External Trustee (Paid)

​Position:
External Trustee (paid) (3-year contract, renewable once to 6 years)

Commitment: 8–10
days per year

Location: London,
UK

What We Are Looking For

This is a chance to join a thoughtful Board of
Trustees who hold the Trust’s Ethos and mission in balance with its commercial
reality. You’ll bring independence of mind, sound judgement, and curiosity
about how governance can enable rather than constrain.

You’ll help ensure the Trust continues to live
its Ethos — that decisions, strategies, and projects serve people and planet.
Working alongside fellow trustees and the executive team, you’ll act as a
critical friend and steward: listening deeply, asking good questions, and
sharing accountability for the Trust’s evolution.

Trustees may occasionally challenge or advise
on strategic projects or client relationships where alignment with Ethos is at
stake.

Knowledge, Skills, and Perspective

You’ll bring knowledge,
skills, and perspective that help the Board govern thoughtfully and
effectively. You may offer strengths in areas such as:

• Governance, finance, or risk –
  guiding organisations with integrity and sound judgment.
• Commercial awareness –
  understanding business models, growth, and financial sustainability.
• Strategic and systems thinking
  – seeing the bigger picture and key interconnections.
• Sustainability and design –
  recognising how creative, systems-led design shapes both the built environment
  and wider systems.
• Change and innovation –
  bringing entrepreneurial energy and creative thinking.
• Communication and influence –
  able to imagine and convey new possibilities.
• Ethical leadership – acting
  with integrity, care, and accountability.

Experience and Perspective

We’re interested in people who
bring different kinds of experience and perspective from one or more of the
following areas:

• Credibility working with
  natural systems and/or regenerative practice – grounded experience in ecology,
  biodiversity, nature-based design, or related fields that connect environmental
  understanding with creative design.
• Design leadership – using
  design to connect creativity, systems thinking, and impact.
• Mission-led and
  entrepreneurial leadership – experience running or advising a purpose-driven
  business, balancing commercial reality with creativity, and finding opportunity
  in uncertainty or transition.

Mindsets

You’ll be selected not only
for what you can do, but for how you think and why you serve. Effective boards
hold past, present, and future in balance. You may be motivated by one of the
following mindsets:

• Custodian – honouring the
  Trust’s origins and Ethos, learning from its evolution, and protecting its
  character as a living inheritance.
• Navigator – bringing lived
  experience of leading or shaping organisations; grounded, pragmatic, and
  willing to face complexity.
• Imagineer – contributing to
  long-term thinking, advocating for ethics, regeneration, and future generation.
• Before submitting your application, please review
  the full job description using the link below.

https://www.usefulsimple.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/251003_UST_Trustee-Recruitment_v4.pdf