My friend and colleague Jon Underwood, who has died suddenly of undiagnosed acute promyelocytic leukaemia aged 44, was the founder of Death Cafe, a “social franchise” of groups where people, “often strangers, gather to eat cake, drink tea and discuss death”. He was a quietly spoken, deeply compassionate radical, who bettered the lives of millions of people all over the world through his work.

Jon was always the first to point out that the originator of the idea was Bernard Crettaz, a Swiss sociologist, but it was Jon’s low-key evangelism that gave the idea momentum in the UK and, thanks to his confidence in the social benefits, and his generosity in sharing it (he held the reins so lightly as to be almost invisible) death cafes have become a global phenomenon.

He was born in Chester to Mike Underwood, an accountant, and his wife, Susan Barsky, a psychotherapist. His parents divorced in 1981, and his mother later married Alistair Reid, a civil engineer.

Jon was educated at St Thomas of Canterbury Blue Coat junior school in the city and at Queens Park high school. He studied philosophy, politics and economics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he met Donna Molloy, now a director of the children’s charity Early Intervention Foundation. They married in 2006.

Jon’s first job was as a systems engineer for Electronic Data Systems. However, he was both intellectual and deeply spiritual and immersed himself in Tibetan Buddhism, eventually giving up his well-paid tech work to manage the Jamyang centre in Kennington, south London, working alongside his spiritual teacher, Geshe Tashi.

In 2002 he became head of community safety at Tower Hamlets council, where he ran an award-winning scheme to rehabilitate ex-offenders. He then became director of performance and strategy for the council.

He left Tower Hamlets in 2010 to develop his own projects around death awareness. He maintained strong links with Jamyang and always wanted the centre to hold funerals. With irony that he would relish, his will be the first one.

I, like thousands of people, have been privileged to host several death cafes, and they can become crucibles of extraordinary intimacy. Jon understood that people have a longing to connect on a deeper level, and sharing our experiences, fears and hopes of death while enjoying one of the simplest of pleasures of our short lives is such a way.

Though his influence on the natural death movement was huge, he would have insisted that he was the rule, not the exception. He knew that compassion, courage and integrity are the bedrock of most people’s personalities; only bad luck and circumstance bend us out of shape. His understanding of this was embodied in everything he did.

Jon is survived by Donna, their children, Frank and Gina, by his mother, Sue, his father, Mike, his sister, Jools, his brother, Matt, and by his stepfather, Alistair.