This individual has spent the last decade delivering strategies for holistic long-term success in the food and drinks sector. As Group Sustainability Manager for a leading UK-based horticultural business, he learned much about practical farm-level challenges and opportunities across the interconnected themes of carbon, water, waste, and biodiversity. Wellies often on, he became adept at defining the business case for investing in site-level decarbonisation and explored commercial opportunities for sequestration. He introduced monthly reporting using a Triple Bottom Line approach (People & Planet as well as Profit!) enabling meaningfully frequent board-level review and steer.  He also developed skills in community engagement and, as Trustee, helped lead a charity established for the purposes of environmental education and therapeutic horticulture.

Then, as Head of Sustainability for a leading UK-based wine retailer, he was able to expand his efforts to include business action for climate and nature across the supply chain. This included efforts to emit less, store carbon, rescue biodiversity, and create climate leaders. It also included the collaborative development of an award-winning wine sector-specific carbon calculator and environmental foot-printing tool, designed to simplify sustainability reporting for wine supply chains: across vineyard, winery, freighting, packaging, and retail.

Prior to his time in sustainability, he was a geologist. He spent a decade conducting highly specialised gold exploration programmes across East and West Africa. He successfully contributed to the establishment of new gold mines in Mali and Côte d’Ivoire. In the latter, he was Country Exploration Manager for 5 years, leading a team of 25 high performing technical experts, which together delivered the Bankable Feasibility Study for the country’s largest gold mine. Success required navigating the complexity of working and living in remote rebel-held territory during an extended period of political crisis which culminated in a brief but intense civil war. He is particularly proud of how well his multicultural team bonded and were able to co-operate to deliver results, overcoming conflicting political views and tribalism-based loyalties.

Going forward, he is looking to build on his experience in applied earth science, project management, team leadership, resilience, and the building of collaborative partnerships to better understand, protect, and regenerate natural capital. To accelerate business action for climate and nature. In a world which needs it with an ever-increasing sense of urgency.

He is a Chartered Environmentalist and Full Member of ISEP, with Masters degrees in Climate Change and Development (University of Cape Town) and Sustainability Leadership (University of Cambridge). 

For introductions contact the Beanstalk.Global team on 01284 715055 or email info@beanstalk.global quoting Ref: 1026346.