In the late 1980s, Sophia Swire worked in the City of London in equity analysis and for Kleinwort Benson in institutional equity sales. She left banking after Black Monday (1987) to found the non-profit Learning for Life.

In 1990, she became noted for selling pashmina shawls through her sustainable fashion brand after seeing them worn by Bollywood stars at a fundraising benefit hosted by Imran Khan in Lahore. She sourced the shawls from a Himalayan workshop in Nepal.

In 1993, she co-founded Learning for Life, an educational charity, acting as a trustee and later chairing its board from 1995 to 2000. The organization established over 200 schools for girls in rural Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India—an achievement that earned her the 2010 Award for Empowering Women in Pakistan.

In 2008, at the invitation of Rory Stewart and the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, she returned to Afghanistan to establish a school for jewellers and gem-cutters. The first students graduated in 2010.

In 2010, Swire became the Senior Gemstones Advisor to the Afghan Ministry of Mines and Petroleum, with funding from the World Bank.

In 2012, she founded Future Brilliance, a non-profit offering vocational and digital training to conflict-affected communities, especially Afghan women. The first project trained 36 Afghan artisans in Jaipur, India, and led to the formation of Afghanistan’s first jewellery cooperative and brand, Aayenda Jewelry. In 2013, Future Brilliance launched the first Digital Literacy training project in Afghanistan, funded by the Canadian Fund for Local Initiatives (CFLI).

In 2013, Swire was announced as a Conservative candidate in the 2014 European Parliament elections for South West England and Gibraltar. During her campaign, she emphasized leveraging her financial expertise to ensure better value from the EU and advocated for refugee crisis response and tackling radical extremism.

Following the fall of Kabul in August 2021, Swire mobilized 170 volunteers from her GEDI.VC network to form a Task Force for Future Brilliance. They provided aid to over 1,500 Afghans and safely evacuated hundreds of women and families, including Sharbat Gula—the iconic green-eyed Afghan girl from National Geographic. These evacuees were housed in a Future Brilliance safehouse in Pakistan, where women received ICT, digital literacy, and English language training, while children studied maths, science, and robotics.

Swire has also worked as a filmmaker. She created and produced the documentary “Burning Man: Art on Fire,” co-produced BBC’s “Smoke Rings,” and produced Channel Four’s “Mr Jinnah: The Making of Pakistan.” She also contributed to the first Natural Resource Charter on behalf of Global Witness.

In 2015, she spoke at the United Nations in New York on Women’s Entrepreneurship Day.