English activist, writer and politician Jayne Ozanne was BOTD in 1968. Born in Barnstaple, Devon, she was raised on the island of Guernsey in an evangelical Christian family. She studied at Cambridge University, becoming of the college’s first female mathematics students, and completed postgraduate study at Oxford University. After graduation, she worked as a corporate brand manager and later as head of marketing for the British Broadcasting Corporation. Ozanne identified as lesbian from early childhood, but spent much of her adult life attempting to pray the gay away, including undergoing a religious exorcisms, and practising celibacy. After years of severe depression, she had a nervous breakdown when she was 28 and was briefly institutionalised. Eventually reconciling herself to her sexuality, she came out to her family, and joined the executive branch of the Church of England in 1999, campaigning for full recognition of LGBTQ people. She came out publicly as lesbian in 2015, becoming heavily involved in campaigning to ban gay conversion therapy. In her 2016 book Journeys in Grace and Truth: Revisiting Scripture and Sexuality, she argued for LGBTQ-inclusive interpretations of Biblical texts about sex and sexuality, followed by a memoir, Just Love: A journey of self-acceptance. Appointed to the Conservative government’s LGBT Advisory Panel in 2019, she resigned two years later, accusing the then-equalities ministers Liz Truss and Kemi Badenoch of “creating a hostile environment for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people”. Ozanne is director of the Ozanne Foundation, a multi-faith charity committed to ending religious discrimination based on sexuality or gender. In 2025, she was elected as a deputy for the States of Guernsey. Her current relationship status is unknown.