I didn't chooseleadership.It chose me.

Toby's story begins in childhood poverty in Poland, where he learned the language of not belonging from his earliest memories. As a small Roma child he was spat at in the street, beaten and humiliated for simply existing.

Teachers singled him out. One day, after he had worked hard on an assignment, his teacher dragged him to the front of the class, ripped his work to shreds in front of his classmates and sneered, “Don't you try and embarrass the Polish kids.” At eleven, skinheads beat him into a coma.

By fourteen the violence was so severe that his family fled to England as refugees: homeless, penniless and unable to speak the language. In that isolation he made a promise. No one would ever feel as alone as he had. He would become the person he needed when he had nobody.

The promise came without a plan or resources. It came with rhythm. Through hip hop culture, a language that never asked him to explain himself, he began building what the world had refused him: a place where everyone belonged.

With his wife Jo he founded Street Factory CIC in Plymouth. He started with the people the world had cast aside. Deaf children formed the UK's first deaf hip hop crew, learning rhythm through floor vibrations. Care leavers discovered leadership through movement. A school slated for closure became a national award winner.

Then came the hardest test: sitting face to face with a former neo-Nazi, the embodiment of the hatred that once put him in hospital. Their unedited conversation became the award-winning film That Boy.

This is where the Gorniak Method comes from. Not a university, but lived experience. From the Roma boy nobody wanted came the man who makes sure everyone belongs.

Today the work is global. Toby is Ambassador of Empowerment for the World Roma Federation, and in 2026 he co-founded Good Man Circle with James Thorp: a space where men can talk, listen and grow, standing shoulder to shoulder. It launches in Dubai in November.