Miscellaneous
Gillian Caldwell is CEO of Global Witness, one of the world's most widely-respected and influential campaigning NGOs. Global Witness boasts a 23-year trade record of working to expose and break the links between natural resource exploitation and poverty, corruption and environmental and human rights abuses worldwide. A trained lawyer, Caldwell moved from her native America to London in 2015, in order to lead Global Witness. In this extended interview, she discusses the dangers faced by her staff when working in some of the world's most politically unstable countries, while giving her thoughts on Brexit and the increasing reliance of media organisations on investigative NGOs. An Amnesty International activist since the age of 12, Caldwell doesn't shy away from identifying "our own hypocrisy and inconsistency in diplomatic relationships", pointing to the role of Western nations in "enabling corruption elsewhere" and the determination of Global Witness to "follow the dollars back home". Referring to her fondness of the UK, she also relays her experiences of navigating the “sometimes substantial cultural differences” between British and American culture.