David Thomson

David joined All We Can as CEO in September 2024. He has spent the last 30 years in a variety of senior roles in the humanitarian and social justice sector, where he is known for inspiring change and helping organisations become fit for purpose and fit for the future. He does this through a strategic and relational approach, building connections to champion causes and creates a distinct and powerful voice for change. He is deeply passionate about seeing change happen and driving the change needed to make the world better – a world where people live equal and free.

David has brought about change through a variety of senior roles, such as, leading and expanding World Vision’s operations in Armenia, building and leading World Vision’s Global Office of Strategy Management to support transformation, as Director of Policy and Programmes at World Vision UK focussing on programme impact, fundraising and influence, and most recently, as Plan International’s Global Executive Director of Strategy and Collaboration responsible to engage and connect people and partners to forge cutting edge international partnerships and alliances for impact, and for evidence based design of agile strategy, new ventures, branding and knowledge assets.

Over the years David has had the privilege of living and working on all continents, initially in crisis situations saving and protecting life, before getting his MSc in International Development from Oxford Brookes University, and focussing on children’s rights and gender justice. In 1999, he spent a summer as a volunteer working with children living on the rubbish dumps of Cairo. That experience of injustice and exploitation , and those children changed his life! Since then, he has held firmly to the challenge of the prophet Micah and tried faithfully to ‘do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God’. David has 3 adult children and lives with his wife in Oxford.