About our CEO

Dominic started his career as a volunteer in Liberia in the late 1980s, working in a school in the centre of the country for two years, leaving just before the start of the civil war there. 

Having spent some time in Japan, Dominic joined GOAL in the early 1990s, and worked for them in Somalia before joining Save the Children. He worked in Somalia with Save and then returned with them to work in Liberia for a year.

In his time with Save the Children, Dominic also spent two years on the Rwandese refugee programme in Tanzania, and then two years in South Sudan, a period which included responding to the Bahr el Ghazal famine. 

Dominic started working with Concern Worldwide at the start of 2000, initially as a humanitarian adviser, before working with former CEO Dominic MacSorley on organisational emergency capacity and preparedness.

Dominic Crowley has spent the majority of his more than two decades with Concern working on emergency programming, building the organisation’s emergency directorate from a team of just three people in the early 2000s to 35 in 2024.

Before taking on the role of CEO in the autumn of 2024, Dominic worked as Concern’s Director of Emergencies, working in a very demanding scope of work with he describes as a “great team”.

Dominic has overseen the development of Concern’s protection and safeguarding team, its supply and logistics team, the organisation’s technical unit – encompassing disaster risk reduction, conflict transformation and security – and the Surge Team, a dedicated team that spends a significant amount of time within countries that are particularly vulnerable.

During his time in the Emergency Directorate, Dominic also served on the Board of VOICE, a network of nearly 90 European agencies working in emergencies, first as a Board member and then as President. He has also had a prolonged focus on security risk management and was the NGO Co-Chair of the Saving Lives Together Oversight Committee which seeks to enhance security collaboration, co-operation and support between NGOs and the UN, and was the inaugural chair of the International NGO Safety and Security Association, a membership association seeking to improve the safety and security of aid workers worldwide. 

As he prepares to lead discussions on the development of Concern’s next five-year strategic plan to support communities living in conditions of poverty and vulnerability, Dominic remains as committed as at any time over his more than three decades in the humanitarian sector.

“The work that is done across the organisation to support our programmes is exceptionally strong,” he says. 

“The commitment of Concern staff to making a difference to the lives of those living in conditions of poverty and vulnerability is central to our work. The shared understanding of our mission and ambition is consistent across the organisation, in all departments and needs to remain so.”