The Molly Huggins Foundation was created to deliver long-term, place-based investment in communities experiencing inequality, operating within the broader mission of the major UK housing group, Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing. With ambitions to mobilise £75m over the next decade and merge with the established migration charity, MTVH Migration Foundation, it required its first independent Chair. This appointment needed a values-led, high-profile leader able to embed community voice, build external trust and guide the Foundation through its next phase of growth and influence. Peridot Partners was engaged to design and deliver a process to identify someone who could both lead the Foundation and represent its purpose externally.
Context.
This appointment took place at a formative moment. The Foundation was transitioning from concept to execution and setting its long-term investment strategy. It required a Chair who could build governance foundations while holding the trust of communities, funders and institutional partners. The landscape around social investment, migration, housing and regional inequality was evolving rapidly, alongside increasing expectations of charities to demonstrate community power sharing, equitable funding and measurable impact. Aligning leadership to these demands was central to the brief.
Brief.
Peridot Partners was appointed to lead a values-driven search for a founding Chair with the credibility, cultural intelligence and governance experience to help shape the organisation’s trajectory. Our approach began with deep listening, spending time with the client to understand the nuance of the mission, the governance ecosystem they operated within, and the kind of leadership authority that would be both credible and additive. Beyond technical chair experience, success was defined through clear markers: a lived or demonstrated commitment to social justice; fluency in housing, migration, or community systems; the ability to influence across sectors; strategic fundraising insight; and the emotional intelligence to unite stakeholders through change. We built a search strategy that prioritised representation, track record and mission alignment, mapping leadership across housing, social investment, public policy, community movements and regulated charity environments. Our process balanced openness with targeted executive reach, designed to ensure diversity of profile, perspective and lived experience at the finalist stage.
Outcome.
Four candidates were shortlisted, all with significant board leadership experience spanning housing, community investment, regulated environments and social justice advocacy. Each brought complementary strengths: governance transformation at scale, system level influencing, lived experience, fundraising leadership and sector authority. The appointed Chair combined long-standing board leadership with deep credibility in communities the Foundation exists to serve. Their career has bridged grassroots service delivery, national policy environments, governance in complex organisations and the mobilisation of significant social investment, providing the Foundation with immediate strategic confidence and external credibility. The appointment delivered a leader who could both establish the governance framework for a newly formed charity and embody its future-facing ambition to shift power, influence investment and strengthen communities facing structural inequity.
“The insight into the client’s requirements together with the encouragement and support given by Clare throughout the entire process put me at total ease. As a consequence, I was able to approach the interview with a huge amount of confidence and do myself justice in front of the recruitment panel.”
Feedback from a successfully appointed Chair.
