in Edinburgh, but the exchange programme was fully funded; not massively, but it meant she didn’t have to take shift work to pay her way through her LA year. “It was the most amazing year of my life. I worked hard, it was a fabulous education, but I also had a great social life. And I met an incredible range of international students. It was one year of my degree, but it was the most formative.”

That year of west coast US travel had an impact. Graduating with a first class degree, Jones seized an opportunity to go to Beijing, working as an assistant in the British consulate office. She was quickly promoted to PA to Her Majesty’s Consul, and was encouraged to apply for the fast track civil service graduate scheme. While working in the embassy, her weekends and free time were spent with blind and deaf children. Volunteering wasn’t new to Jones; she’d worked in homeless shelters in California during her year there. But her involvement with charity work in China gave her an appetite to make a bigger difference, not just by doing hands-on work but looking at a more strategic, behind the scenes, role. While the civil service processed her application she simultaneously applied to join the Cancer Research UK (CRUK) graduate scheme. “I applied for both grad schemes and I got the cancer research one first. As soon as I heard I knew that I wanted to do fundraising and marketing for CRUK. I flew back from Beijing and came back for that.”

Over 1000 had applied to the CRUK fundraising and marketing graduate scheme. Four were chosen, and Jones was one of them. She instantly knew it had been the right move. “What appealed about the foreign office was the worldwide travel, and learning different languages. But actually it was a bit stuffy for me, very regimented, formal. Quite process driven,” says Jones. “Whereas I am very creative, entrepreneurial, spontaneous. Both grad schemes offered me good career progression, but I felt that it was missing that creativity, that spark.

CRUK is the world’s largest cancer research charity, with 4,000 employees and 40,000 volunteers. For 18 months Jones worked in a number of different units across the marketing and fundraising departments. This gave her an understanding of event management, sales promotion and involvement in a range of different marketing and communications roles. This initial experience was to determine her future, and from an early stage she was drawn to communications. “From the outset I was most interested in working in the more strategic areas, having a bigger impact by thinking about the strategy of the organisation.”

As well as time spent on fundraising and in the innovation and strategy teams, Jones was also briefly seconded to the Fundraising Standards Board. Not content with just helping out in these roles she created a number of initiatives that ensured she got noticed. When the graduate scheme finished she was asked to stay on, as project manager bridging the gap between the comms director and the director of fundraising and marketing.

Jones still seems somewhat in awe of CRUK. “They are constantly innovating and thinking about the next thing. There was an

approach in the innovation team where ideas were presented to the directors in a Dragons Den style. If they liked an idea, we would pilot it. They were always trying to think about the next thing, and the next income stream. They never sat back and thought we’re OK” says Jones, adding “it was just great being part of that environment. It was professional, engaging and fun.”

A year and half later, however, Jones left CRUK. She hadn’t planned on leaving the organisation so early into her time there, and certainly hadn’t been looking for a new job. A chance read of a weekend newspaper’s job section exposed a head of programmes position for the Duke of Edinburgh awards scheme. It was closer to her Buckinghamshire home, but more importantly it provided Jones with clear career progression. It was a much bigger role; a communications brief, but the job was also about volunteer management, training, and, crucially for Jones, a much bigger team. It was a bigger team, but a smaller organisation. Jones doesn’t regret making the step, but feels that two years was the right time for her in the role. “It was a big change for me. I had gone from working in this big, energetic, top-of-the-league charity, to working for a much smaller organisation. It was a really important charity in terms of the impact it has on people’s lives, but after a couple of years there I craved to be back at a big organisation again, because it’s just more my style. I think when you work in a small organisation it’s almost like you can do everything you want to do in a couple of years, and then you’ve reached your ceiling. You’ve made your impact, and the changes you want to make and then you have to move on.”

Proving the lie that recruitment advertising is on its last legs a similar chance glance at a newspaper brought the position of head of internal communications at Oxfam GB to Jones’ attention. This was a much larger organisation than the Duke of Edinburgh Awards, but the role was much more narrowly focused. “I definitely felt it was narrower, and they asked me that at my interview – was I sure I wanted to just be head of internal comms. But it was a sacrifice worth making for me, because I knew I would love working for Oxfam.

Jones never realised she would be in the role for five years. “But it has never bored me,” she says, “working for a humanitarian organisation means there’s never a dull moment. There are crises, humanitarian emergencies, and the organisation is constantly thinking of different things, of new plans.”

She feels this is especially true of internal communications. “In any comms role you’re right at the coalface, but this is especially true with internal comms. You’re not only having to align staff with what is happening in external comms, you’re also having to pull internally in terms of strategy, planning, change processes and so on.”

Although currently undergoing a strong renaissance, five years ago internal communications was not seen in the same light. Jones acknowledges the growth of strategic importance in the internal communications position. “I didn’t respect internal communications when I worked in other organisations. It was always an area of expenditure that I questioned” she says, continuing to explain its new-found importance. “I think the CEO and leadership teams have cottoned on to how incredibly valuable it can be to have an internal comms strategic professional at their right hand side, and how much you can help their internal profile, the culture of the organisation and also assist an organisation through change.”

In the past year Jones’ team has won a number of awards, including the Corporate Engagement Awards (organised by Communicate magazine) and the CIPR Inside awards. Jones typically mentions these before admitting to also personally receiving the Internal Communicator of the Year award at the Institute of Internal Communications Icon Awards. Awards entering, however, has only been a small part of a greater involvement with the various trade bodies and organisations that have been discussing internal communications issues in recent years. “I think its natural to look at what other organisations are doing, and benchmarking what I do and what the team is doing against others, and always wanting to be better. I am constantly striving and wanting to have the best internal comms for Oxfam. I look at professional bodies that have a great network and think how can we all learn from each other. That’s much more important than thinking about myself. I view professional bodies as how they benefit the team and the organisation.”

Jones tends to benchmark against the private sector “We’re all sharing common challenges like improving line management communication, dealing with change process or restructuring and communicating a new brand, and I do tend to be inspired by stories of how the private sector have done things,” she says, mischievously adding, “I then try and work out how can I do it on a much smaller budget.”

Certainly one area where she sees companies having to improve their communications is by keeping-up digitally. “Employees are constantly multi-channelled at home. If they then get into work and all they’ve got is some old-fashioned intranet and an email, they’re never going to feel as engaged. I think we should see employees more as consumers.”

In March of this year Jones role changed. Oxfam had recently taken on a new comms director, a new fundraising director and a new campaigns director. With such change in senior management it was perhaps even more important that Oxfam’s internal and external communications were aligned. Jones will be keeping her internal communications responsibility, but will assume more external communications responsibility. She’ll focus more on Oxfam’s brand campaign, its external messaging and helping people engage with its cause. Having been to countries like Liberia and Ethiopia with Oxfam she feels one of her remits is to make people feel the same sense of outrage she felt when she met people there.

It’s a demanding role and she acknowledges that friendships have taken a back seat. “I am a very sociable person and in some ways I do miss my friends, but really my work and my family are my world.” Which seems to have been a constant throughout Saskia Jones’ life.