The Client
Womankind Worldwide is a global women’s rights organisation partnering with feminist movements to end violence against women and girls, advance economic justice, and amplify women’s voices in decision-making everywhere.
Key Objectives
In 2023, Oxford HR was selected by the board of Womankind to lead and support the search and recruitment of Co-CEOs, with one CEO to be based out of the London Office and the other CEO to be based in one of the focus countries. Womankind had recently adopted a co-leadership model at their board chair level and were eager to transition to a similar model at the CEO level. The Co-CEOs would adopt and understand feminist leadership principles and would lead on the organisation’s ambitious plans of transitioning from UK based charity to a Global South led organisation. Additionally, the Co-CEOs would represent the organisation externally as well as bring leadership to their hybrid teams.
Services
- Executive Search
- Co-Leadership Appointments & Coaching
Oxford HR worked extensively with the board of Womankind and other stakeholders over several rounds of consultation to finalise the recruitment process, the job description, the scope of the roles as well as the location where the other CEO would be based.
After a thorough consultation phase, Oxford HR designed a recruitment plan which was shared with the board members. We agreed to focus the search on Kenya and UK where the CEOs could be based. Our search focused on finding intersectional feminist leaders who had experience working with feminist and women’s rights organisations, civil society organisations or charities.
After 7 weeks of search, we presented two separate longlists, one for each location, with 14 candidates on each list. We then used psychometric assessments (Hogan) to help support the matching of the final candidates for the shortlisting phase. We administered the assessments and also used a psychometric interview to understand more about each candidate. This was then used to help support the formulation of compatible pairs. The potential shortlisted pairs then met informally for a chemistry conversation. All of this information was used to help inform what a great pair of co-CEOs would look like. Not only did we have to take into account personality, strengths and development areas, but we also had to ensure that both Co CEOs felt able to share, learn and support each other, despite geographical distance.
The outcome was successful; we were delighted that Womankind appointed Disha Sughand and Diana Njuguna as co-CEOS.
