But while his adviser in charge of media relations, Meg Powell-Chandler, has worked for the Conservative party almost continuously since she graduated in 2009, Yates took a different route into government.
After two years working for management consultancy firm McKinsey, he plunged into the world of do-gooding starting out at the Christian charity Tearfund before studying social entrepreneurship for a year and then founding his own social enterprise, The Challenge Network, in 2008.
Anyone wanting to know what makes Yates tick could do worse than watch his TEDx talk from 2016, where he describes all of us as living in “bubbles” of people just like us. Fundamentally he is powered by a desire to get people from different backgrounds mixing or in fancier words, promoting social integration.
For five years, with The Challenge’s co-founders Craig Morley and Doug Fraley, he pioneered a summer programme designed to get young people from different social backgrounds mixing.
His underlying vision, says Emma Jenkins, head of HeadStart and development at The Challenge, was to do more than deliver apprenticeships, which is why their Step Forward scheme did a lot of additional work on team building, developing confidence and people skills; on going into schools and recruiting from non-traditional demographics; and on integration between apprentices on all its pathways.
He fundamentally cares about there being an impact on the ground
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, given all they were trying to achieve on apprenticeship funding, Step Forward turned out to be financially unsustainable, and the programme is winding down next year. Then party officials will generally make lots of phone calls and whittle their list down to a shortlist, which is then vetted by the Conservative Campaign Headquarters, and the minister is given the final pick.
So how was Yates known to people in government?
His first forays into the world of Westminster came in the form of the Social Integration Commission, which was convened by The Challenge in 2014 and brought together representatives from business, the third sector and policy, with the aim of identifying good practice in social integration and making recommendations. Chaired by Matthew Taylor, the head of the RSA, it produced three reports, and led to the creation of an all-party parliamentary group on social integration chaired by Chuka Umunna MP and for which The Challenge now provides the secretariat, which means that they do all the admin and logistics.
Their design principles for an integrated society have also been adopted by the government in its integrated communities strategy and the Greater London Authority’s All of Us social integration strategy.
“Jon brings a savviness and practical aspect to a policy world,” says Rebecca Carter, director of organisational strategy, planning and communications at The Challenge.
