A former Foreign Office diplomat has been appointed as the chief executive of a £1m-a-year prison rehabilitation charity.
Sian Williams will join Switchback in October.
She succeeds Alice Dawnay, who founded the charity 15 years ago and announced her departure in May.
Williams joins Switchback from Toynbee Hall, where she is director of policy and innovation with a focus on financial inclusion.
Before this she was a diplomat at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and worked for the Money Advice Trust.
She is also chair of trustees at the think tank Positive Money.
Switchback works with young men after they have left prison.
The charity says 90 per cent of the people it works with do not reoffend, compared with half of prison-leavers across the country as a whole.
It raised just under £1m in 2020/21 and has doubled in size since 2018.
Williams described Switchback as “one of the most impactful justice charities in the UK” and said it was “an honour to have the opportunity to build on such an impressive legacy”.
Duncan Shrubsole, chair of trustees at Switchback, said: “Sian’s leadership, thoughtfulness and commitment to Switchback’s values impressed everyone she met, from trustees to the staff team and former Switchback trainees.”
The charity did not say what Dawnay plans to do next.