Charles Rowett , current Chief Executive of Gotelee Solicitors , worked in financial services before leaving the private sector in 2011 to lead a Yorkshire based cancer charity, but returned to his adopted county of Suffolk in 2017 when he rejoined the commercial world. In this article he discusses why he made the move, and shares his passion about business and charity working together.
Financially, the charity had been reasonably well-funded but struggled to attract new donors. One of my priorities was to rebuild the charity’s fundraising activities and to set up some important partnerships, including Yorkshire County Cricket, in order to engage with local people and it worked! To add to our good fortune, generous legacies and a major new income stream from drug royalties helped us transform the charity into one of the very best in the UK. How did your background in finance help? By 2016 the charity’s finances were in great shape. It was being well-managed, was highly respected and had built very positive collaborations with universities, the NHS and public health and city councils. In many ways, I felt “my work was done”, and it was the right time to move on.
By coincidence, Yorkshire Cancer Research (YCR) came up by chance in a conversation. I met them and was completely hooked by their passion and commitment. So we moved to Yorkshire, and I enjoyed five, life- changing years which gave me a completely different outlook on work, family, health and the importance of local communities. Making the leap from financial services isn’t necessarily an obvious one, you must have faced some challenges? My priorities centred on developing a new strategy, moving away from long-term bench research to highly focused patient- centred innovation, cancer prevention, early diagnosis and clinical trials.
You were born in Yorkshire but moved to Suffolk, then back to Yorkshire – and now you are back again – how did that come about? 2011 was a strange year for both me and my family. I was working in financial services in Norwich, the economy was still in the depths of the recession and the sector was depressing and frustrating - it really made me think about “doing something more meaningful with my life”. On a personal front, my father had been diagnosed with kidney cancer and my mother had been fighting cancer for several years. Many of my relatives had died of cancer, so this was always going to be “a cause” that had personal relevance.
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