We have appointed Peter Wood as our new director of safety and security. Pete was most recently the head of global security for Oxfam, where he led a renewed focus on duty of care and managed the organisation’s response to several crisis incidents. He held various other senior security roles over eight years at Oxfam. Prior to that, he was the deputy area coordinator for northern Jordan for the Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development (ActEd) and the deputy country director for DR Congo for Medair. Before moving into the humanitarian sector, Pete served for eight years as an officer in the British Army, including three operational tours. He lives in Kenya.

Pete will be responsible for leading our international team of safety and security consultants providing mentoring and capacity building to organisations and activists under threat in violent environments and closed civic spaces. He will also liaise with and provide support to the foundations and nonprofits that are our security clients in the human rights, environment, and humanitarian worlds. We are delighted that he will be joining our team in this senior role, and look forward to working with him.

Our current safety and security lead, Dan Williamson, will be stepping down at the end of May. In the meantime, he will be leading a six-week handover and onboarding period before formally handing over the reins to Pete on 1 June.