Neil Jeffery was recently appointed as the new CEO of the Koru Foundation, and started in the role in early December

Chris Tomlinson, Director of Programme Strategy at BWEA and member of the Board of the Koru Foundation expressed his support for the decision; "We are delighted to announce the appointment of Neil Jeffery as our new Chief Executive. Through an extensive search and selection process we believe we have found an outstanding candidate to lead the organisation through the next critical stage of its development."

Neil has a decade's experience leading and building organisations: for five years he was Excutive Director of a research and policy institute in Washington DC providing analysis for the US Congress and more recently he has successfully led two UK based organisations through significant periods of change and growth, as CEO of International Development Enterprises and Excutive Director of the International Centre for the Legal Protection of Human Rights. Neil has worked with poor communities in the developing world for over 20 years with particular expertise in poverty, developnment and human rights. He lived and worked in Latin America for several years, is a fluent Spanish speaker and has an MBA with distinction from Sir John Cass Business School.

He added, "I am honoured and extremely excited to be joining such as innovative and forward-looking charity. Poverty remains an enormous global development challenge. The work of the Koru Foundation in providing the poorest people in the world with access to cheap, reliable and renewable energy sources is a crucial contribution to poverty reduction; it promotes enterprise development, enables individuals and communities to establish new and more effective ways to generate income, and increases access to health care and education.

The link to and support from the growing and dynamic renewable energy business sector is vital to Koru's future success, and means that its potential impact on the lives of the poorest people on the planet is greatly enhanced. I am looking forward to the challenges of the next few months and working with the Board, staff and companies across the renewable energy sector to build and strengthen the work of the Koru Foundation".