From Project Professional to CEO, with the RSPCA's Joanna Rowland

Why It Matters

Rowland’s story shows that project‑management expertise can accelerate entry into top‑level nonprofit leadership, while emphasizing the urgent need for financial resilience and agile, collaborative approaches in the charitable sector.

Key Takeaways

• Project management equips CEOs with enterprise‑wide oversight and stakeholder skills
• Transitioning from civil service to charity amplifies decision‑making responsibility
• Financial resilience is the RSPCA’s top priority amid funding challenges
• Agile principles can balance control with innovation in nonprofit operations
• Cross‑functional, co‑design approaches improve animal‑welfare outcomes across the organization

Summary

The APM podcast features Joanna Rowland, who left a senior civil‑service career to become chief executive of the RSPCA in December 2025. The conversation explores how a project‑management background prepared her for leading one of the UK’s largest animal‑welfare charities.

Rowland stresses that her first priority is financial resilience, noting that charities are not as well‑funded as the public assumes. She also highlights the broader mission—advocacy, prevention, and influencing food‑production practices—requiring the same strategic oversight she honed on multi‑billion‑pound government programmes.

She likens the RSPCA to “inheriting a stately home,” where the CEO is a custodian for future generations. Her project‑management toolkit—vision setting, risk and stakeholder mapping, and disciplined communication—proved essential, especially when she explained how agile‑style “co‑design” can unite communications, assurance teams, and scientific experts on the new farm‑welfare scheme.

For project professionals, Rowland’s journey illustrates that the discipline can be a direct pathway to C‑suite roles, provided they gain operational experience and learn to loosen rigid controls in favour of innovation. The insights signal that nonprofits increasingly need agile, cross‑functional leadership to navigate funding pressures and deliver impact.

Original Description

Emma meets Joanna Rowland, Chief Executive of the RSPCA. Listeners might remember her previous interview with the podcast in 2020 during the pandemic, when she was Director of HMRC’S COVID-19 response unit, responsible for helping mastermind the UK government’s furlough scheme, and where she was also head of the project management profession.

A lot has changed for Jo since then. She rose through the ranks of the civil service, leaving project management behind her to become Director General of the Home Office, before joining the RSPCA in December 2025 as CEO.

Find out what it’s like to be a first-time CEO; why project management is a perfect training for the role; why project managers need to set their sights higher; and her advice to getting to the C-suite.