Tech entrepreneur Rob Wilmot has been appointed as the new Chair of Common Purpose Charitable Trust. Undertaking a term as Chair of up to three years, he will replace previous Chair Robert Care, Principal at worldwide engineering group Arup, who has stepped down after serving a two year term.

Rob Wilmot is the CEO of online idea management platform Crowdicity and was previously one of the three founding executives of UK internet service provider, Freeserve, in 1998; and shortly afterwards became one of the youngest ever executive officers of a FTSE 100 company at the age of 29.

For the last three years Rob has worked with the UK Government Cabinet Office as a non-executive Director of the Crown Commercial Service, serving until recently as HM Government’s Crown Representative for Software. Here he spent his two and half year tenure at the heart of digital transformation helping to build commercially savvy leadership capability in IT software procurement within central Government Departments and the wider public sector - driving hundreds of millions of pounds of savings for the UK tax-payer in the process.

Rob also has interests in several digital marketing and e-business consulting ventures including bcsAgency and eCommonSense. All of this experience puts Rob in an excellent position to lead Common Purpose as we further develop a programme of ‘blended learning’ in leadership development, which combines on and offline learning.

As part of our ‘blended learning’ programme, we have so far created an online course with FutureLearn called Developing Cultural Intelligence for Leadership. We are also working with Rob Wilmot’s Crowdicity to launch a worldwide online innovation community which crowdsources ideas for charity-led projects; most recently, we are running a Comic Relief-funded challenge to source ideas on how to increase civic engagement. 

Rob Wilmot spoke about his appointment: “The world needs more leaders who are able to lead across boundaries. Over the last 26 years, Common Purpose has demonstrated that this can be achieved, in part, through its unique brand of leadership development. Continuing Robert Care’s work and taking its leadership development online through blended learning and the crowdsourcing of ideas to drive innovation is an exciting challenge and one I hope I can contribute to with my own skill set.”

The outgoing Chair, Robert Care will continue as a member of the board of trustees. He spoke about stepping down: “Although I am stepping down as Chair of Common Purpose Charitable Trust, I am delighted to be continuing my involvement with the organisation as a trustee. I believe so passionately in what it does and the impact it has. I very much enjoy working with both the staff team and the wider Common Purpose community.”

Julia Middleton, Founder and CEO of Common Purpose Charitable Trust spoke about both Rob and Robert: “It is an honour to welcome Rob Wilmot as Chair of Common Purpose Charitable Trust. We have benefited from Rob’s insight, advice and friendship over the last decade. His leadership, energy, drive and vision will be a real asset to the organisation. Both myself and the rest of the board are excited to work with Rob, following a unanimous board decision to appoint him. I would also like to state my gratitude to Robert Care for his tenure as Chair where he has achieved great success in focusing on our governance structure and overseeing our exploration of blended learning. I am sure Rob Wilmot will continue that great work in the coming months and years.”