OBE for former CEO

UK, 6 Jan – Nigel Woof has received an OBE in the New Years Honours List for Humanitarian Services as Chief Executive of MapAction.  Nigel joined MapAction, the Buckinghamshire based charity, as a volunteer in April 2003 and quickly showed special talents during early deployments to Sri Lanka for the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and the Pakistan earthquake in 2005. He became the Operations Director in 2007 and then Chief Executive in 2009.

Nigel has shown an exceptional understanding of relief needs in the immediate aftermath of a disaster and the initiative and ability to devise and produce a variety of maps to provide a “common operational picture” which plays a major part in coordinating the many UN and international organisations involved in the response.  His leadership and organisation has been a significant factor in the service delivered by the MapAction team.

Although he handed over his role as Chief Executive in January 2013 he remains a very active MapAction volunteer and has just returned from the Philippines where he, along with other MapAction volunteers, prepared information maps to assist the UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination Team in the aftermath of one of the worst hurricanes ever to hit the Philippines.

Nigel’s immediate reaction:

“It’s exciting of course, but also humbling to be singled out. Really the award should be for the whole MapAction team, most of them volunteers and all amazing people, to recognise their joint endeavour in so many disasters over the past decade. I’ll also be raising a New Year’s glass to all the unsung heroes in humanitarian aid agencies we’ve worked with across the world, whose collective commitment never stops.”