Sailor's Society chief executive Stuart Rivers acknowledges that he took a “massive hit on salary” when he left the world of business to work for charitable organisations.
“Part of the reason was that I reached a point in my life where there was nothing more I necessarily wanted to achieve in the corporate world, and at the same time I had just dealt with a very tricky project,” he says, a reference to being tasked with cutting many thousands of jobs at Sweden’s Ericsson.
'Totally different'
“I was looking for something totally different,” says the man who ditched the executive suit to work for the Salvation Army.
“I got my hands dirty running a needle exchange and providing outreach for homeless people, getting them into accommodation, providing food and clothing and dealing with drug addiction.”
He has now been in the charity sector for 17 years, working his way back to director level and joining the Sailors' Society in 2013.
He admits to having no maritime background, the closest link being the Scottish port of Aberdeen, from where his mother hails and family connections with the trawler, dock and more recently offshore oil and gas industries.
