Changemakers: Shaks Ghosh

Developing good leaders is everything to Shaks Ghosh. Around 15 million people in the UK volunteer with charities on a weekly basis. As Chief Executive of Clore Social Leadership, Ghosh supports the leaders of those not-for-profit organisations, essentially working to equip the 800,000 paid staff in the UK social sector with the skills they need to have impact.

She seems destined to have been a leader in the sector. From her childhood in Calcutta to her first job as an urban renewal officer at Leicester City Council in 1981, changing society has been her life’s work – for which she was awarded a CBE in 2015.

Following 10 years as CEO of Crisis, one of the UK’s biggest homelessness charities, she led the establishment of the venture philanthropy charity the Private Equity Foundation, now known as Impetus. In 2008 she took the reins at Clore Social, part of the Clore Duffield Foundation, which was named after the British financier, property magnate and philanthropist Sir Charles Clore.

“My school was run by Irish nuns,” Ghosh says. “They were my first role models – incredible women who travelled across the world, were passionate about girls’ education and who role-modelled strength. I was surrounded by these women who did good work in a very humble way. They were the people I wanted to be.”

She is also her parents’ daughter: Her Indian father gave her impatience and her German mother, her compassion. Both were “mad” environmentalists and debates around the dinner table on saving the earth were commonplace. But Ghosh veers away from her parents when it comes to the ‘how’: “They would always put the environment first,” she says. “I would always put people first.”