Saying goodbye to Joelle
After more than a decade with Macmillan, our Director of Volunteering, Joelle Leader, is taking a well-earned retirement. Joelle initially joined Macmillan in 2012 on a three-month contract as Volunteering Strategy Manager. After 12 years of service, most of these spent as Director of Volunteering, Joelle has decided that it is time for her to retire from working for Macmillan (though, as you might expect, not entirely from volunteering).
Joelle’s calling time on a 50-year long working career that started out in the Police force, before she moved to the charity sector and spent the bulk of her career working across a wide variety of roles, organisations and causes. Joelle has decided that the time is right for her to take some time to enjoy the Brighton coast with her family, to travel more and to spend more time in her volunteer role as a Magistrate.
Joelle has consistently spoken of the privilege it’s been for her to lead the Volunteering division at Macmillan. And she certainly leaves the function much changed from when she started. Just some of the highlights from her tenure include…
• Creating the Macmillan Volunteering Quality Standards (MVQS) in 2014 - a pioneering step which set out the expected volunteer experience and helped drive the standard for volunteer management at Macmillan Establishing the Macmillan Volunteer Forum in 2014, to represent the views of Macmillan Volunteers at the highest level in Macmillan.
• Launching Assemble in 2022 - a dedicated and futureproofed volunteer management system built around the needs of Macmillan volunteers.
Perhaps her achievements and her advocacy for Macmillan volunteers is best illustrated in the current Transforming Macmillan Together project, where volunteers are not only part of our future thinking but are directly helping us shape the future of Macmillan itself.