You work for an organization called Civil Rights Defenders. You can almost tell from the name what you do, but would you like to describe a little more about what you actually do?
Sure, Civil Rights Defenders is an international human rights organization that is politically and religiously independent. We conduct advocacy work, legal processes and inform about the situation of human rights globally. In addition, we have an emergency fund that works to provide support and assistance to human rights defenders who are at risk.
We support human rights defenders in over 50 countries and have a local presence in over 10 countries. We work with over 300 human rights organizations worldwide.
The need for support for the issues we work on is enormous and in the two years I have been working here, we have doubled our turnover and almost doubled the number of staff.

Interesting - but I understand you come from a very different background? What do you feel you have contributed in particular?
That's right, this is my first time working in the NGO world. My background is actually from the business world where I spent about half of my professional life working in large private global companies, and the other half in state-owned companies. When I joined the organization, the finance function was quite shaky. They had been working hard to change their financial system and when I came in it was not fully implemented. In addition, the few employees who were left in Finance were pretty exhausted. This, combined with the fact that the organization had been in the red for several years in a row, meant that there was a lot to deal with. In this case, much of the initial work was about creating stability with the right skills and processes and completing the implementation of the system.
I usually think of the Finance function as part of a company's or organization's infrastructure, if the Finance flows do not work, the rest of the organization also hacks. During the change journey, we have been greatly helped by three values - simplicity, transparency and communication. These values have permeated the entire Finance change process and guided us when we have come to different choices before making decisions.

What would you like to say to others who, like you, are thinking about taking the step from profit-driven to non-profit organization?
What made me take the step from the beginning was that I wanted to make a real difference, it may sound like a worn cliché but in the work I do I feel that I contribute to something meaningful all the time. In addition, I get a unique insight into what is happening around the world through our employees and partners on the ground. It's both scary and super interesting at the same time.
What has always been my focus is to take the best of the business world and apply it to the NGO world, which I see colleagues in other organizations with similar backgrounds doing as well. However, I think there is a lot more to do in that area, so we need more people. After all, taking a role in a non-profit organization doesn't have to be a lifetime job and I think more people could think like that!