Our CEO and Executive Team

Theresa Shearer FRSE
Enable CEO

Theresa Shearer is an internationally acclaimed CEO, Chair, non-executive director and influential leader in transformational service delivery, board governance, strategy and public policy, with extensive experience and impact across the NGO, corporate and government sectors.

Appointed Enable CEO in 2015, Theresa led the charity from a seven-figure deficit to long term sustainability and growth. Building on her experience as an Executive Director in professional services in the corporate sector, she has increased revenue more than four-fold from £25m to £100m whilst serving five times more customers and beneficiaries (from 3,000 to 15,000) and employing 3,000 people. In an exceptionally challenging fiscal environment for NGOs, Theresa has increased the commercial resilience of Enable, generating year on year surpluses, growing reserves in both cash and percentage terms to secure the charity’s long term sustainability, and successfully merging three other social care charities into the organisation.

Exceptional non-executive experience on corporate, NGO and public boards includes current appointments to the Board of the Organising Company of the Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games; Vice Presidency of the European Association of Service providers for Persons with Disabilities (EASPD); and the Council of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She also sits on the Scottish Government’s Interim National Care Service Advisory Board. University experience includes the Strategic Advisory Boards of the Centre for Public Policy and the Adam Smith Business School at the University of Glasgow.

A recognised champion of equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI), Theresa has influenced the development of human rights-driven self-directed care, employability, education and training in Scotland and across Europe, and successfully campaigned for the real living wage for every hour worked by the social care workforce. A former Vice President of Inclusion Europe, she was appointed to the Law Family Commission on Civil Society and to the Institute of Directors’ (IoD) Shinkwin Commission on the Future of Inclusive Business, driving the evidence-based case for cross-sector collaboration across corporate and government employers. Her leadership has been recognised on numerous occasions, including the prestigious IoD Scotland Chair’s Award in 2023 and an Honorary Doctorate from Edinburgh Napier University in 2024.