Stamp out Poverty
Our team
David Hillman
Founding Director
Dave is an award winning campaigner and policy expert.
He founded Stamp Out Poverty in 2006 with the aim of taxing globalised activities such as finance, aviation and fossil fuel extraction to create new funding streams for development and climate action.
In response to the global financial crisis in 2010, he was central to launching the Robin Hood Tax campaign, which spread internationally and led to Financial Transactions Taxes being adopted in many countries including France, Italy and Spain.
From 2018, David steered Stamp Out Poverty’s focus toward climate action. In 2021, he co-founded the Make Polluters Pay UK coalition and co-authored the Climate Damages Tax report. In 2022, working with international partners, he helped secure a dedicated “Loss and Damage” Fund at COP27. In 2025 he co-founded the International Make Polluters Pay Coalition. His current policy work focuses on accelerating renewable energy in Global South countries by reducing the cost of capital. He is a Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative board member.
David cut his teeth as an anti-Apartheid activist before going on to work on the campaigns to Drop the Debt and Ban Landmines. As Coordinator of Landmine Action, he worked on the successful effort to achieve a Landmine Treaty in 1997, attending the award ceremony of the Nobel Peace Prize to the International Campaign.
Louise Hutchins
Campaigns Director
Louise is a climate campaign strategist working to build powerful movements, shift politics, and popularise big ideas.
With Stamp Out Poverty, Louise co-founded the fast growing International Make Polluters Pay Coalition and convenes the UK Make Polluters Pay Coalition. She works with influential allies to champion a negotiated Fossil Fuel Treaty. And she works to unlock large-scale climate finance for the Global South with Stamp’s ‘Supercharging the Energy Transition’ project.
As an international political advisor to Latin American government ministers, she helped fight for 1.5°C at the COP15 Paris Climate Negotiations, and build international support for a new fair UN Tax Convention to end tax havens.
She campaigned for greener fairer cities in senior roles working with the World Resources Institute, C40 Cities, and New Climate Economy.
At Greenpeace, she played a leading role in the campaigns that ended coal and blocked fracking in the UK, and confronted Shell and Gazprom in the Arctic.
She has been a regular university guest lecturer and media commentator.
Layla Wade
senior communications advisor
Layla Wade is a campaigner, and communications strategist with movement-building skills.
A Trinity College Dublin graduate, she has over 8 years experience building eco-social justice campaigns that deliver with public mobilisation for systemic change.
Layla focuses on connecting communities, amplifying diverse voices, and creating spaces where people can influence the decisions that affect them, whether it’s digital justice or holding those responsible for accelerating climate change to account.
John Christensen
Chair – Management Group
John chairs Stamp out Poverty’s Management Group and is a director of the Balanced Economy Project.
He is a founder member of the Governance Board of Tax Inspectors Without Borders (a joint UNDP/OECD programme). He co-founded the Tax Justice Network and directed its activities from 2003 to 2016. He previously headed the government economic advisory service of Jersey. This work covered policy areas including financial regulation and corporate governance.
Trained both as an internal auditor / system analyst and economist, he has also worked as a documentary maker, film reviewer, publisher, and political activist. He produced The Spider’s Web: Britain’s Second Empire (2017), and The Finance Curse (release 2026).
Maé Kurkjian
Management group member
Maé Kurkjian is Director of Advocacy for France at ONE. She brings 10 years of advocacy experience to the forefront of global development.
Maé holds a master’s in international relations from Sciences Po Lille and the University of Copenhagen and specializes in development financing – from official development aid and debt management to reforming multilateral banks – as well as solidarity levies (financial transaction taxes, air ticket levy) and international tax transparency. She champions international solidarity and universal access to healthcare.
She currently works from the ONE Campaign in Paris where she leads the advocacy strategy and efforts for their French office.
Max Lawson
Management group member
Max is Head of Inequality Policy and Advocacy at Oxfam International.
He leads Oxfam’s research, advocacy, and policy on inequality, and is a regular author of Oxfam’s most high-profile products for media and advocacy, including Oxfam’s annual inequality report for the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Max has lived and worked for Oxfam in over 25 countries and helped lead Oxfam advocacy at the World Bank, IMF, G7 and G20. He was also a lead author of Oxfam’s recent ‘Climate Equality’ report on the link between inequality and climate breakdown.
Matti Kohohen
mANAGEMENT GROUP MEMBER
Matti Kohonen works at the Financial Transparency Coalition as the Executive Director, coordinating the activities of a coalition with 11 members in all regions of the world to fight financial secrecy and tax abuses and to support government spending towards realising human rights and sustainable development.
He holds a PhD in Sociology from the London School of Economics and Political Science, on how we should think of value creation beyond profit and GDP. He has worked for 20 years also on the impact of financial and tax policies on developing countries and populations and is a founding member of the Tax Justice Network, and more recently the Rights-Based Economy group which seeks to bring human rights tools in shaping economic policy and practice.
He has also been actively involved in the Financing for Development (FfD) process at the UN, ensuring that development finance overall represents the interests of people in the global South, working with stakeholders to strengthen follow-up at the UN FfD Forum, the UN Tax Committee, and via the UN Human Rights Rapporteurs to strengthen their work on development finance
Mike Podmore
MANAGEMENT GROUP MEMBER
Mike has over two decades of experience in securing policy and funding impact on HIV, health and human rights at global, regional and national levels.
Since 2015, he has been CEO of STOPAIDS, the network of all UK NGOs working on the global HIV response.
Mike is a trustee of Stamp Out Poverty and WACI Health; a Steering Committee member of Action For Global Health UK; and a co-founder of the Digital Health Rights Project and the Inclusive Global Health Institutions Project. Mike led STOPAIDS to became the first charity in the UK to introduce the 4-day week in 2019.