Role description
Purpose of the role
The Chief Executive Officer will provide strategic and operational leadership to the Gambling Lived Experience Network (GLEN), ensuring the organisation delivers its mission with impact, integrity and long-term sustainability. Working closely with the Board of Trustees, staff team and wider lived experience network, the CEO will lead GLEN through a pivotal period of organisational growth, increasing influence and significant change across the gambling harms system.
As a relatively young organisation, GLEN is continuing to strengthen its structures, systems and ways of working. At this formative stage, the CEO will play a critical role in building organisational resilience, embedding effective governance and creating the foundations required to support sustainable growth and greater national impact.
At a time of evolving funding, commissioning and policy arrangements, the CEO will ensure lived experience insight remains influential within system design, service improvement and decision-making. The role will be central to strengthening GLEN's profile, developing strategic partnerships and leading the delivery of ambitious organisational objectives, ensuring GLEN remains a trusted, independent and authoritative voice within the gambling harms sector.
Key responsibilities
Strategic Leadership and External Influence
The Chief Executive will lead and sustain GLEN's strategic presence and influence, ensuring the organisation is recognised as an independent, credible and authoritative lived experience voice within the gambling harms system.
The successful candidate will:
Act as a high-profile representative for GLEN, building trusted relationships with government, regulators, commissioners, policy makers and sector leaders.
Shape and communicate GLEN's strategic vision, ensuring lived experience insight meaningfully informs policy, commissioning and system improvement.
Influence national policy, funding and system reform through the effective use of evidence, data and lived experience perspectives.
Articulate and promote GLEN's unique value proposition, demonstrating the importance of structured lived experience insight in decision-making and service design.
Strengthen GLEN's profile through proactive engagement with stakeholders, partners and the media.
Organisational Leadership and Governance
The Chief Executive will provide clear organisational leadership, ensuring GLEN has the governance, systems and capabilities required to deliver its strategic ambitions and operate sustainably as it grows.
The successful candidate will:
Lead the development and delivery of GLEN's strategic plan, ensuring organisational activity is aligned to priorities and impact.
Strengthen governance, accountability and decision-making frameworks across the organisation.
Work closely with the Board of Trustees, providing strategic advice, assurance and support to enable effective governance.
Ensure robust risk management, financial controls and assurance processes are embedded and proportionate to organisational growth.
Build the operational infrastructure, systems and organisational resilience required to support future development.
Delivery and Impact
The Chief Executive will oversee the effective delivery of GLEN's strategic priorities, ensuring the organisation delivers meaningful outcomes and measurable impact.
The successful candidate will:
Provide leadership and oversight across all programmes and activities, ensuring delivery against agreed objectives.
Maintain focus on GLEN's priority issues and emerging opportunities within a rapidly evolving policy and commissioning landscape.
Ensure lived experience remains central to all areas of GLEN's work and influence.
Embed equality, diversity and inclusion across organisational strategy, delivery and engagement.
Develop mechanisms to measure, evaluate and communicate GLEN's impact and contribution to system change.
Financial Sustainability and Growth
The Chief Executive will lead the development of a sustainable and diversified funding model that supports GLEN's independence, resilience and long-term ambitions.
The successful candidate will:
Develop and deliver a long-term strategy for financial sustainability and organisational growth.
Build and maintain strategic relationships with funders, commissioners and partners.
Lead fundraising, business development and income diversification activity.
Ensure effective financial stewardship, planning and resource allocation.
Balance organisational growth with financial sustainability and strategic priorities.
People, Culture and Leadership
The Chief Executive will foster a values-led, inclusive and high-performing culture that enables colleagues, trustees and people with lived experience to thrive.
The successful candidate will:
Provide inspiring and visible leadership that reflects GLEN's values and purpose.
Create a culture of accountability, collaboration, learning and continuous improvement.
Lead, support and develop a high-performing team through a period of organisational growth and change.
Champion equality, diversity and inclusion across organisational culture, leadership, partnerships and external influence.
Ensure that lived experience remains at the heart of decision-making, engagement and organisational development.
Person specification
Knowledge and experience
Essential
Proven experience as a Chief Executive within the not-for-profit, public sector or health-related systems and leading through periods of transition, growth or structural change.
Demonstrable experience of leading strategic development with proven ability to lead through ambiguity, challenge and resistance.
Experience of building credibility with funders, commissioners and senior stakeholders.
Strong track record of driving government, policy and system change through campaigning, advocacy and influencing with the ability to communicate complex ideas clearly in ways that are accessible and engaging.
Significant experience of operating at senior level within the charity sector, with a strong understanding of charity governance, trustee accountability and regulatory compliance including safeguarding.
A strong passion for the importance of lived experience, with the ability to champion and embed lived experience insight meaningfully across organisations and systems and communicate its value credibly and with empathy.
Experience of building and sustaining strategic partnerships across complex stakeholder environments.
Experience overseeing organisational budgets and financial governance arrangements proportionate to organisational scale.
Experience ensuring that engagement, participation or service design reflects the diversity of affected communities and reduces barriers to access.
Understanding of change dynamics in complex multi-stakeholder environments.
Desirable
Experience of delivery of organisational turnaround including experience of embedding new operating models or organisational disciplines.
Experience of working within the gambling harms sector, public health, addiction, mental health or another stigma-affected area, with an understanding of the barriers individuals face in having their voices heard and influencing services, policy and systems change.
Skills and abilities
Essential
Strategic thinker with system wide awareness and ability to translate long-term vision into achievable organisational priorities and delivery plans.
Demonstrated ability to build, sustain and influence strategic relationships at Board and senior commissioner level.
Politically astute and able to operate constructively in contested environments.
Ability to balance external influence with internal organisational development.
Experience in organisations that combine analysis, policy development and implementation.
Intellectually curious and analytically strong, able to cut through complexity.
Bold and decisive, willing to make and stand by difficult choices.
Highly visible and externally credible.
Resilient and emotionally intelligent, able to lead through tension and change and combine challenge with empathy, internally and externally.
Values-driven, with a deep commitment to addressing gambling harm.