Pete Hannam

Pete Hannam has spent more than twenty-five years in technology, building data platforms and leading engineering teams across government and industry. That career has run from hands-on developer to head of function, and stayed close to data and, more recently, AI. He has long put the same skills to work in the community: he joined Switchboard LGBT+, the national LGBTQIA+ helpline, as a volunteer in 2014 and led its technology until late 2025 — its CTO in all but title, and officially a Trustee, Secretary and Co-Chair. He's also a Trustee and Secretary at ParaPride, which supports LGBTQIA+ people with disabilities and long-term conditions.

He started directory.lgbt in April 2026. The problem it sets out to fix is easy to see from anywhere in the community: small LGBTQIA+ groups are almost invisible online, the information that would help you find them travels by word of mouth, and the directories that have tried to gather it up have struggled to stay current. Everyone Pete spoke to who had run one told him the same thing — the hard part isn't building the list, it's keeping it from going out of date.

That's the bet directory.lgbt is built on: that the tireless work of keeping a directory current can finally be automated — with people checking the results, not a machine left to run on its own. It's deliberately independent, with no parent organisation, so any group can list without signing up to anyone else's banner. And it's for everyone; no one has to prove they belong to use it. Success looks modest and specific: a small group that used to be hard to find gets listed, and starts seeing new faces turn up.