Who’s Moving — August 2026 A monthly look at leadership transitions across the charity sector.
August’s movements are dominated by two familiar patterns and one that deserves more attention than it usually gets. The first is the departure of long-serving CEOs who leave behind organisations they have genuinely shaped. The second is the steady rhythm of trustee appointments that signal where boards are trying to strengthen themselves. The third — and the one worth sitting with — is the number of internal confirmations and interim-to-permanent appointments quietly happening across the sector.
The CEO departures
Angela McConville leaves the NCT after more than six and a half years. Hilary Croft departs Coeliac UK after seven years, moving to Off the Record in Bath and North East Somerset — a switch that takes her experience in leading a health charity into the youth mental health space at a moment when that sector needs experienced leadership badly.
Both exits follow a pattern that has run through recent months: leaders who have stayed long enough to build something real, leaving at a moment of their own choosing rather than under pressure. The organisations they leave face the same question that recurs every time this happens. Not just who comes next, but whether the brief for the next appointment reflects what the organisation needs to become rather than what it has been.
The internal confirmations
Emma Hodges becomes permanent CEO of Lisieux Trust having served as interim since early June. Tope Medupin steps up as acting chief executive at NCT while a permanent search runs. Tim Reeve moves from deputy director and COO at the V&A to lead English Heritage — not an internal appointment, but a promotion from an adjacent role in a related sector that follows the same logic: a board that looked at what proven operational leadership looked like and decided to back it.
The Lisieux Trust outcome is the most straightforward of these. Six weeks as interim, then confirmed permanently. That timeline is short enough to raise the question of whether the process was rigorous or convenient — but the two are not mutually exclusive. Sometimes the right person is already in the room and a proper process simply confirms what was already apparent.
The appointment that stands out
Ronald Tagwireyi becomes CEO of Refugee Sanctuary Scotland, moving from chair of the organisation into the executive role. His background spans Zimbabwe, Commonwealth study, a career at BT, and years of volunteering and governance in the Scottish refugee sector.
The move from chair to CEO is unusual and not without governance complexity — the blurring of lines between scrutiny and execution requires careful management. But the appointment brings something that matters in this particular organisation: direct personal experience of the asylum system and the journey it describes, combined with strategic and governance knowledge accumulated from the inside. That combination is harder to recruit externally than a board might assume.
The board appointments
Mark Wood becomes chair of Scope, arriving with nine years as chair of the NSPCC behind him. Jonathan Hewett takes the chair at Ben alongside four new trustees, completing a leadership refresh as the automotive charity deepens its health and wellbeing ambitions. Jane Madgwick becomes chair of Tree Aid, bringing a conservation and authorship background to an organisation working on tree planting and land restoration in sub-Saharan Africa.
Two appointments at the National Lottery Community Fund are worth noting together. Sunder Katwala, director of British Future and an EHRC commissioner since May, and Michelle Mitchell, CEO of Cancer Research UK, join the board. Both bring significant sector credibility and — in different ways — an understanding of how policy and public trust intersect. For a funder of NLCF’s scale, that combination at board level matters.
Mencap’s appointment of Dinesh Sattee as a trustee — its second trustee with a learning disability — is the kind of structural commitment to lived experience governance that deserves to be named specifically rather than buried in a list. It is one thing to say that those with lived experience should shape services. It is another to put them on the board with actual governance authority.
What this month suggests
August has been quieter in volume than some months but consistent in theme. The sector continues to recycle experienced leaders across organisations — Hilary Croft moving from health to youth mental health, Tim Reeve from the V&A to English Heritage — in ways that suggest a relatively small pool of senior talent moving between roles rather than new people entering at the top.
That observation is neither a criticism nor a surprise. But it is worth boards keeping in mind when they write a recruitment brief. The strongest field is not always the one that looks most like the last appointment.