Changemakers: Zelda Perkins
The very first interview I conducted as part of this Changemaker series was with the legendary Zelda Perkins, whose experience with Harvey Weinstein drove her to lead a years-long fight to stop the abusive use of NDAs to silence women. Zelda had a major campaign win in 2025 when the Labour government used the Employment Rights Bill to ban any form of clause in any agreement that could prevent a person from speaking about harassment or discrimination. This Bill has now received Royal Assent.
It is impossible not to be immediately, overwhelmingly inspired by Zelda Perkins.
Zelda worked for Harvey Weinstein early on in her career. In 2018, after twenty-three years of silence, she broke her NDA to speak to the New York Times about her experiences. This not only helped to set wheels in motion that would eventually see Weinstein convicted and incarcerated, but gave an explosion of energy to the MeToo movement started by Tarana Burke in 2006.
Zelda has been unwavering in her call to ban NDAs - non-disclosure agreements, the legal contracts that prevent survivors of abuse from speaking out about their experiences and ultimately stymying any kind of justice being served. For Zelda, NDAs are the root cause of scandals such as the Weinstein story: silencing victims of abuse serves only to further cement the power of the abuser, and enables their predatory behaviour to continue.
Her campaign win is a testament to her doggedness and tirelessness - but, crucially, also to her smart strategic use of the resources at hand and an absolute clarity of focus. Here are seven key lessons changemakers and campaigners can take from her success.
Be a smart collaborator.
It’s often easy to assume the people on the other side of the table are the enemy. Zelda didn’t do this: rather, she took a collaborative approach, asking herself what people needed in order to be able to support her and her campaign.
This is not to say you should be naive: it’s helpful to be alert to what motivates people. “It’s just about understanding people’s agendas,” Zelda says. “Some people’s agendas are more self-serving than others - it doesn’t make them bad, it just means you need to understand them to get the best out of them. Repeating an injustice over and over again is not going to get you a win.”
Build key relationships ahead of time.
You never know who is going to play a pivotal role in your campaign. Zelda built relationships across parliament with MPs of different levels of experience and influence across many years. Some of these relationships felt inconsequential at the time but proved to be the keys to unlock progress. Always be on the lookout for allies across the political spectrum and take what they can offer, even if it feels limited.
Play smart - leverage small wins to your advantage.
“Every bill that was on the table, I looked at and thought - how could you crowbar confidentiality into this?” Zelda got amendments into the Higher Education Bill and the Victims and Prisoners Bill. While these amendments would only affect a proportion of the population, it meant that Zelda had leverage when it came to more encompassing bills like the Employment Rights Bill or the Equalities Act. “They created a two-tier system - some people were protected and some weren’t. So it became about fairness… It’s about setting a precedent, it’s about finding a way in.”
Stay on message, keep your powder dry.
Because of her public link to Weinstein, Zelda got approached for comment every time a story broke about a man abusing his position and power over women. However, she never got sucked into the scandal of the day: she kept firmly on message that NDAs were the problem. “Repeat your message and over time it gets through,” she says. It took a long time for the media to understand that at the root of every scandal was confidentiality, but once it landed it became a key message in their reporting.
Personal experience makes for the best campaigners.
There’s no getting around this one: personal experience gives you credibility with decision makers. But for Zelda it was also the driving force behind her campaign, and the reason she kept going through adversity. If you are a campaigner or a changemaker working on an issue that doesn’t directly affect you, think about how you can uplift and support people for whom the issue is their lived experience. “It’s a lonely, isolating experience sometimes,” she says - those are the campaigners who need our collective resources.
Get help where you need it.
No one can achieve change by themselves. Zelda recognised where she needed help - she needed people with strategic and political savvy. (She found help with the truly brilliant Kat Sladden at Breakthrough Impact - have a look at their work if you’re not familiar.) They helped to connect her with key MPs and look out for key pieces of legislation where she might get NDAs on the agenda.
Never give up - and stay nimble.
The Labour party had been promising to support Zelda while they were in opposition, and then once they got into power they gave her a hard “no”. Zelda did not let this deter her. “They realised I wasn’t going to go away,” she says, “and they realised this could be a really big good news story that wasn’t going to cost them anything.” She reckoned that the Employment Rights Bill was her big opportunity “and I just threw everything at it… a petition, polling that backed up our data, loads of media… it was kind of a pincer movement.”
Zelda tried all sorts of tactics - voluntary agreements such as university and business pledges not to use NDAs - that had varying success. The university pledge precipitated law change rapidly through the Higher Education Bill; not so with the business pledge. “The key thing is to try lots of things, but remember where your focus is.”
Ultimately, she says, “whenever you’re talking about your issue, you’re winning. It can feel like a drop in the ocean - but drop by drop, you’re changing the ocean, and then the ocean turns into a wave.”