Peter McCleave is Managing Director of blood cancer charity, DKMS. He started his career with National Express, before switching direction and joining investment bank Goldman Sachs. In 2017, he was diagnosed with a blood cancer, myeloma, in response to which he set up a stem cell donor recruitment drive called 10000 Donors. To date this has recruited more than 130,000 donors.
I was given 7 years to live, 7 years ago. Clearly I’m still here. Thankfully medicine and science have progressed, so there are other treatments which I can benefit from. There’s still no cure. But I’m very optimistic, as long as I can buy time and influence the environments in which cures potentially can be found, I can influence the odds at the very least. And even if I can’t take advantage of it, there’ll be blood cancer patients who will. It’s just about buying yourself time and using what time you have left wisely to do something useful.
Without the diagnosis, I’m probably still climbing the greasy pole in the investment banking world. Although I’d rather not have myeloma, it was almost the key to unlocking a job, which I feel well suited to. Now I’m lucky enough to be able to sit at the top table and take advantage of those experiences and hopefully influence the life chances of other people with blood cancers.
Ultimately, it’s a people game. Regardless of whether it’s private sector, public sector, banking or blood cancer, it’s underpinned by the people who are operating within that environment. And I’ve always enjoyed the people aspect of my work. I can’t achieve anything without the support of people around me who are also willing to come along on that particular journey.
I want us to aspire to more. There are lots of well-meaning people in charity. I want us to be better than that. I want us to offer more and to be an aspirational place to work. I want our targets to be bigger, I want people to want to come and work with us and bring their skillsets.
The private sector has valuable lessons for the Third Sector. There’s a mindset that is demanded of you in the private sector, where you are held to account, and it is very results driven, it’s very focused, and there is nowhere to hide. You know that you have to perform, otherwise the consequences are going to hit your ability to put food on the table. That commercial mindset, that willingness to challenge, to think big, think on a scale that may involve a few more zeros or to a target or even finding a better way of doing things, that’s what I think we need in the charity sector.
Don’t play a role. Early in my career I almost felt like I had to act in a certain way because I was young and I didn’t know any better. There’s a certain stereotype that’s comes with young 20-something men in the investment banking world. Without realising it, I sort of embraced it and I shouldn’t have done because I wasn’t being myself. You can’t pretend to be someone else for a long period of time. It doesn’t matter how junior or senior you are, people see through the veneer very quickly.
Everyone’s a little bit insecure. Before time-served work and life experience are banked, most people are winging it to a certain extent. No one’s that confident all the time, and it’s okay. For me, that insecurity had been the bedrock of my drive and ambition and I would not be without it.
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Cause & Effect is a series from Hope, in which leading figures who have been involved in building and promoting good causes tell us what they’ve learned from their experiences. Hope is a strategic and creative agency helping not-for-profits raise their profile, promote their cause and raise more money (www.hope.agency).
