Matt Leach

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

SKILLS

ABOUT MATT LEACH

Change-focused leader and experienced campaigner, with a relentless focus on harnessing the value of evidence and insight to deliver positive change in the context of often rapidly shifting economic and political landscapes. Matt is currently Interim CEO of the Building Centre, where he is leading a major turnaround in its commercial performance. Prior to that, he was CEO of Local Trust, which delivered the £285m Big Local programme, the biggest-ever single investment by a non-state funder in place-based change.Whilst leading Local Trust, Matt has presided over a transformation in its external profile and reputation, drawing on research and learning from the Big Local programme to establish it as a leading contributor to policy debates on neighbourhoods, community power, and \"levelling up\" left behind neighbourhoods, leading the successful cross-sectoral Community Wealth Fund campaign and founding the influential Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods.Prior to leading Local Trust, Matt successfully relaunched longstanding housing charity HACT as a ground-breaking ideas and innovation agency for the housing sector; was Associate Director at the (briefly influential) ‘Red Tory’ think tank ResPublica; and held a range of senior policy and leadership roles across the public sector, including as Chief Executive of civil society funder Capacitybuilders and Director of Policy and Communications at the Housing Corporation. In his early career, Matt variously wrote the Queen’s Speech, secretaried Cabinet committees, bag-carried for ministers, founded an Urban Development Corporation, co-authored a Green Paper on planning reform, managed a Bill Team and led delivery of the referendum on the establishment of a new Mayor for London. He is a tireless activist and entrepreneur, investing energy into multiple start-ups, turn arounds and growth strategies across multiple organisations across public, private and not-for-profit sectors.Matt specialises in generating fast impact. Rethinking vision and strategy, building new relationships, reinventing brand, fixing and optimising systems and transforming organisational culture. Questioning, challenging, embracing and managing existing and future risk, regardless of scale. Whether in start-up, rescue, turnaround or reinvention scenarios, Matt generates results through a relentless focus on maximising returns from existing organisational assets and strengths, and effectively levering previously unrealised organisational value to achieve large scale change.