Joining the YMCA in 1984 as a volunteer Board Director, Leigh Gibson has served for 15 years (including time as President) in that volunteer capacity before assuming the position of Chief Executive (CE) in March 1999. They held that position until their retirement in December 2024, a period of over 25 years.
Starting as the CE, historical organisational charts show that she was also the Financial Officer and the cleaner! Over time she slowly built & transformed the organisation by looking for government funded programmes and scanning the environment for any opportunities to grow. Building off the success of youth, fitness and education initiatives Leigh witnessed across the wider national movement, and had the courage to first dive into the early childhood sector, where significant growth then occurred for Y Gisborne, with two Early Childhood Centres and an OSCAR programme.
Leigh was responsible for starting a number of other new services including Alternative Education, providing nutritional healthy school lunches, free community health and wellbeing classes, bringing Les Mills fitness classes to Gisborne, launching Raise Up locally and most recently getting into trades education through taking over the operations of GDI.
Growing team from 2 FTE through to over 100 people and it now sits on 71 FTE employees and 17 contractors. And most importantly it has been done while also being financially successful, having built up a very strong Balance Sheet over that time which has become the envy of other Ys across the country.
Leigh completed a Diploma for the not-for-profit sector while she continued to work full time and also personally invested in being exposed to, and part of the global YMCA movement. A part of the latter, she served as a member of the Executive Committee for the World Urban Network for 15 years. Through this involvement she has seen first-hand the work being undertaken by YMCA’s globally in diverse and extremely challenging conditions and been able to bring this experience back to New Zealand, as well as support a number of young people to experience and learn through attendance to global YMCA conventions or working opportunities as well.
As a result of her work, the Y has become a respected cornerstone of community life, ever expanding its services, deepening its reach to the community it serves and becoming a trusted resource for countless families and individuals, resulting in her being awarded the Queen’s Service medal for outstanding services to the Y in 2010.
In summary, for someone to serve the YMCA movement in such an impactful way for over 40 years is extraordinary, and we are pleased to announce the awarding of Life Membership of the National Council to Leigh Gibson.
