ShelterBox founder dismissed as CEO

Governance | Niki May Young | 22 Aug 2012

The board of disaster relief charity ShelterBox has removed founding CEO Tom Henderson from his position with immediate effect.

In a statement the charity advised that: "The Board of ShelterBox Trust can confirm that Tom Henderson is no longer CEO of ShelterBox. There is an ongoing appeal process, and as we do not wish to prejudice any outcome, and to maintain fairness to all involved, we will not make any further comment.

"A process has already begun to find a new CEO, with John Leach (previously chief operating officer) acting as CEO in the interim period."

ShelterBox was founded by former Royal Navy search and rescue diver Henderson in April 2000. Since then the board has delegated the day-to-day running of the charity to Henderson and the senior management team of international director Lasse Peterson and four departmental heads.

Henderson has received a number of international awards for his work at the charity, including an OBE received in 2009.

Interim replacement John Leach has been head of operations at ShelterBox since October 2009 and was previously operations manager at Parcelforce Worldwide for three years and Royal Mail for five years.

Shelterbox relies almost entirely on donations from the public to undertake its operations, and the support of over 170 voluntary response team members and hundreds of other volunteers. The charity proved fundamental to the relief efforts after the 2005 tsunami, sending out more than 22,000 aid boxes, which include resources such as tents, mosquito nets, cooking equipment, tools and educational resources.

Comments

[Cancel] | Reply to:

Name *

Email *

Organisation

Job Title

Comments *

Verification *

* Please read our Community Standards

Close »

Community Standards

The civilsociety.co.uk community and comments board is intended as a platform for informed and civilised debate.

We hope to encourage a broad range of views, however, there are standards that we expect commentators to uphold. We reserve the right to delete or amend any comments that do not adhere to these standards.

We welcome:

Robust but respectful debate
Strongly held opinions
Intelligent relevant discussion
The sharing of relevant experiences
New participants

We will not publish:

Rude, threatening, offensive, obscene or abusive language, or links to such material
Links to commercial organisations or spam postings. The comments board is not an advertising platform
The posting of contact details for yourself or others
Comments intended for malicious purpose or mindless abuse
Comments purporting to be from another person or organisation under false pretences
Gratuitous criticism, commentary or self-promotion
Any material which breaches copyright or privacy laws, or could be considered libellous
The use of the comments board for the pursuit or extension of personal disputes

Be aware:

Views expressed on the comments board are left at users’ discretion and are in no way views held or supported by Civil Society Media
Comments left by others may not be accurate, do not rely on them as fact
You may be misunderstood - sarcasm and humour can easily be taken out of context, try to be clear

Please:

Enjoy the opportunity to express your opinion and respect the right of others to express theirs
Confine your remarks to issues rather than personalities

Together we can keep our community a polite, respectful and intelligent platform for discussion.