Toby Johnson started working in the co-operative movement in 1977 at Suma Wholefoods, which has since grown to be the biggest collective workers’ co-operative in Britain. In 1979 he founded Leeds Beer Co-operative which ran a real ale shop and later a microbrewery. Following this grounding he became the secretary of ICOM, the UK worker co-ops federation which has now merged with Co-operatives UK. In 1994 he was seconded to the Social Economy Unit of the European Commission for three years, during which he managed two calls for proposals for transnational projects to develop the sector.
In 2002 he became the Commission’s social economy expert for the EQUAL programme, where he enjoyed writing analytical case studies, preparing policy recommendations, organising seminars and conferences, and building up Wikipreneurship.eu as an online knowledge base. From 2008 until 2014 this transnational role continued, and Toby supported three mutual learning networks of European Social Fund managing authorities: Better Future of the Social Economy (BFSE) followed by the Social Entrepreneurship Network (SEN) as well as the Community of Practice in Inclusive Entrepreneurship (COPIE). From 2015 to 2019 he led the ESF Transnational Platform managed by AEIDL, which supports transnational working in the ESF by running nine thematic networks and a database to help projects to find partners (see http://www.transnationality.eu).
He has also worked as a journalist, and has edited a number of EU magazines such as Euroabstracts as well as numerous conference reports, project profiles and online news articles.