Simon Goff

Partner & CEO

Over the more than eight years Simon has spent at Purpose he has played a key role in our global expansion. After joining the Strategy team as one of Purpose’s first employees in London, he went on to lead the growth of our EMEA region as its Managing Director before relocating to Sydney to establish an Asia Pacific hub for our work. Since 2020, he has played a number of global roles including Global Managing Director and COO. In 2023, he became Purpose’s CEO, relocating to London with his family for two years to lead the organization and identify a long-term CEO successor before returning to Australia where he and his family are based.

At Purpose, Simon has developed and led projects with clients including The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the LEGO Foundation, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, Google, Luminate Group, Unilever, the World Health Organization, the Red Cross, AGL, and The Fred Hollows Foundation on issues including early childhood development, digital rights, climate change, avoidable blindness, and women’s empowerment. 

Simon has deep experience working on some of the world’s most complex problems – crafting new ways to channel the power of culture toward positive social change. Through his career he has built unique partnerships to harness the potential of powerful storytelling to mobilize people to action. 

Prior to Purpose, Simon spent over a decade working at the intersection of media and social change. After joining Viacom International in London to work on MTV’s social responsibility initiatives, Simon co-founded the MTV EXIT Foundation, an independent non-profit organization based in London and Bangkok committed to ending human trafficking and exploitation, becoming its Chief Executive in 2009. In 2013, Simon became Executive Director of FilmAid International, an organization that uses the power of film and media to bring life-saving information, psychological relief and empowerment to refugees.

Simon completed a degree in Engineering and Business Finance from University College, London, which somehow led to making a television program about his journey across the Caucasus and Central Asia in search of Xanadu. He hopes the resulting program remains buried in the archives.

He is a native of Brighton, England, and has lived in London, Bangkok, and Sydney.