Dev Sharma is a 21-year-old British-Indian food campaigner from Leicester, and a student of Human, Social and Political Sciences at Magdalene College, UNCambridge. He co-founded Bite Back 2030 with Jamie Oliver at the age of 14 and went on to lead the six-year campaign behind the UK’s world-first ban on paid online junk food advertising, which came into force in January 2026.

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His campaigning grew out of his own school days. Junk food adverts followed him from the school gates onto his phone, while classmates went hungry once the holidays began. He started an open letter to Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock calling for junk food ads to be banned online. The policy was announced in the Queen’s Speech in June 2021, and after years of delay and industry pushback, it is now law.

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During the COVID-19 lockdowns, when schools closed and children lost their free school meals, Dev supported Marcus Rashford’s campaign to end child food poverty, which gathered more than a million signatures. That pressure helped secure free school meals over the holidays and the first rise in Healthy Start in a decade, from £3.10 to £4.25 a week.

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As a Member of Youth Parliament, Dev spoke twice from the House of Commons despatch box. He went on to chair the UK Government’s first Youth Select Committee, an inquiry into the cost of living. He has delivered a Food Charter to 10 Downing Street and met cabinet ministers and Keir Starmer to press the case for a fairer food system.

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His work has taken him to the UN Food Systems Summit, COP26 and the Global Obesity Summit in New York, and back home to switch on Leicester’s Diwali lights, the largest Diwali celebration outside India. He has won a Diana Award and praise from Jamie Oliver and Dame Emma Thompson.

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Today Dev chairs the Food Education Network and sits on the board of EAT, where he worked on the EAT-Lancet report. He is a Food Foundation Ambassador, an RSA Fellow and an Odyssey Fellow, and splits his time between Leicester and Cambridge.