Gill Johnson (she/her)

With Opportunity Green since: November 2023

“Registering, setting up and seeing our new Opportunity Green Europe office up and running has definitely been a career highlight. I’ve learnt a lot about the differences between running an organisation in Belgium compared to the UK, and am looking forward to seeing this new office go from strength to strength.

Growing and managing the operations team has been another proud moment for me. We are now a team of four, and I’m lucky to work alongside such experts in their field and absolutely could not do my job without their support.”

Specialist areas:

Project management, organisational strategy, people and culture, charity compliance and governance, organisational development and change

About Gill:

Having worked in development, humanitarian and environmental charities for more than 20 years, Gill brings a rich mix of expertise to Opportunity Green. Her roles have spanned charity leadership, fundraising, change management and operations. 

Before joining us, Gill was CEO of Wicked Weather Watch – a climate change education charity working in primary schools – and Global Development Director of CDP, where she led a team of 30 fundraisers and grant managers to raise over £25m per year. She began her career volunteering in South Africa as part of an HIV awareness programme working with young people in rural areas. Since then, she’s travelled extensively in Africa and Asia, meeting local partners and seeing firsthand the impact of climate and other issues on local communities. 

As our Chief Operating Officer, Gill has led our expansion into Europe, opening a new office in Belgium; managed a challenging IT migration; grown our finance and people systems; and made sure that equality, diversity and wellbeing are at the very heart of our work policies. As a member of our senior leadership team, she helps define and implement our organisational strategy. Day to day, she heads up the finance, IT, people and culture, office management and governance aspects of Opportunity Green. In practice, this means having oversight of everything from recruitment to organisational budgets, to making sure we’re run well as a charity.