Sacha Deshmukh joined Amnesty UK at a turbulent time for the organisation. But since his arrival, he has worked to change things for the better, as he explains to Melissa Moody.
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Like many other charity CEOs, Sacha Deshmukh has held a mix of private and notfor-profit roles in his career, landing, over the past decade, predominantly within the charitable sector. “I quite like the fact I’ve had a mix,” he says, noting that there’s a more commonality between different sectors than many people would believe. “[There’s a] passion for being in a very cause-driven environment, where your responsibility is to try and make an organisation as effective to that cause as possible.” It’s for this reason, amongst many, that he has been driven to lean his focus towards the charity space.

Joining in a crisis
At the centre of this is Amnesty UK - a charity that has been under the spotlight for claims of institutional racism. Its former CEO, Kate Allen, brought forward the date of her planned retirement in 2021 amid reports from staff of racism in the organisation. A report released in 2022 criticised the organisation for failing to embed equality, inclusion and anti-racism. This formed a complicated backdrop when Deshmukh joined the organisation, initially in 2021 as interim CEO and then permanently from 2022.

“In some ways, the biggest challenges I faced when I started the role were coming into an organisation that clearly, when a crisis was public, needed someone who was going to help it grapple with that crisis.”

Once stories began hitting the news pages, change escalated quickly. Deshmukh heard about getting the role on Friday, and started the following Tuesday.

“If you think about the scale of the challenge, perhaps you might use some time to think about it and get ready before you’re responsible for it,” he says, yet he had a matter of hours rather than weeks or months. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, he says, believing it’s only when you dive in that you can truly get to grips with the challenges.

And as he settled into the role, he realised that, despite the challenges the institutional racism posed, Amnesty UK was still delivering “incredible work on its cause.” But it was the environment surrounding the staff that was letting everyone down.

So what has Deshmukh done to help tackle racism? A report published in 2022 and carried out by Global HPO, was the first step. It was intentionally a co-commissioned report between the board, activists, trade union, managements and former staff. “From the beginning, the commitment was that it will be published in full so we would all see it at the same time.”

This was as a response to one of the issues identified – a culture of secrecy. “So busting through that and saying actually, there is a problem” was key for Deshmukh. There would be no secrets and no editing on the report.

The report, published in April 2022 found three major themes that needed improvement; culture, lack of organisational infrastructure, and that the charity needed to ‘learn how to learn’.

It read: “It is indefensible that the world’s leading human rights organisations would not be practising internally what it preached externally. Additionally we did not expect to find an organisation like AI UK exhibiting such immaturity in its approach.” There was evidently, a lot of work that needed done.

Out of date

Within the themes the report identified, Deshmukh drilled down into some of the specific reasons the racism and other issues may have been occurring. One of those was that the processes within Amnesty UK were outdated. The organisation hadn’t modernised in about a decade and processes that may have been suitable in 2010 were out of date in 2020.

“People think that [some processes] lead to equitable outcomes, but actually inherently in their design or nature they’re less equitable for some people.” He hastened to add that although many of the issues raised were about racism, it wasn’t the only way bias existed.

“If you have disorganisation within your organisation, who can typically rise to the top of a less intentionally progressive situation? It’s the men,” he states, suggesting that sexism is another bias that existed.

The organisation hadn’t had a change of leadership in 20 years. “I think it’s difficult for anyone over that timeframe. You can run an organisation really well, and you probably won’t get it right. You set it in a good direction for the first decade but actually it’s a pretty impossible task.”

The processes that needed change ran throughout the whole organisation. There was an environment of conflict in order to reach a resolution for a decision rather than positive dialogue, he added.

So are the issues at Amnesty UK resolved? “They’re better than they were,” he says. “But I’d be the first to say we’re halfway there.” Since the organisation had been frozen in its way of working, it’s now looking to do the opposite. “Our goal should try and be the progressive employer of 2030, but lets see if we can get there by 2026. Let’s not just make ourselves good enough, now lets try and get beyond that.”

Lessons

Amnesty UK isn’t the first, and certainly not the last organisation to face these challenges. Those who work in charities are passionate about what they do, but “what you actually have to do is then put a much greater emphasis on what it means to positively work with differences of views, differences of dialogue, differences or points of view and a positive inclusion,” says Deshmukh. “You have to be really intentional”.

When facing a crisis, organisations are quick to try and protect their reputation. “Reputation is the result of reality; it’s not a separate thing itself. I think sometimes charities are too quick to go ‘there’s this crisis’ and the issue is reputation. But the issue is the actual issue.” Many organisations need to take that first step in acknowledging that the problem exists. “You don’t have the luxury [of thinking it doesn’t].”

Then, of course, the issue needs solved, and that can be done with the knowledge of people identifying those issues as a first step, he adds. One of the most important things, Deshmukh says, is honesty, openness and transparency. “It’s so prevalent for people to say ‘we know that the depth of our problem is, but gosh we can’t tell our staff that because we don’t trust them or something.’

“Whoever the audience is, who you’re aiming to help has a lot of major problems if you can’t actually trust your staff to have an adult to adult dialogue with you about the organisation itself. If you’re having an adult to child dialogue then don’t be surprised when the behaviours within the dialogue are like teenagers.”

Looking ahead

Stepping away from the issues at Amnesty, Deshmukh explains how privileged he feels to be in his job. “It’s an incredible privilege to have a role where you’re tasked with working for the benefit of people all around the world.”

Working not only in Amnesty UK, but across the sector, he has seen how things have changed – or not. One of those is the way the sector approaches leadership. “I don’t think that the sector realises that leadership is a set of skills and knowledge and methods and approaches to leadership,” he says. “Actually being a CEO, that’s a very significant part of your responsibility and focus, and therefore your passion has to be those areas and applying them.

“Charity CEO jobs are hard, in some ways you’re being asked to sort of show a superpower of being good at what I’ve just described, but also the absolute expert in the issues areas and the lead public spokesperson.

“The general ask of a CEO is those three things, but what’s not changed enough is realising that if you only get people who are either only interested in being the lead expert and being a spokesperson and not interested in running your organisation, or you get people who only focused on the first two things and don’t have that much leadership experience and you don’t give them the support, you’re giving them a very hard task, and you may be setting them up to fail.”

So what advice would Deshmukh give other leaders? “You can only be the leader that is you being yourself. Your aim should be to be the leader that is being yourself when you’re your best self. If you aren’t feeling happy, there’s something wrong with the environment in which you’re being a leader. You’ve got two choices: you can either manage to change it, or don’t stay too long in a place when you’re not happy as the leader because it won’t let you be your best self.”

Along with being your best self, a big part of being a CEO is using your voice for influence, and with a general election coming up, the voices of the sector will be needed.
Deshmukh is aware of this, and so is the rest of the organisation, both in the UK and globally, too. In fact, this year, around the world, there are more people participating in elections than there has been in about 70 years.

“One thing that’s really important, not just because it’s a rule from the regulator, but it’s written into our core statures that Amnesty International globally and in any country is strictly nonpartisan.” The organisation has produced a manifesto of what it hopes the next government would do including to protect and expand rights of people in the UK, repeal the Public Order Act, and introduce a Racial Equality Bill.

With all of this in mind, it’s a busy year for Deshmukh and Amnesty. But they are working hard on the future; both inside and outside of the organisation with the aim of making it brighter for all involved.

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