Oxfam’s chief executive Danny Sriskandarajah has spoken about how he landed the top role after telling trustees “you’ve clearly let yourselves down”, amid the safeguarding scandal that rocked the charity.

In an exclusive interview with Charity Times, Sriskandarajah revealed how he got the role, his plans to transform the charity and tackling financial and organisational amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Sriskandarajah revealed how he applied for the top role following the resignation of chief executive Mark Goldring in 2018, after a public outcry over sexual misconduct by the charity’s staff in Haiti and Chad and subsequent attempts to cover it up.

In applying for the role he also wrote a letter to the chair of trustees to air his concerns around safeguarding.

He told Charity Times: “I said: ‘You’ve clearly let yourselves down and many others down and you need to fix that – but actually your challenge is bigger than that. It’s not just about safeguarding. You need to re-imagine what Oxfam is: the role you play in civil society and the role you play with other NGOs’. I thought, let’s see how willing they are to hear that argument.”

He said it was an argument the charity was willing to hear as he was offered the job in August 2018 and took up the post in early 2019.

You can read the full interview here.

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