Gillian Caldwell

Biography

Gillian Caldwell is a Skoll Awardee consulting in the areas of strategic planning, organizational development, retreat design and facilitation, executive coaching and transition planning. She served as CEO of Global Witness from 2015-2019, during which time the team generated numerous systems-changing impacts, reshaped strategy to double down on the climate crisis, strengthened its governance, management team and communications capabilities, significantly increased its budget, financial reserves and staff size and opened a new office in Brussels to complement those in London, Washington DC and Beijing. She previously served as Campaign Director for 1Sky (now part of 350.org), which she helped build from inception. 1Sky grew within two years to become the largest collaborative climate and energy campaign in the US, combining over 640 allied organizations, organizers in 23 states, more than 200,000 climate advocates and 4000 “Climate Precinct Captains” across the country. Gillian was previously Executive Director of WITNESS, co-founded by musician Peter Gabriel, using the power of video to open the eyes of the world to human rights abuses. Gillian led WITNESS' rapid expansion over ten years and helped produce over 30 documentary shorts and films for use in systems-changing advocacy campaigns. Gillian also directed a global undercover investigation and campaign on the Russian mafia’s involvement in trafficking women for forced prostitution, and produced and directed an influential documentary film which was televised internationally and helped spur policy changes worldwide. She has received many awards and honors for social entrepreneurship, including an Echoing Green fellowship, the Skoll Award, the Schwab Foundation Award, an Ashoka Award. She was also honored as an MIT Directors Fellow and given a Next Generation Leadership Award by the Rockefeller Foundation. She serves on the board of EarthRights International and the Purpose Foundation.