Chair of the Board of Trustees

Are you seeking a board opportunity with a high-impact charity that aligns with your values and vision for society? Passionate about refugee welfare, integration, and unlocking talent for the UK?

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Breaking Barriers:

Acre is delighted to be partnering with Breaking Barriers, our pro-bono partner, to appoint its new Chair of Trustees.

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Breaking Barriers' mission is to welcome refugees into meaningful employment through one-to-one advice and guidance, education, and training. Founded in 2015, this UK-based fast-growing organisation now supports more than thousands of individuals per year.

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Purpose of the role:

This is an exciting opportunity for an experienced leader to join a growing, impact-focused and ambitious charity supporting refugees to access meaningful employment and build a new life.

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The Chair leads the board, ensuring that it governs Breaking Barriers effectively, in service of its vision and mission. The Chair leads in an inclusive way, supporting the board to work together well, and providing support and challenge to the Chief Executive. The Chair is also an ambassador for the charity.

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The Chair of Breaking Barriers provides visionary leadership and strategic direction, ensuring that the organisation effectively achieves its mission while adhering to its core values. This pivotal role involves governance oversight, board leadership, executive support, and serving as an ambassador for the organisation.

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Key responsibilities:

• Strategic leadership and vision: Guide the organisation with a strategic vision, aligning the board and staff's efforts with the mission. Lead the development and review of long-term strategies to ensure responsiveness to community needs and adaptability to the changing environment.

• Governance and oversight: Ensure effective governance, oversee board operations, and ensure compliance with legal, ethical, and functional responsibilities. Monitor financial performance and adherence to non-profit management best practices.

• Resource mobilisation: Support and participate in fundraising strategies, leveraging networks, and engaging with donors and stakeholders to secure necessary resources for the organisation's work.

• Building and leading the board: Ensure the board comprises members with diverse skills and perspectives. Lead recruitment, orientation, and training of board members and facilitate effective meetings and discussions, ensuring productive governance to advance the purpose and values of the organization.

• CEO support and evaluation: Support and maintain a constructive relationship with the CEO, creating a positive and strong working relationship to jointly set and achieve appropriate targets, staying in regular contact and acting as a sounding board to discuss strategic or staffing issues - coaching, supporting and challenging as necessary. Ensuring accountability for organisational performance.

• Ambassadorship: Act as the primary ambassador, representing and promoting the organisation's mission, values, and interests to external stakeholders, enhancing its reputation, and fostering collaboration, fundraising and promotional opportunities.

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To view the full job description and person specification, as well as details on our accessible recruitment process, please view the attached recruitment pack.

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What's in it for you?

Holding the high-profile role as the Chair of Trustees has a number of benefits, including the following:

• Contributing to an important cause: Having appropriate support for refugees in the UK to access meaningful employment does not only benefit the refugee community. It also supports businesses to have access to a wider talent pool and helps foster integration in society.

• Opportunity to make a difference: As the new Chair for Breaking Barriers, you will have the opportunity to drive the growth of a highly impactful Charity with current funding of circa £4 million per year. Breaking Barriers has ambitious plans to extend its impact and you will play a part in spearheading this.

• Expanding your network: Breaking Barriers partners with some of the most high-profile corporates such as Macquarie, Bank of America, LinkedIn, Ikea, and the Big Yellow Group. Being the Chair of Trustee means that you will have exposure to these organisations. You will also have access to other senior stakeholders within Breaking Barriers' wider network, amongst the trustees, executive, and founding teams.

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Other considerations:

• As part of our safeguarding commitment to our clients, we carry out pre-employment checks to ensure that successful applicants are suitable to work with adults at risk. These include basic DBS checks, obtaining references and verifying a candidate's identity and right to work in the UK.

• Breaking Barriers is committed to protecting an adult's right to live in safety, free from abuse and neglect and for their views, wishes and beliefs to be fully considered when deciding action.

• We are an equal opportunities employer and welcome applications from all suitably qualified persons regardless of age, disability, gender reassignment, sex, sexual orientation, marriage and civil partnership status, pregnancy and maternity status, race, religion or belief.

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Role information:

Location: Flexible (travel to London will be required at least once a quarter)

Salary: N/A (Volunteer role)

Time commitment: 1.5 to 2 days per month

Contract: The Chair is appointed for an initial 3-year term with the option of renewal for up to 3 terms. The maximum term for all trustees (including the Chair) is 9 years.

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How to apply:

If you are looking for a role where you can make a real difference, we want to hear from you.

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Breaking Barriers belongs to the Experts by Experience Employment Initiative, which advocates and supports organisations to employ more people from a refugee background. With this in mind, we particularly welcome applicants with experience of seeking asylum and/or a refugee background. If you are an expert by experience (a refugee or a migrant with direct, first-hand experience of issues and challenges of the UK asylum or immigration system), you can ask for an independent and confidential support for your job application from the Experts by Experience Employment Network.

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Please reach out to Canace Wong at Acre at canace.wong@acre.com for further details. Alternatively, you can contact Breaking Barriers directly by reaching out to HR Manager Dani Meier at d.meier@breaking-barriers.co.uk.