Camila Batmanghelidjh

30th July 2012 by Natalie Burns

Back to Camila Batmanghelidjh

Camila Batmanghelidjh is the founder of two children’s charities – The Place 2 Be (now national) and Kids Company, where she currently works with some of the most traumatised young people living in London.

Kids Company was set up in 1996. It employs more than 550 staff, benefits from 10,976 people volunteering annually and reaches 17,000 children a year with therapeutic care.

She trained as a psychotherapist, engaged in 20 years of psychoanalysis and has become an advocate for vulnerable children. In 2009 she was named Business Woman of the Year for the Dods and Scottish Widows Public Life Awards. Camila has also been awarded Social Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst and Young, and Coutts and the Most Admired Chief Executive by Third Sector Magazine. She won the lifetime achievement award from the Centre of Social Justice. Kids Company has been awarded the Human Rights Awards by Liberty & JUSTICE and has been awarded Child Poverty Champion Status by the End Child Poverty Action Group. In 2010 Camila and Kids Company were given the Award for Innovative Excellence by Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Now.

Kids Company currently has a partnership with the University of Cambridge and UCL involving research into neurodevelopmental trauma.

Camila considers herself very privileged to be working with what she describes as extraordinarily courageous and dignified children. She has a good sense of humour and refuses to take herself seriously!