CV

You can download a pdf of my CV here.

Curriculum Vitae | Ben Metz

+44 (0)7961 373 385 | mail@benmetz.org | www.benmetz.org

Personal statement:

I have extensive knowledge of development, change and psychodynamics, across systems and organisations, gained over two and a half decades of leadership across a diverse set of organisations in the social and environmental sectors.

This gives me the framework through which I help empower people to step back, strategically explore their work, its dynamics, and instigate new behaviours and activities.

Inspired by impending climate breakdown and biodiversity collapse I’m focused on helping to build solutions that are proportionate to the environmental, and associated social, challenges ahead of us. In recent years my focus has been on law and legal systems, due to the untapped potential they hold to effect positive change.

This has led me to the role of Executive Director of The Chancery Lane Project, which is working to rewire contractual law to fight climate change.

Work:

I build systems and organisations for social and environmental change. All my work is focused on understanding the sectoral, organisational and social dynamics at play in furtherance of solving complex social and environmental challenges. This requires a deep understanding of issues of ownership, governance, policy, entrepreneurship and finance in everything I do.

In the last decade I have been focused on how to create and sustain systems that enable people to take agency, shaping the world around them for the better.

A selection of my work includes:

  • Consultancy to a major UK law firm, advising on their response to the climate and ecological emergency (Spring ’19), leading to an initiative aimed at empowering individuals throughout the legal profession (Summer ’19 – January 2021)
  • Leading the development of Better Nature, a new-start organisation focused on political-economic rules change through civic mobilisation so that the rules governing humanity support, rather than destroy, nature. (Jan ’18 – October 2020)
  • Project lead for Planet Tracker and Fish Tracker, transposing the Carbon Tracker methodology to soft commodities (Oct ’17 – Jun ‘18)
  • Supporting the establishment of CIVA Invests, a new >£1 million social investment fund identifying, supporting and investing in social sector organisations (Jan ’16 – Jun ’17)
  • Instigator and project lead for Flip Finance, which developed user-led approaches to social investment to meet the needs of social sector organisations, their funders and investors (Sep ’15 – Dec ’16)
  • Consulting to the Power to Change, developing a new fund and support programme for peer networks across the community business sector (Jun ’15 – Apr ’16)
  • Assisting the law firm Bates Wells & Braithwaite establish and run the Stephen Lloyd Awards, a crowd-sourced and -managed annual award that supports early stage social projects to achieve practical, sustainable social change (Jan ’15 – Dec ’17)
  • Leading the Online Health Communities research project, which mapped and explored the emerging world of patient led digital communities and their impact on health services (Mar ’14 – Sep ’15)
  • Assisting the Small Business Association of Jamaica to develop a grassroots social innovation strategy for the island (Jan ’14 – Jun ’14)
  • Leading the development and delivery of the Artha Venture Challenge, an investment competition for social ventures in India (Mar ’13 – Jun ’14)
  • Being Creative Director for Social Capital Markets, the world’s foremost impact investing conference, based in San Francisco (Jan ’12 – Oct ’12)
  • Co-founding Shared Assets, an organisation championing new models of ownership and governance related to land-use, and urban and rural regeneration (throughout ’11)
  • Founder of Marmalade, the participant-led fringe to the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship (Jan ’10 – May ‘17)
  • Founding director of Ashoka in the UK, the world’s leading network for social entrepreneurs. While in post I raised in excess of $5 million and supported more than 150 international social entrepreneurs working across over 35 countries (May ‘06 – Sep ’09)
  • Founder and CEO of London Community Recycling Network. While in post I grew the organisation to 16 staff members was a founding member of the Big Lottery’s Community Recycling Programme, securing, managing and distributing £37.5 million for community waste projects across the UK, in partnership with RSWT; supported social enterprises to secure nine large-scale public sector contracts totalling more than £35 million t/o; and led the start-up of six new Community Recycling providers, each with year one turnovers of between £600,000 and £1million (Nov ’00 – Apr ’06).

Education:

I have an M.A from the Tavistock Centre in “Consulting and leading in organisations: psychodynamic and systemic approaches”.