In October 2017, Jonny Jacobs CA was in the Simón Bolivar Institute, Bogotá, attending the One Young World summit as a representative of ICAS and Chartered Accountants Worldwide. His attendance was in recognition for being named One Young CA just a couple of months earlier.

Among the guests were the former Secretary-General of the UN, Kofi Annan; KPMG’s Global Head of Corporate Citizenship, Lord Michael Hastings; and Unilever CEO, Paul Polman. Alongside them were a succession of panellists and speakers addressing topics designed to make the leaders of tomorrow think about their own approach and how they could make a positive impact.

The event made Jacobs consider his own journey and how he could use his experiences to be a leader and to influence others. “I can tell you that being in Bogotá, representing ICAS, is where I found my purpose,” he says.

That journey started as a Glaswegian kid growing up in a working-class family. His parents separated when he was 13, leading to an unstable home life, with Jacobs often having to fend for himself.

At school, he was a bit of an entrepreneur – at one point running a car wash business as a way to make ends meet.

“There’s a bridge that runs through Glasgow, the Kingston Bridge, and I became fearful that I would end up living under that bridge. I had that image in my head and thought, ‘How do I get out of this?’” he recalls. “A friend of my dad’s was an accountant and he lived in a house. So my thought process was as simple as this: I’ll become an accountant – because I was good at trading, good at numbers, good at commerce.”

“When I reconnected with ICAS what really struck me was this strong sense of community. There was something about belonging which resonated with me”

“I wanted to join the best accounting firm I could, and all the firms in Scotland did their training through ICAS,” he says. And so, he spent almost five years with KPMG studying to become a CA.

Soon after qualifying, Jacobs stood for ICAS Council, but was unsuccessful – and that, seemingly, was the end of any plans for a more active relationship with the institute.

Reconnection

“After qualifying I didn’t stay particularly connected to ICAS,” he says. “Then, some years later, I received an email asking me for feedback about ICAS. In that moment, I thought, maybe I should get more involved. And when I reconnected what really struck me was that, yes, we’re a network, but also that there’s this strong sense of community. There was something about belonging which resonated with me.”

Naturally, the bond between Jacobs and ICAS was significantly strengthened when he was named One Young CA. “Two things stuck out [about One Young CA]. First was doing the keynote speech at the Admission Ceremony, which, frankly, I was very, very nervous about. It felt like I didn’t sleep for weeks before delivering that speech.

“Then going to One Young World, I felt a huge weight on my shoulders, but it allowed me to explore myself. The people that I spoke to and the situation I found myself in were quite alien to my day-to-day, but I leaned in and really bought into it.

“I’d always embraced the broader leadership role of finance professionals. We’re at the heart of organisations. We develop corporate strategy. We’re close to the board. We’re embedded in the leadership team. In many ways, we set the budgets. So it’s up to us where we choose to influence. This gave me even more motivation to consider the role CAs could make to drive the board agenda, including how we influence culture to both improve performance and balance that with doing the right thing.

“Beforehand, I also had this feeling that I needed to give back and I had led various initiatives in the past. I knew the importance of social mobility and diversity and inclusion.

“I didn’t necessarily know how to deliver social impact at scale, but I had recently completed my leadership programme where the last module was to work with the management team of a charity.”

So in 2015, following his work during the leadership programme, Jacobs became treasurer and trustee at Aspire, the UK’s leading spinal cord injury charity. That gave him an insight into how a charity works and he formed partnerships with other organisations to promote its message and make real impact for a cross-section of stakeholders.

Following One Young World, he returned from Bogotá energised for his Strategy and Transformation Director role at Pladis, the company behind brands including McVitie’s, Carr’s and, aptly enough, Jacob’s. The business had signed up to the mental health charity Mind’s Time to Change pledge, which aimed to end the stigma around the subject at work. Jacobs stepped up to become the Executive Sponsor of the company’s activities in this area, and architected a programme that led to more than 200 ambassadors across the business, leading cultural change and creating even more social capital to drive performance.

It’s not unknown for organisations to make all sorts of well-meaning pledges without actually investing the money or articulating the commitment in a way that makes sense for what they do or produce. It took time and a lot of conversations for Jacobs and his ambassadors to get the C-suite on board. But the solution was staring them in the face: it was tea and biscuits.

Jacobs led the charge to create the first ever social partnership with McVitie’s in its 180-year history and Pladis partnered with Mind to launch a campaign in 2019 titled “Let’s Talk”, which appeared on millions of packets of McVitie’s products, on billboards and in TV ads.

In the same year, Jacobs was invited by One Young World to address its summit. He delivered a speech on mental health in the grand surroundings of Central Hall Westminster – and it was here that he first opened up about his childhood to an audience.

Since then, Jacobs has become an advisory board member of Mad World, Europe’s largest B2B summit for mental health, and a trustee of the UK Mental Health Foundation, which runs the national awareness week.

Finding his purpose in the Colombian capital ultimately resulted in Jacobs receiving an MBE for services to mental health in the King’s birthday honours list, announced in June, recognising the impact he had made in the mental health agenda and in driving cultural change in business and beyond.

For somebody who has done so much to promote the concept of good mental health and who boasts a formidable record in FMCG and retail (he was previously Head of Finance at M&S Foods and Finance Director EMEA at Starbucks), joining Holland & Barrett as Group Finance & Transformation Director in 2024 was a perfect fit for both Jacobs and his new employer.

“Holland & Barrett’s mission is to support people’s preventative health and wellbeing and ultimately add quality years to life. What a terrific mission to be a part of!

“It is a business that is growing strongly. And if you look at where the market is, preventative health is becoming even more top of mind.”

He also recently took part in a webinar on mental health along with three other CAs as part of the national awareness week. “We pick a theme every year; last year it was around kindness and nature, this year it was community. I really like those themes because they are positive. So often mental health is viewed in a negative way. We had one member, Lisa Blum CA, who is a competitive powerlifter, and she spoke about the sport also being a community. And I think there is something in that.”

Jacobs concludes: “Maybe when we talk about becoming an ICAS member, we could say you are not only are joining a network, you are joining a community.”