Hi, I’m Rylie Sweeney.
I've spent my career on both sides of how decisions about young people get made: inside government and national institutions, and alongside the young people living with what those institutions decide. Work that included working on national and regional policy, and advising the United Nations as Global Education and Youth Policy Consultant.
It was as a Youth Advisor to the Children's Commissioner for England that this became impossible to ignore. I was involved in the Big Ambition, the largest national exercise of its kind, which found that only 22% of children believed the people who run the country listen to what they have to say, and just 10% of teenagers believed they had the power to influence the issues they care about.
That wasn't surprising to me. Across every system I worked in, young people's lives were being treated as separate pieces, education, employment, community, rather than one connected picture, and that fragmentation was exactly why so many young people felt unheard.
I founded The Insight to Impact Collective to build a better understanding of young people's lives, across education, employment, community, and opportunity, tracked over time so that understanding stays current, not fixed at a single moment.
We do this by bringing research, policy, and practice together, and putting that understanding directly in front of the people who decide what happens next. Helping government, public services, and partner organisations better understand the challenges and opportunities facing young people.
I'm a strategic, insight-led leader who turns complex systems into practical action. My work sits at the intersection of data, people, and policy. Over the years that's taken me across technology, regulated public bodies, the public sector, and most recently the maritime industry. The core focus has stayed the same: bringing organisations together, unlocking capability, and turning complexity into clarity.
That means leading product and operational transformation, working inside complex multi-source data environments, and building programmes that connect real insight, from customers, stakeholders, and communities, to outcomes that actually land. Whatever the sector, the same question drives me: how do we make this system work better for the people inside it?
At The Insight to Impact Collective, I lead the operational side, translating ambition into action. Building partnerships, designing programmes, and creating practical solutions that connect young people's experiences with the decisions that shape their futures.