A conversation with Rachel Casey, COO at Dogs Trust

As COO of Dogs Trust, Rachel Casey balances financial sustainability with a complex social mission. When one of her senior leaders, Maria Murray, began her apprenticeship, the focus wasn’t on development for development’s sake. It was about building leadership capability the organisation genuinely needed.

Building Leadership Capability That Sticks

In this conversation, Rachel reflects on the skills that mattered most, how they showed up in practice, and what senior leaders often underestimate about apprenticeships at this level.

Leadership skills as organisational infrastructure

“For us, the critical thing for success is leadership skill,” Rachel explains. “How we lead and manage our people underpins everything: financial efficiency, clarity of direction, how we communicate, and how early we address problems.”

Investing in leadership capability, particularly for leaders with long-term potential, was a deliberate strategic choice. “For people like Maria, who are strong and have real potential for the future, it’s worth making that investment so those skills sit within the organisation.”

From the outset, the priority was to develop leaders who could think beyond their immediate remit and operate at whole-organisation level.

From operational focus to enterprise-wide thinking

Maria was already a strong operational leader. The noticeable shift has been about adopting a broader perspective.

“It was about understanding the whole organisational position—finance, impact, data—and how you move an organisation forward strategically,” she says. “Not just what happens in your own space, but how decisions land across the organisation.”

The apprenticeship helped Maria connect theory to practice more consciously. “It didn’t just build skills—it helped her think about how she was using them day to day.”

The skill that made the biggest difference: Embedding learning

What stood out most to Rachel wasn’t a single module or framework.

“I was really impressed by how Maria would do a module and then immediately think about how to embed it,” she says. “I’ve seen plenty of development programmes where people enjoy the learning, but unless you proactively apply it, it doesn’t stick.”

Here, application is built in. Learning doesn’t sit alongside work—it feeds directly into live strategic and operational conversations.

“That’s where the value comes,” Rachel adds. “The benefit to the organisation comes immediately.”

Creating value beyond finance

As a charity, Dogs Trust must fundraise continuously. But financial efficiency is only part of the equation.

“We want to make the most of every donor pound.” Rachel explains. “That means thinking about efficiency, but also effectiveness: balancing cost against achieving our charitable objectives.”

Through the apprenticeship, Maria developed a stronger capability to think about value creation in broader terms. “Sometimes the right decision is to spend more because it creates greater impact. Being able to weigh that up, and measure it, is a really important skill.”

This thinking began to shape how new services and ways of working could be developed with clearer consideration of both financial and societal outcomes.

Making impact measurable

Rachel notes that one of the most practical outcomes was Maria’s focus on measurement: thinking about how Dogs Trust can build clearer measures of impact into the development of services and ways of working, tracking the wider organisational and societal benefits. For a charity, Rachel explains, that ability to weigh up efficiency and effectiveness against cost—and evidence all three—is central to making the most of every donor pound.

Leading through significant change

These skills were tested in practice during a period of major organisational change. Following a strategic reorganisation, Dogs Trust made difficult decisions about focus, investment and priorities—changes that affected large teams.

“Maria led the changes in her directorate exceptionally,” Rachel says. “There were difficult conversations, redeployment, recruitment —and a lot of emotion.”

What stood out was not just execution, but ownership. “She wasn’t part of the executive discussions that made those decisions, but she really owned them. She sold the direction to teams, brought people with her, and led them through the grief, the anger, and the uncertainty.”

For Rachel, this was leadership capability in action. “It was a whole-organisation shift, and she was instrumental in moving her part of the organisation in the right direction.”

Influence that works over time

Maria has always been a strong influencer. What developed further was a longer-term view.

“She started thinking less about short-term objectives and more about how we get from where we are to where we want to be;” Rachel explains. “Who needs to be involved? Which teams need to come on the journey? What are the steps over time?”

That cross-organisational mindset is now shaping her next phase of leadership, with discussions underway about leading enterprise-wide projects.

What senior leaders often underestimate

For Rachel, the biggest misconception is assuming development happens automatically.

“It’s very easy to think you send someone on an apprenticeship and they’ll come back shinier!” she says. “But the real value comes from thinking carefully about what they’re learning and how it’s being embedded into their work.”

That requires active leadership. “Making time for conversations, creating opportunities to apply learning, and using those skills more widely across the organisation—that’s what unlocks the benefit.”

When done well, the impact is immediate and lasting. “Those skills embed in the individual, but they also embed in the organisation.”

Looking ahead

As Maria continues to develop, the focus is shifting towards enterprise-level leadership.

“The next step is ownership of something genuinely cross-organisational,” Rachel says. “That’s where those skills can really scale.”

For Dogs Trust, that means leadership capability that supports both impact and sustainability—now and into the future.

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