Childline UK

He led the organisation through major governance reform, reducing the board to 12, and ultimately the Charity Commission closed its case.

Today, he leads the NSPCC, the charity behind Childline.

Chris has spent his career leading organisations where people care deeply about the cause, but passion does not necessarily make governance easier.

Sometimes it makes change much harder.

So I want to understand what actually happens inside those boardrooms.

How do you persuade people to reform a system that they love? How do you know where the real power sits? How do you lead through painful decisions without losing your humanity? Chris, welcome to Grit in the Boardroom.

Before we begin, I'd like to acknowledge the recent death of Dame Esther Ranson and the extraordinary legacy she leaves through Childline.

What would you most like people to understand about what Esther changed for children?

And that this gives the students a list of organisations of where they might get help.

So you could then show up things like Childline, things like the NHS and your all important safeguarding team.

But getting them to practice how to help somebody having a panic attack with those grounding techniques will help them to understand they can do it for other people and they can do it for themselves.

I hope this has been thought-provoking for you.

They do them brilliantly, whether it be bullying, sexual sort of identity sort of storylines, eating disorders, mental health issues.

And they were doing an abuse storyline and it had full support from Childline and the NSPCC.

And at the end of the day, I wanted to get the story out there.

I wanted to raise awareness about it and do my best to tell the story.

And then with a bit of my study, but also where I started in my career in sub-Saharan Africa, I took a role at the Microloan Foundation, which was helping women set up businesses and providing finance and mentoring support to people in remote rural areas of Malawi, Zambia and Namibia.

three years later for various sort of personal professional reasons it felt like the right time to to to look for a new role and I thankfully happened upon a role at the NSPCC which then turned into almost 15 years of incredibly demanding relentless work but incredibly fulfilling and then I uh I told you on the train actually when we were talking about mental health and things I forget now with the time passing so quick I think 17 years ago yeah 17 years ago lost a family member to suicide my cousin and one of the many reasons I love Childline within the NSPCC's world is just how often young people who are either with suicidal thoughts or actively have a plan.

And so I think when I felt ready in career terms and sort of personal terms to seek a new challenge, immediately when I heard about and saw the opportunity with Air Ambulances UK, I suppose that visceral, life-saving nature of Air Ambulances work understandably gripped me.

And just the more I heard about the work that they do and the services, you know, the 21 air ambulance charities across the UK, just hearing more and more about the work, just absolutely amazing and inspirational.

Now he's out, why can't we get him a job looking after Justin Bieber? Or One Direction? All right, Conrad Murray might have killed a pop star, right? But just think about how many kids he saved.

He did two years in prison and he got a Lifetime Achievement Award from Childline.

This week, Conrad Murray went out for Halloween.

He went trick or treating and he went dressed as Bubbles, Michael Jackson's chimp.

I chose placements where I could learn from those different from me.

I went to a youth club in Andersonstown, Childline in Durban, South Africa, and an education provision in Poleglass.

I got to meet young people and colleagues from all backgrounds and have continued to enjoy this diversity into the rest of my career.

And now I get to deliver good relations training.

We're exceptionally grateful to her.

And one thing she did was volunteer for Childlines.

And we were saying when we met to rehearse this, Esther Ransom, who founded Childline, had just died, so it was very touching.

So there you are, Nicola.

Give us the names of some of the charities that you've worked for.

I've worked for Gypsums, Childline, Caring for Gibraltar, Straits of Gibraltar.

Too many to count.

So it's obviously a very caring thing because a lot of the charities that you've helped, it's all about caring.