Health charity hands newly created comms director role to Shelter job share duo

Two job sharing senior marketing and communications managers at Shelter have been recruited to take up the newly created role of director of communications at Leukaemia UK.

Lizzie Afonso and Anna Wilson have led a number of media, communications, and marketing functions at the homelessness charity on a job share basis for several years.

They have now both moved on a similar job share basis to take on the newly created director of communications post at Leukaemia UK.

This is the first time Leukaemia UK has created a communications role within its senior leadership team.

Their recruitment on a job share basis is also part of a commitment to flexible working by the health charity.

Afonso and Wilson lead a three strong team alongside freelance and agency communications support.

“Our communications team is central to achieving Leukaemia UK’s ambitious strategy to save and improve more lives through research, awareness and advocacy, so this is a great step forward as we continue to strengthen our staff team and build our communications activity,” said Leukaemia UK’s chief executive Fiona Hazell.

She added: “The easier we make it for people to work for us, the happier and more productive they will be, so we’re delighted to be able to put this into action by enabling our director of communications role to be one that is to be job-shared between two outstanding candidates.”

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In a joint statement Wilson and Afonso said: “The opportunity to continue with our successful job-share model means that we can take this next step in our careers whilst maintaining a flexible working pattern, and we are grateful to Fiona for seeing the advantages of this set-up.

“We believe that two brains can be even better than one, and hope that job-sharing will soon become much more common across the sector and beyond.”

This is the second senior job share appointment by Leukaemia UK this year after Birgitta Clift and Samantha Braithwaite were appointed to fill the trust fundraising manager role.