SHACKLETON FOUNDATION - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Chairman
- Freelance Brand and Marketing Consultant
Charlotte is a freelance brand and marketing consultant with extensive experience and knowledge across creative and analytical disciplines. She has worked from both a client and an agency perspective and on major international consumer brands, with a particular passion for retail. To equalise her love of baking, she cycles wherever possible.
Job Titles:
- CEO and Founder of Ren Organisational Consulting
Karen is the CEO and founder of Ren Organisational Consulting, combining experience and knowledge together with psychology-based insights to help individuals take their performance to higher levels and for organisations to be a greater success. Karen speaks conversational French and Cantonese, and is passionate about travel, hiking and baking.
Paul has over 20 years of leadership experience in the social enterprise, philanthropy and impact sectors. He started his career at Water Aid, the UK's leading water and sanitation charity and then spent seven years at Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor. He is passionate about the role seed funding and risk capital can play in getting great ideas off the ground and now works as a consultant, supporting start-ups, enterprises, philanthropists and investors to build impactful portfolios and scale their operations.
Plum is an experienced freelance philanthropy and impact consultant with a particular focus on early -stage ventures. She advises donors and funds on impact management and measurement and helps foundations and individuals use more of their assets for impact. She was previously Head of Impact Investing at New Philanthropy Capital (NPC) and started her career in equity research for Merrill Lynch.
Robert Dickinson started Croydon ParkBox in 2024 following a summer of carrying half a tonne of toys and books to the park with his son to play with. Set within the context of almost 1 million UK children not having a single book at home, only 25% of children playing outside regularly the cost-of-living crisis, he wanted to find a way for others to enjoy what Robert and his son did. Play, read, bond in public parks.
Sir Ernest Shackleton is widely known as one of the most inspirational leaders of the twentieth century. Whilst he never achieved his personal dream of being the first to reach the South Pole, his reputation as a leader of men is based on a still greater success: the survival and safe return of all of his team members, whilst overcoming almost unimaginable odds. Shackleton's name lives on as a synonym for courage, bravery and most of all, leadership.
Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton was a key figure in the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration alongside Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott, all of whom are famed for their courageous exploits that captured the public imagination.
He was born to Anglo-Irish parents on 15 February 1874 in County Kildare, Ireland. He was the second of ten children and his father was a doctor. In 1884, the family moved from Ireland to Sydenham, London where Shackleton was educated at Dulwich College. The young Shackleton did not distinguish himself as a scholar and was said to have been ‘bored' by his studies. Rejecting his father's wish that he become a doctor, he joined the merchant navy when he was 16 and qualified as a master mariner in 1898. This enabled him to travel widely and he developed a keen interest in exploring the poles.
Job Titles:
- CEO and Founder of Gympanzees
Steph is CEO and founder of Gympanzees , a multi-award-winning charity that provides services for disabled children and young people. Steph is a previous Shackleton grant recipient in 2018 and joins us as our Leader Trustee representative. Steph is a highly specialized paediatric physiotherapist based in Bristol. With over 20 years of experience in the industry, Gympanzees has won a host of awards, including a Queen's Award for Innovation, and Stephanie has recently won a Prime Minister's Points of Light Award, one of only two awarded in Bristol.