Will Day
The son of a diplomat, Will Day was raised in a number of different countries including the United States, Cyprus and Ethiopia.
Having graduated from the University of Exeter with a degree in Politics, he began his career as Acting Field Director (Uganda and Ethiopia) and as Field Director (East Sudan) with Save the Children UK, where he managed large scale humanitarian responses to the consequences of war and famine.
Whilst recovering from an accident, Will worked as a producer and presenter with the BBC World Service for Africa and was subsequently Relief Coordinator for the Horn of Africa with Oxfam GB.
Instrumental in the establishment of Comic Relief, a fundraising and grant making organisation, Will went on to become its first Grants Director with responsibility for setting up its grants programme for Africa, where he was also involved in the production of the charity’s television and radio documentaries.
After leaving Comic Relief he was the first full time Director of the Opportunity Trust, a specialist micro credit non-governmental organisation (NGO), and was Chief Executive of CARE International UK between 1996–2004.
He is currently Special Advisor to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and a Senior Associate of the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership, where he is a faculty member of the Prince of Wales’s Business and Environment Programme. He is Chairman of Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP), a non-profit company bringing together private sector and NGO organisations to pursue the MDG for water and sanitation, and most recently has been appointed as a part-time Sustainability Advisor to Pricewaterhouse Coopers in the UK.
He sits on the Board of the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), and is a member of WWF UK's Council of Ambassadors. Until July 2008 Will was Chairman of the BBC Children in Need Appeal, the largest grant giver for disadvantaged children in the UK, and an independent assessor for the public appointments process of the DCMS.
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Additional Responsibilities:
1989 – 1993: Member, Grants Committee, Charities Aid Foundation
1990 – 2000: Member and (from 1998) Chairman, BBC Central Appeals Advisory Committee
1993 – 1996: Non-executive Director, South Kent NHS Hospitals Trust
1996 – 2008: Independent Assessor for Public Appointments, UK Government Department for Culture, Media and Sport
2005 – 2008: External Advisor, BBC Corporate Social Responsibility Board
