David Jamilly


David Jamilly is an English social entrepreneur and humanitarian.

Business career

David Jamilly co-founded Theme Traders with his sister Kim Einhorn. Theme Traders is a London based event management, party planning and prop hire company launched in 1989. The company grew out of their work as children's entertainers, when they began to receive requests from parents to organise entire parties.

Humanitarian activities

David Jamilly started his humanitarian activities with entertaining sick children at Great Ormond Street Hospital. In 1977 he founded Pod Children's Charity, which now arranges over 2500 performances a year and has entertained over a million children in children's hospital wards and hospices throughout the United Kingdom.
David Jamilly appeared on the Secret Millionaire in 2010 in Redcar in an extended programme, which topped two million seven hundred thousand viewers by the end of it. The programme saw David handling out £25,000 each and becoming patron to Sid’s Place - Redcar Community College, Zoe’s Place - baby hospice and Redcar Amateur Boxing Association.
David, alongside Frankie Wales, was one of the co-founders of the Redcar Fire and Steel Festival a festival which celebrated Teesside’s heritage of 150 years of steel making.
David Jamilly founded The Good Deeds Organisation in 2005 which promotes global good deeds and kindness and went on to co-launch and celebrate Kindness Day UK in 2010. Kindness Day UK aims to make each person in the UK carry out one act of kindness on 13 November, World Kindness Day.
In 2011 David Jamilly founded Kindness UK, a not-for-profit, independent organisation which aims to promote, share and unite kindness every day and make kindness a greater part of everyone's day-to-day lives. He is also a patron of Zöe's Place Baby Hospice, a charity for sick babies and young children.

Educational activities

He sat on the Advisory Board for the International Centre for Research in Events, Tourism and Hospitality 2011 - 2013 based at Leeds Metropolitan University. Jamilly was made an Honorary Doctor of Business by Southampton Solent University, awarded 22 November 2013. David Jamilly funded Kindness UK Symposium at the University of Sussex in 2016. He was also a guest speaker at Sheffield Hallam University.

Books by David Jamilly