By Deborah Snow
THE man who has been the face of progressive online social campaigning in Australia is moving on.
Simon Sheikh, the national director of GetUp!, will today announce his resignation from the organisation to avoid ''burning out'' and to take to the road for a while with his new wife, prominent climate activist Anna Rose.
GetUp! national director Simon Sheikh has announced he is moving on.Credit: Rob Homer
The 26-year-old told The Saturday Age he had been quietly planning his departure for some time, and that it had nothing to do with his dramatic collapse on ABC TV's Q&A program at the start of this month.
He says the episode delayed his announcement because he'd wanted to recover sufficiently to ''draw a line'' under it by reappearing on Q&A, which he did last Monday night.
He has since received a clean bill of health, though the fainting spell had shocked him.
''Despite the role, at my core I'm a very private person,'' he said.
''To have that kind of thing happen is just something that I found very embarrassing and was almost mortified to have it happen publicly.''
He said he was ''worried that the intensity I'd been working at over the last four years might do some long-term damage … but all of the signs are I'm really healthy, just in need of a break''.
Mr Sheikh is something of a political prodigy, having taken the director's job at GetUp! four years ago aged just 22, and overseeing a leap in membership from 270,000 to more than 610,000. While the major parties contest GetUp!'s numbers, he says it's justified to include those who have donated, signed petitions or been active in other ways, and that 80,000 Australians made a donation in the past 12 months.
He nominates as personal highlights the day he sat in Parliament when the carbon tax went through (despite ''many'' death threats), and seeing the government significantly increase funding for mental health in last year's budget. Both are causes the organisation had campaigned ardently on. Mr Sheikh had a personal stake in the mental health campaign as his mother, Rhonda, was a long-term sufferer.
The GetUp! board has anointed deputy national director Sam McLean as successor and Mr Sheikh says he's leaving the organisation in experienced hands.
Mr Sheikh has yet to decide on his next career move, but is adamant it will involve ''helping create a more progressive Australia''.