Chief Executive Officer

About the War Child Alliance

The War Child Alliance was formed in 2023. It brought together the five War Child fundraising members (in the Netherlands, UK, Germany and Sweden, plus Children in Conflict in the US) and 14 programme members based in and around conflict-affected areas across the world. The resulting Alliance integrated programme activities under one umbrella – all with the aim to multiply our impact for conflict-affected children. Inevitably there have been challenges along the road, which have required the Board’s attention. The Alliance is now entering a critical phase of its development, where strengthening shared governance across member organisations, deepening equitable partner models, and ensuring clarity of roles between Alliance and member entities will be central to delivering impact at scale.

Main Purpose of the CEO Role

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is accountable for the overall leadership, strategic direction, and performance of WCAF, ensuring the organisation delivers its mission and contributes sustained, high quality impact for children affected by conflict.

The role plays a central part in shaping how the WCAF delivers value to its target communities by strengthening collective action, enabling shared investment in common priorities, and supporting effective implementation through the shared platform. Internally and externally, the CEO provides executive leadership, decision making, and representation for WCAF, while strengthening alignment, collaboration, and trust across Alliance members, Fundraising Members, and key external stakeholders, in line with agreed governance arrangements.

This role also stewards the continued maturation of the War Child Alliance model, reinforcing shared accountability, clarifying decision making where required, and supporting confidence in a federated structure with distributed authority.

Core Responsibilities:

This is the most senior executive role within WCAF. The CEO is the statutory director of WCAF, chairs the International Management Team (IMT), and is accountable to the International Supervisory Board (ISB). The CEO leads the organisation within the authority delegated through the Articles of Association and governance framework.

The CEO operates at the highest level of organisational leadership and is required to balance strategic vision with organisational stewardship, external influence, and respect for shared governance. The role is exercised in a complex international and federated environment, engaging with the ISB, Alliance members, Fundraising Members, donors, partners, and staff representation bodies. The CEO will lead the WCAF and the Alliance through a period of operational model change, consolidation and maturation, strengthening Alliance coherence, reinforcing financial sustainability, maturing shared operating mechanisms, and positioning War Child as a credible and unified external actor in a rapidly changing humanitarian and development landscape.

Strategic Leadership and Delivery:

• Lead the development and delivery of WCAF’s long term strategy, for approval by the Supervisory Board, ensuring alignment with the War Child Alliance’s shared vision, values, and objectives.
• Translate strategy into clear organisational priorities, annual plans, and performance frameworks for WCAF and, where relevant, across shared Alliance initiatives.
• Lead organisational and Alliance wide change initiatives, including shifts in operating models, shared services, and ways of working, ensuring clarity, engagement, and sustained accountability.

Alliance Stewardship and Operating Model:

• Support the effective operation of governance and collaboration mechanisms across the War Child Alliance, strengthening alignment, trust, and collective decision making between members.
• Lead the continued maturation of the War Child Alliance operating model, including strengthening shared services, clarifying decision rights where required, and reinforcing mechanisms for shared accountability and collective investment.
• Promote organisational coherence and transparency by ensuring clear visibility of priorities, decisions, performance, and shared results across WCAF and the Alliance, in line with agreed governance processes.

Governance, Risk and Board Engagement:

• Ensure effective governance, risk management, legal compliance, safeguarding, and financial stewardship within WCAF.
• Provide high quality information, analysis, and advice to the ISB to enable effective oversight, strategic decision making, and assurance.
• Exercise executive authority within WCAF in line with the Articles of Association and governance framework, while enabling shared leadership and collective decision making across the broader Alliance.
• Ensure effective engagement with employee representation bodies, including the Netherlands Works Council (Ondernemingsraad), by maintaining transparent communication, fulfilling consultation and co-determination requirements, and fostering a constructive and trust-based relationship.

Organisational Leadership and Culture:

• Provide overall executive leadership to WCAF, ensuring strong performance, effective decision making, and alignment of people, resources, and priorities.
• Build, lead, and develop a high performing IMT, fostering accountability, collaboration, inclusion, and collective ownership of results.
• Lead and model an organisational culture grounded in integrity, safeguarding, equity, accountability, learning, and high performance.
• Lead the proactive management of organisational risk and opportunity, supporting a strong risk aware culture across WCAF and shared Alliance functions.

External Leadership and Representation:

• Act as the most senior spokesperson and representative of WCAF with donors, partners, sector bodies, and other external stakeholders.
• Position War Child as a unified and credible Alliance externally, strengthening strategic partnerships, donor confidence, and sector influence.
• Support the growth and development of War Child’s broader movement and network by enabling engagement, opening opportunities, and strengthening collective identity and reputation.

Each staff member, including the CEO, is responsible for contributing to a culture aligned with War Child’s mission, safeguarding commitments, Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) principles, and the Core Humanitarian Standard.

These duties provide a framework for the role and should not be regarded as a definitive list. Other reasonable duties may be required consistent with the grade of the role.

The successful candidate will demonstrate the ability to balance strategic vision with organisational stewardship and external influence, exercising leadership with confidence, nuance, and integrity within clearly defined governance arrangements.

The CEO will be comfortable working in a complex international and networked environment, ideally with experience of leading an organisation towards a more intentionally partner-led model. This includes experience of engaging constructively with governance bodies, alliance members, donors, partners, and wider sector stakeholders. They will bring strong judgement, high personal credibility, and political awareness, alongside the ability to lead through complexity, ambiguity, and change while maintaining trust, alignment, and a clear focus on mission and impact.

Education:

• Relevant postgraduate qualification or equivalent senior leadership experience in a related field is desirable. Equivalent combinations of education and experience will be considered.

Experience:

• Led an organisation or enterprise level function with accountability for strategy, performance, and sustainability across multiple functions, geographies, or organisational entities.
• Developed strategy and translated it into clear priorities, delivery plans, and measurable outcomes.
• Led a team or organisation through a complex change or transition process.
• Worked effectively with boards or supervisory governance bodies.
• Led senior leadership teams to enable accountability, collaboration, and organisational clarity.
• Oversaw financial stewardship, organisational sustainability, and risk informed decision making.
• Represented organisations externally and built senior level partnerships.
• Experience in international, humanitarian, development, or networked environments.
• Experience of living or working in conflict-affected settings.

Languages:

• Fluency in English is required for this role.
• Additional languages may be useful depending on stakeholder groups and organisational context, for example Arabic, Dari, French, Spanish, or Ukrainian.

(Technical) Knowledge:

• Strategic leadership in complex, multi stakeholder and federated environments.
• Strong understanding of governance, compliance, safeguarding, and risk management.
• Ability to operate effectively within alliance and shared platform models.
• Credible external representation and high stakes communication skills.
• Strong personal commitment to ethical leadership, inclusion, accountability, and child safeguarding.

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