Chestnut Tree Partnership
An overview of my professional experience
20+ years of strategy consulting experience, with a focus on sustainable strategy covering areas from sustainable operations and supply chain, through new product development and launch, to creating transition plans to reshape businesses with sustainability at the core
Corporate delivery experience - focusing on building new businesses and services - from idea initiation and market assessment, to accessing funding, product launch and new business set up
Fellow of IEMA, Fellow of the Energy Institute and Chartered Management Consultant
NED, Advisory and Foundation Experience
Board and advisory board member for the Eden Project focusing on international development, biodiversity and digitisation
Chair of the Haberdashers Hatcham College board, driving educational outcomes in South East London
Fulbright Scholar as part of MBA at the Wharton Business School
Vocational Work
Worked with Mozambique timber industry businesses to support them in building out a timber business node (including ancillary businesses) and expand existing businesses
Deputy expedition leader for a Belize expedition focused on building schools, national park infrastructure, a laboratory for the natural history museum and seeing the impact of farming methods/fertiliser run off on reef health
What I stand for
In creating solutions for a sustainable world, balance is everything. Along those lines there are a number of things that we at the Chestnut Tree Partnership are committed to....
Driving Practical Solutions
I am committed to support organisations turn sustainability commitments into action. I work with businesses to build sustainability into the strategy, change approach and day to day activity - blending people, planet and profit. We have a short period of time in which to radically change the corporate world, moving from linear to circular economies with sustainability built in at every stage of delivery. We are having to do this while building the skills and experience to deliver in what is the biggest Industrial Revolution of at least this generation.
I draw on decades of experience across industries to support organisations with the right skills and insights - pulling in partner businesses in a collaborative way to bring the latest thinking and most relevant experience.... We don't have time to compete our way to a sustainable future nor do we have time not to learn from the experiences, wherever they can be found!
Creating a just transition
Too often when we talk about the sustainable transition we ignore the 'just' elements of that transition. We need to be ensuring that the sustainable world that we create is one where everyone has opportunity to thrive and that we are not forcing people to make the choice between planet, equality and keeping their families alive.
I ensure we build the 'just' component - including elements such as poverty elevation through to supporting people to make the right choices in a way that takes into consideration their circumstances - into all of our decisions.
The sustainability reset that we are going through needs to ensure that we create not only a more environmentally sustainable world, but also a world were everyone has opportunity to thrive. This isn't just a principled stand, it is also a practical one - failing to bring the world with us will doom the sustainability transition to failure as people move away from the big picture needs to focus on their immediate personal priorities.
Putting the planet at the centre
Sustainability to many means carbon - setting targets around getting to net zero and managing the impacts on the planet of global warming... This is only a small part of the picture. We need to be managing biodiversity, water and many more elements if we are going to drive the needed transition - effectively making the planet and all its species clients of any change.
While this creates 'wicked problems' - multi dimensional issue sets with a high degree of variability/ambiguity - through my career I have not shied away from that complexity, but embrace it. making it part of the process and solution design in order to create a balanced set of solutions that deliver the broad change that is needed.