We celebrated International Women’s Day (IWD) this year by holding an event where we shared stories from inspiring female leaders who both support and lead charities in our programme. We also hoped these testimonials might inspire more women to join us. IWD is a global day that celebrates the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women, but also calls to accelerate gender parity. At Pilotlight we are very proud of the fact that female Pilotlighters made up 37% of our membership in 2016, but we would love to have a greater proportion in 2017.
Tulsi Naidu, UK CEO of Zurich and a member of our Board of Trustees, first joined Pilotlight in 2011 and spoke about her experiences at our IWD event. She explained that she first came to us because: “My friends told me that I needed more balance in my life and donating my time to Pilotlight might be a chance for me to find it.” She came to one of our events, heard our stories, recognised the opportunity and the rest is history. The key benefit she finds from our programme is that it allows her to use the business skills she has honed throughout her career to make a meaningful impact on charities: “There is real power in coming out of 'the bubble'. Every meeting I feel so inspired, humbled and amazed by charity CEOs and the work they are doing.”
Our flagship programme offers a collaborative environment where we match teams of four senior business leaders (we call them “Pilotlighters”) to coach a charity leader to develop their strategic knowhow and plan for sustainability, development and growth. This process is managed by a dedicated Pilotlight Project Manager, who facilitates the sessions, arranges the meetings and drives the outcomes. All our Pilotlighters need to do is turn up and bring their experience to the problems at hand.
Martine Verweij, who also spoke at the event, is the founder and CEO at Kids Run Free, a Pilotlight partner charity that has just finished a year of coaching from a team of Pilotlighters. She came to us because the charity needed structure and strong support for their strategy and business planning. As Martine said: “I needed fire and I got it! We came out stronger than we went in and we are ready for more. Ready to help more children be fitter, happier and healthier – and the Pilotlighters did that. If you feed the root of a charity, the charity will grow.”
There are well over 150,000 small charities out there across the UK that we could be helping, and we can only do that thanks to the skills and expertise of our Pilotlighters. We also know there are many ambitious and inspiring women in the business world who have the skills and expertise to have real and lasting impact on a charity. Being a Pilotlighter has not only helped Tulsi find balance, but it also gives her contact with topics and technical aspects of policy that she would never otherwise encounter. And she helps a charity along the way.
I would like to thank both our inspiring speakers at our event and everyone who came to find out more about how we are creating change for the small charities we work with. We will be holding similar events in the future where we discuss the impact of what we do in both London and Edinburgh. To let us know if you would like to come along or if you are interested in joining us, please email: [email protected].
