Ciara Devlin, who has spent several years in senior roles at homelessness charity Crisis, has been appointed as the next chief executive of refugee charity Breaking Barriers.

She joins in November and replaces founder Matt Powell, who is leaving after eight years at the charity, which he set up to link refugees and businesses to provide them with “meaningful employment”.

He said that Devlin has been hired due to her experience of growing a charity, while at Crisis between 2005 and 2022. Over this period the homelessness charity grew from a London based organisation with 90 staff to a national organisation with services UK wide.

Breaking Barriers has set an aim of quadrupling its reach by supporting 4,000 refugees a year by 2030. This will mean growing its annual turnover from £4.8m to £15m and its staff from 80 to 300 as it looks to expand from five locations “to many more”, said Powell.

“One thing I’ve learnt over the years is how hard growth is, and that the challenges you face are so different at each stage,” he said.

“We have learned many lessons and professionalised an unrecognisable amount since we first started around a kitchen table all those years ago.

“But I am an entrepreneur at heart. While I’ve loved seeing the spark of the idea I had become reality, as we progress through our scale-up phase, we need someone who has ‘been there, done that’.

“Someone who can anticipate the hurdles before they’ve even come into view.”

Devlin’s senior roles at Crisis include a three-year stint as its head of place-based programmes from 2019.

She has also been the homelessness charity’s head of new developments, corporate partnerships manager and director of its 50th anniversary programme.

This year she has been a senior consultant at Kenyan based charity Living Goods and spent three months as interim deputy director at The Death Penalty Project.

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