Dr Halima Begum has been appointed the new CEO of ActionAid UK, an international charity working with women and girls living in poverty. She will take up her position in July 2023.
Halima is currently CEO of the Runnymede Trust, the United Kingdom's leading race equality think tank. Prior to her work with the Trust, she held senior positions in the UK Department for International Development, the British Council and LEGO Foundation. Halima also has a longstanding connection to ActionAid, having joined the organisation as a recent graduate in 1999 and helping ActionAid set up the Global Campaign for Education.
Halima was born in Sylhet, Bangladesh and raised on Brick Lane in London. In addition to being a nationally respected thought leader on civil rights and equalities, she has spent much of her professional career on overseas posting and has headed major civil society, research and policy programmes in fields including education, gender equality, poverty reduction, human rights, food insecurity, public health and post-conflict reconstruction.
Dr Halima Begum, incoming CEO, says: “It is a great privilege to be re-joining the wonderful team at ActionAid, an organisation that works on exceptionally important causes and that has always remained close to my heart. Right now, there is such enormous complexity in the world, and an overwhelming number of crises affecting some of the most vulnerable members of our global community.
From the Turkey-Syria earthquakes and ongoing war in Ukraine, to the food crisis in East Africa and beyond; humanitarian needs are growing alarmingly and by the day – and we know that women and girls will typically suffer the most. While the challenges across the sector are numerous, significant and immediate, not least in terms of charitable funding during the cost-of-living crisis, this is a pivotal moment for me to be returning to ActionAid.
I look forward to working for the entire AA team and our stakeholders, and to using my experience to support ActionAid’s vital work responding to humanitarian disasters, fighting poverty and ending violence against women and girls.”
Dr Kendi Guantai, ActionAid UK’s Chair of Trustees, says: “We are thrilled that Halima has chosen to return to ActionAid and lead us forward. Her vast experience in challenging and overcoming inequality, combined with her strong grounding in and passion for humanitarian response, human rights and gender equality, will be invaluable in helping ActionAid realise its vision of creating a just, equitable and sustainable world in which every person enjoys the right to a life of dignity, freedom from poverty and all forms of oppression.”
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For further information or interview enquiries, please contact uk.media@actionaid.org; or if out of hours, on +44 (0) 7753 973 486.
Notes to editors
ActionAid is an international charity that works with women and girls living in poverty. Our dedicated local staff are changing the world with women and girls. We are ending violence and fighting poverty so that all women, everywhere, can create the future they want.