The Philanthropy Impact Podcast · Philanthropy Impact

In Conversation With Neil Heslop

June 17, 2024·35 min·3 clips

Neil Heslop's experiment showed 9 interviews when he hid his blindness, but only 1 when he disclosed it.

The conversation starts with biography, but it does not feel too polished. The host asks Neil Heslop, chief executive of the Charities Aid Foundation, how he got here and what keeps him interested in the work. Heslop begins with law. Three years of study were enough for him, though the training still helped later. Telecoms and IT came next. Over twenty-five years, he worked in roles connected to Nortel, O2, and Cincinnati Bell, then sold a couple of businesses in North America. The next turn was almost comically ordinary: a pub, a friend, and the question of what the next ten or fifteen years should look like. The friend suggested making charity work the day job, since the sector could use skills Heslop already had. It stuck. The next morning, that throwaway line was still sitting there, and the idea became harder to ignore. RNIB gave him the opening. After the chair approached him about an advisory group, Heslop said he was looking for an executive role instead. That led to RNIB Solutions and a more serious move from business into charity leadership. The ending lands on luck, skill, timing, and hard work. Heslop takes the correction, brings in the Gary Player line, and treats opportunity as something you still have to be ready to answer.

As heard by us

A clear career turn from telecoms to charities, with the mechanics left visible.

This Philanthropy Impact Podcast conversation follows Neil Heslop from a law degree in the late 80s through 25 years in telecoms and IT services across the UK, the United States, and Canada, and on into the not-for-profit sector and the Charities Aid Foundation.

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Why you'd press play

For when you want a career reroute that starts in telecoms and lands in a pub conversation.

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