The CEO of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH), Anne Godfrey, has announced that she will be stepping down before joining GS1 UK in August.
Godfrey had held her position at the CIEH from January 2016 and will become the new CEO of GS1 UK, a company which represents 40,000 members working in retail, foodservice, healthcare industries.
Prior to joining CIEH, Anne previously held senior positions at The Chartered Institute of Marketing, the Business Travel Association and The Law Society. Her earlier career was in professional publishing included senior sales, marketing and product development roles for Thomson Reuters and Pearson.
The appointment concludes a search initiated by GS1 UK chair Chris Tyas in January after current CEO Gary Lynch announced his intention to retire. The balance of the year will see a transition of global and local responsibilities prior to Lynch’s retirement at the end of 2020.
“Anne is an energetic leader, driven and versatile, but with the empathy that is critical in this role, due to the need to understand and respond to the multitude of stakeholders.”
Chris Tyas said: “We were determined to embark on a process to secure the right person to succeed Gary, and in Anne I am certain we have. She has the drive and experience to deliver the great vision we have for our members and, even more importantly, she is culturally aligned with our organisation and the industries we support.
“Anne is an energetic leader, driven and versatile, but with the empathy that is critical in this role, due to the need to understand and respond to the multitude of stakeholders.
“In normal circumstances the task would have been hard enough, but with the added complexity of the Covid-19 pandemic, I am even more relieved that we managed to complete Anne’s appointment and have agreed a start date of August 1st, all things being equal.”
Anne Godfrey said: “The opportunity to deliver GS1 UK’s vision of responding to key macro trends and supporting a diverse membership across all industry sectors is fascinating. Having met members of the team and supervisory board I knew that GS1 UK has a strong culture of collaboration, and a passion for what they do, which is aligned to my own belief as to how you build successful membership-based organisations.