Anna Wardley
Founder of Luna
Anna Wardley
Anna Wardley is the founder and CEO of the Luna Foundation. Motivated by the loss of her own dad to suicide when she was nine and the lack of support available both then and now, she is on a mission to transform the experience of children left behind after a parent takes their own life. Anna has raised significant funds and awareness for suicide-related charities as an endurance swimmer, and she shares her story around the world as a motivational speaker.
In 2019 she was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to carry out international research on supporting children left behind after parental suicide. Her research travels took her to Australia, Denmark, Sweden and the USA where she visited ground-breaking projects supporting children and their families after suicide. She published her report entitled Time to Count in December 2021 and incorporated Luna as a Community Interest Company in March 2022 to take forward her key recommendations.
In May 2022 Anna was named as a Shackleton Leader by the Shackleton Foundation, an organisation which identifies social entrepreneurs who embody Sir Ernest Shackleton’s leadership qualities, and provides funding and mentoring to help them to drive meaningful change in society.
She has also been selected to take part in the Sound Delivery Spokesperson Programme 2022, which amplifies the voices of people with lived experience of social issues in the national media.
A former journalist, who started out as a graduate economics correspondent for an international news agency, Anna has circumnavigated the globe in the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race, founded an award-winning PR agency and completed numerous gruelling endurance swims around the world including the English Channel, the Catalina Channel and the Strait of Gibraltar.
Through Luna, Anna is dedicated to breaking the chain of poor mental health and increased suicide risk for those who lose a parent to suicide in childhood.
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