Ste Richardsson

Ste Richardsson is the co-director of XJW Friends, a support group for former members of the Jehovah's Witnesses with over 1000 members UK-wide, as well as the co-director of Deptford Pride, an annual community pride in the south-east London district of Deptford.
Life
Richardsson left the religion in 2007 after a long battle between his faith and his sexuality. Upon becoming a humanist, he left the religion, and a series of events left him homeless.
Humanist Activism
In 2010, he joined Terri O'Sullivan becoming a co-director of events at XJW Friends, a group which supports ex-members of the Jehovah's Witnesses who have been (shunned and ostracised) by their friends and family, and he has continued to support former Jehovah's Witnesses primarily through peer-support socials and tours.
He is currently a committee member of Faith to Faithless a section of Humanists UK which supports people who have left high-control religions of all kinds. He has also spoken at several events for the Association of Black Humanists most notably at an event at common House and another one at the organisation's first Festival of Reason and Free-thought in 2018..
In June 2019, Richardsson will be chairing a panel discussion entitled "LGBT and BAME communities; fighting bigotry, and making use of allies" at Leicester University for the LGBT Humanists UK Conference, interviewing founder of UK Black Pride, Ms Phyll Opoku-Gyimah and Daniel Asaya who founded the House of Rainbow.
== LGBTQ+ Activism ==
In 2018, Ste and his partner, Peter Collins, began to run Deptford Pride as a local community event. The event attracted over 500 people from the local area in 2017 and close to 1000 in 2018.
Ste led a guided tour of the black history of the Deptford area for Black History Month in 2018 emphasising the intersection of black and LGBT history, and the Deptford Pride team continue to organise events throughout the year.
Education
He holds a bachelor’s degree in linguistics from Queen Mary University of London, UK where he conducted research into the treatment of religious minorities such as Jehovah's Witnesses in both the UK and France. He went on to gain a masters in Medical Translation and in Secondary Education and currently works as a language teacher and lecturer.
In 2010, he used his knowledge from his medical translation degree to lead tours of the Natural History Museum about evolution, natural selection and comparative anatomy and consequently set up his own tour company. His company now offers tours of the Natural History Museum, the British Museum and the V&A.

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