As Mark McGreevy OBE prepares to step back from Depaul International, Alexia Murphy, CEO at Depaul UK, reflects on his leadership and vision. 

I’ve known Mark McGreevy for far longer than I’ve worked at Depaul UK. Long before homelessness was widely recognised as a global issue, Mark was a disrupter, already speaking passionately about the need for an international response. I still remember hearing him describe that vision at a time when very few people in the sector were thinking beyond national borders. What struck me most was that even then he understood something many others did not: that real and lasting solutions must come from local people in local communities. 

That belief has shaped everything Mark has built since. Having founded Depaul UK, the youth homelessness charity I now lead, he could easily have stopped there. Instead, driven by the conviction that homelessness demanded a truly global response, he went on to create Depaul International (DPI). But his vision was never about building a centrally controlled international organisation. Quite the opposite. Mark believed deeply in local leadership, in trusting local people to understand their own communities, identify what is needed, and lead change themselves. 

In true Vincentian spirit, Mark has always led through empowerment rather than direction. He has consistently encouraged those closest to the problem to become the ones shaping the solution. Today, the Depaul Group is made up of eight charities around the world, led locally but bound together by shared Vincentian values, and most recently welcoming The Philippines into the Group. These values, rooted in the Vincentian tradition of service and dignity for those most in need, sit at the heart of everything Mark and Depaul do. 

It is difficult to fully quantify Mark’s achievements over the years. We can point to the numbers of people who have avoided street homelessness, accessed treatment, been housed, fed, cared for, nurtured and supported. But in many ways, his most significant contribution lies in what cannot easily be measured.  

When Depaul UK was founded under the leadership of Cardinal Hume* in 1989, it was in direct response to the tragic number of care leavers dying from drug overdoses on the streets of Westminster, often just beyond the walls of our institutions and government buildings. Shocked by what he saw and driven by a determination to make it impossible to ignore, Mark took the lead in building the new organisation. Alongside others, he urgently campaigned for stronger statutory duties requiring local authorities to support care leavers. 

It is not an exaggeration to say that because of that leadership and persistence, many lives have been saved. Mark changes systems, not only through leadership and influence, but by helping to build organisations designed to empower others to lead and create change long after he stepped back from day-to-day decisions. 

Yet what continues to stand out is his humility. More than thirty years on, he has never lost sight of the human reality that sits behind the work. He remains deeply moved by each individual story, of someone sleeping rough, living in a shelter, or displaced by war. Mark is, in the truest sense, a Vincentian leader, persistently guided by a simple but demanding question: what must be done? 

When I think about Mark’s leadership, I do so with real gratitude for all that he has given us. I know Mark will always be there for me, and for all of us, if we need him, and I suspect we will from time to time. More than anything, I think about what he has given us: a way of leading and a way of living out the Vincentian values that continue to shape everything we do.  

Those values have always been bigger than any one individual and are shared across the whole Depaul movement. I see them in our staff teams, in the way people support one another, and in the care and dignity with which we work alongside those who turn to us. Because of that foundation, I feel confident we will continue to grow and build on what has been created for a long time to come. 

 

* Cardinal Hume brought together the Daughters of Charity, the Society of St Vincent de Paul and the Passage to set up the first Depaul service, led by Mark, in 1989.