Dr. Danny Sriskandarajah

Dr Danny Sriskandarajah

Oxfam GB Chief Executive and DEC Trustee

Danny joined Oxfam GB as Chief Executive in January 2019. He previously led CIVICUS, the Johannesburg-based alliance of civil society organisations with members in more than 180 countries. Prior to that, he spent four years as Director General of the Royal Commonwealth Society and as Deputy Director and Director of Research at IPPR.

 

He was born in Sri Lanka in the 1970s and was initially raised in a rural community without electricity or running water. His family was displaced by the onset of a brutal civil war and Danny spent time in Papua New Guinea and Australia, where he went to school and university.

 

Danny moved to the UK in 1998 and completed his Masters and Doctorate in international development at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, with the focus of his doctoral thesis being ‘Development, inequality and conflict’. He became a British citizen in 2010.

 

The contrast between the wealth and opportunity of life in the global north with his early years in rural Sri Lanka has given him a passion to take on the root causes of poverty, and he is committed to Oxfam's long-standing approach to speaking out against injustice.