Exit Interview: Charles F. MacCormack, Chief Executive, Save the Children

Why he’s leaving: Mr. MacCormack, who has led the international aid group since 1993, says he is leaving because “the things I came to do are done. It’s a good time to let someone else come in with a new way of looking at things.” He plans to keep working to fight poverty worldwide and will remain as chief executive until a successor is named.

Biggest accomplishment: Organizing the Westport, Conn., group’s work to focus on several big topics. “In 1993 we were really a collection of thousands of micro projects,” he says. But now Save the Children is focused on just four or five big causes, such as nutrition and basic education. Mr. MacCormack also helped increase the charity’s annual budget nearly sevenfold during his tenure, to $550-million.

Biggest challenge: Coping with the mounting number of crises. During his first years, the group might have responded to just four or five emergencies per year; now, it responds to 30 or 40. The increase, he says, is due to climate change, environmental degradation, migration, and other factors. Says Mr. MacCormack: “If I could use one word, it would be overextension—of people, resources, systems, and time.”

Background: Mr. MacCormack, 69, has spent his career trying to improve the lives of people in poor countries. He led World Learning, an international education charity in Brattleboro, Vt., for 15 years before taking his current position. He worked as a vice president at Save the Children during the 1970s and, before that, in positions at the School for International Training and the Brookings Institution.

Salary: $320,000

What’s next: Mr. MacCormack points to the explosion in the number of donors and organizations working to fight poverty in the developing world and says he wants to focus on helping to better coordinate those efforts, perhaps through teaching and research. “You see tens of thousands of wonderful projects,” he says, “but not necessarily permanent solutions to problems.”