Why leadership teams need lived experience

Authenticity remains the holy grail for charities looking to deepen their organisation’s good work. Increasingly charities are looking to ensure authenticity is coming from the very top of their organisation to drive impact, by recruiting leaders with lived experience of receiving the charity’s help.

Recruitment helps tackle a lack of diversity among charity leaders. According to a 2025 report by the Charity Commission and think tank Pro Bono Economics, too often trustee boards do not represent the wider population or the people they support.

Similarly, a report by social mobility charity The Sutton Trust in 2025 found that more than a third of charity chief executives are privately educated and one in five attended Oxbridge.

“Understanding who is at the top of charities is particularly important for those supporting marginalised groups, as having lived experience can bring expertise and insight to strategic decisions and policy,” states the Sutton Trust’s report.

“Diversity amongst senior staff, for example socio-economically, can ensure a wide range of perspectives that reflect those served by a charity are considered.”

Here, we look at charities who have hired chief executives, senior staff, and trustees with lived experience, and how it helps the charity’s cause.

Leaders understand the impact of services for themselves

The Terrence Higgins Trust has been providing support to those with HIV since 1982 and, in August 2025, appointed a chair of its board with decades worth of experience of being helped by the charity.

The role was given to Niall Bolger, who has been helped by the Trust since he was diagnosed with HIV in 1990.

He is also an experienced leader, as London’s longest service council chief executive until January 2025, leading local authorities in Hounslow and Sutton.

“The charity has been with me every step of the way since I was diagnosed at the age of 24,” said Bolger. “I know the impact of Terrence Higgins Trust’s services, making a difference to thousands of people’s lives every year." 

Leaders are personally committed to the cause

The Blue Light Card Foundation helps with the mental health and wellbeing of those working in the emergency services. The charity supports those who deal every day with the pressures involved in helping others, often in extreme situations.

First-hand knowledge of the situations that personnel experience is important for its leadership.

In 2025, it appointed David Crews to its board, a station commander for South Wales Fire and Rescue Service, with responsibility for crews in Merthyr Tydfil. He has is also a member of the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) mental health and wellbeing board, giving him further leadership experience in supporting people’s wellbeing.

The Blue Light Card Foundation said Crews’s “passion for mental health and wellbeing support is deeply rooted in personal experience”.

Crews explains: “I have sadly experienced the personal impact of being bereaved by suicide. This has provided a real focus in wanting to improve the support and provision available to emergency responders and our community.”

Leaders embed lived experience throughout the charity’s work

The Trussell Trust was set up in 2000 to tackle food poverty, with its first food bank opening that year. Its network has since grown to more than 1,400 food banks across the UK. During the summer of 2025 it ensured it had a strong voice among those who have used food banks by appointing Val McKie as a trustee.

She had been forced to turn to food banks after her husband was diagnosed with cancer and is a speaker on food poverty issues. McKie says her priority as a trustee of the charity is to ensure “that lived experience remains embedded in everything Trussell does and using my knowledge of the social security system to inform our work”. 

Leaders can relate to service users’ experiences

This family support charity launched during the 1970s, and in 2025, appointed its first ever co-chief executives Natalie Acton and Jodie Reed to lead its network of 175 local charities.

As well as being experienced leaders of organisations across the public sector, both are also parents of young children.

Home-Start says Acton and Reed’s lived experience gives them a “first hand understanding of the pressures families face”.

Acton, who is a former civil servant working at the Department for Education and No.10’s Policy Unit, added that “at a time when parenting has become more isolating, the daily support offered by [the charity] is a lifeline”.

Leaders personally value the charity’s impact

In autumn 2025, single parent Abigail Wood was appointed as chief executive of Gingerbread, which has been supporting such families since 1970.

“As a single parent myself, I’m inspired by and grateful for what the charity has achieved for single-parent families over the years,” says Wood.

“…from building supportive communities both online and in-person to securing major policy changes that make life fairer for families like mine.”