Executive for humanitarian logistics - Volunteer

HLA has a strong volunteer base and extensive network of NGOs, organisations, academia, donors, and the logistics sector. We want to enable locally led humanitarian logistics to build partnerships with the private sector - ensuring HLA is financially sustainable.

What difference will you make?

This is an opportunity to help shape how humanitarian logistics evolves - supporting locally led response, fostering responsible private‑sector engagement, and strengthening professional practice across the sector.

The role will help to improve collaboration, knowledge exchange, systems change, and practical impact in humanitarian logistics by

• Helping the organisation focus on areas where it can add the most value, particularly at national and regional levels.
• Supporting collaboration between international and local actors in ways that are equitable, respectful, and sustainable.
• Ensuring that HLA Connect’s social enterprise activities align with good practice for locally led supply chain resilience, crisis preparedness and response.
• Translating private‑sector expertise into accessible learning, tools, and dialogue for humanitarian aid practitioners.

What are we looking for?

You are likely to bring a combination of the following:

• A social entrepreneur, ideally with senior experience in logistics, supply chains, disaster management, or related sectors
• A strong understanding of locally led agendas and the realities faced by local and national actors
• Experience working with, or within, the private sector in logistics or supply‑chain contexts
• Proven ability to build partnerships across cultures, sectors, and power dynamics
• Experience with fundraising, organisational development, or network‑based organisations
• A collaborative, facilitative leadership style suited to volunteer‑led environments

What will you be doing?

HLA Connect is a Community Interest Company (a non‑profit social enterprise) established by and for the Humanitarian Logistics Association (HLA), which is a UK based charity and global, practitioner‑led network working to strengthen humanitarian logistics and supply‑chain capacity, with a growing emphasis on local leadership, national systems, and cross‑sector collaboration.
HLA supports humanitarian actors by facilitating training, knowledge exchange, research, and professional networking. As the humanitarian system shifts toward locally led, preparedness, and more effective engagement with the private sector, HLA’s role is to act as a neutral convenor and capacity‑strengthening platform, bridging local actors, international organisations, and logistics and supply‑chain partners.
The objectives of HLA Connect CIC are to perform trading activities that generate profits for payment to Humanitarian Logistics Association.
We are seeking a Chief Executive / Business Development Lead to guide HLA Connect through its setup and first phase of strategic evolution.
This role is focused on enabling locally led humanitarian logistics and building meaningful partnerships with the private sector, while ensuring the organisation remains financially sustainable, operationally realistic, and able to generate surplus revenue that can be used to support HLA (the charity).
Reporting to the Directors, you will work closely with volunteer teams to position HLA as a trusted platform for collaboration — not a delivery agency, but an enabler of better systems, skills, and relationships across the humanitarian logistics ecosystem.

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