Legal Recourse
I have worked across multiple facets of the legal sector, exploring how law can be used to effect environmental change at speed and scale. My work ranged across: Strategy advice to commercial law firms on responding to the twin crises of climate breakdown and biodiversity collapse; Support to a range of campaigns and campaigning organisations; and Strategy development to philanthropic foundations seeking to enter the field.
View ProjectStronger Stories
I worked with Stronger Stories, assisting them to develop a movement that uses storytelling to help good ideas get heard. My work had three strands. First, I supported them to increase their engagement in the environment sector. Second, I helped them develop an open source, distributed and enabling organisational structure capable of building a movement. Third, I helped them keep the show on the road while we move Stronger Stories from consultancy to movement.
View ProjectBetter Nature
Launched at the start 2020, Better Nature aimed to place nature and natural resources at the centre of emerging efforts to redesign our social, economic and political systems, to ensure the continued wellbeing of humanity on a healthy and thriving planet. Our analysis indicated that the transformation of humanity’s activities so they restore nature is only possible at the speed required through political-economic rule change. Such a change will only be realised via strategic and targeted civic mobilisation, enabled by narrative change. These three elements, political-economic rule change, narrative change and civic mobilisation, defined Better Nature’s approach to catalysing systems change. We supported multiple keystone actors to adopt this approach, adapting existing and building new infrastructure, grant and investment...
View ProjectCapacity Building and Support
I have provided capacity building and support to a range of organisations and individuals focused on developing solutions that are proportionate to the environmental and social challenges facing us. Recent themes, common to many of the organisations I’ve engaged with, have been around improving communications and engagement, identifying and securing funding, and strategy development within complex systems.
View ProjectBringing GreenWave to the UK
GreenWave is an award winning US-based organisation that has developed an Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture (IMTA) model through sustainably farming a variety of ocean produce.[1] Through CIVA, I have partnered with GreenWave to launch this innovative model across the UK. The model is currently being operated by farmers and local communities successfully in 25 locations on both coasts in the US, and has caught the attention of chefs, food processors and retailers, the media and, most importantly, prospective farmers and local communities. Examples of media interest in GreenWave can be found here. Details of GreenWave’s partners can be found here. Founder Bren Smith’s TED talk can be viewed here. The 2013 New Yorker article that triggered much of the subsequent...
View ProjectPlanet Tracker
From October 2017 to June 2018 I was project lead for Planet Tracker, focused on undertaking a feasibility study to transpose the Carbon Tracker methodology to other areas of human activity, which are causing significant breaches of environmental limits and mapping the associated financial implications of overstepping these ecological limits.
View ProjectFish Tracker
From June 2016 to June 2018 I was project lead for the Fish Tracker, an initiative aiming to align capital markets with sustainable fisheries management. Built on the work of the Carbon Tracker Initiative, Fish Tracker investigates the role that financial institutions play in financing the trade in global fisheries, with a view to supporting investors becoming more aware of the inherent risks in this activity.
View ProjectThe Gathering
I led the production and curation of an invitation only event for circa 120 of the UK’s most active social investors, titled The Gathering. The client, and organising committee, is a combination of The Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Access – the Foundation for Social Investment, Big Society Capital, Triodos Bank and Resonance Ltd.
View ProjectThe Power to Change Peer Networks Programme
I assisted the Power to Change in establishing a new £750,000 fund providing a combination of grants and peer support to assist the development of peer to peer programmes working across the community business sector. Over the course of about 18 months I undertook the research the fund was built on, and then developed criteria and systems for its successful functioning. I then assisted with the appointment of a third party manager to run the find and the associated Community of Practice.
View ProjectOnline Health Communities
Online health communities and the ecology of platforms that now surround patients are an important and developing force in shaping healthcare. In 2015 Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity together with the Health Foundation commissioned Paul Hodgkin and myself to review the barriers facing and opportunities offered by online health communities. The results of this work can be seen here.
View ProjectFlip Finance
Flip Finance was a small collaborative that developed a range of investee-led approaches to social investment creation, making it more accessible, attuned and responsive to the needs of Social Sector Organisations, and to transform more widely the way in which social investment products and services get designed and delivered. Check out the Flip Finance website for more information.
View ProjectFoundational Thinking
Foundational Thinking was an initiative that aimed to go back to basics to explore how foundations could contribute to revolutionising the ecosystem of finance and support for charities and social enterprises. The project explored the ways in which grant-making foundations – both public and private – can innovate and adapt to better serve the needs of the organisations they support and ultimately communities and beneficiaries.
View ProjectCIVA Invests
The Centre for Innovation in Voluntary Action (CIVA) is a charity and company that was set up in 1995 by Michael Norton and was chaired from its inception, until his death in 2014, by the lawyer Stephen Lloyd. In 2017 CIVA received a million pound+ donation to extend its existing social investment activities. I helped develop everything that was needed to bring this new fund to life.
View ProjectStephen Lloyd Awards
Since his untimely death in 2014 I have been assisting BWB LLP and their charitable incorporated organisation, BWB CIO, in the development and management of the Stephen Lloyd Awards, an annual award that supports early stage social projects that have real potential to achieve practical, sustainable social change.
View ProjectMarmalade
I conceived of, developed and have run Marmalade (formerly OxfordJam), the fringe to the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship. Run since 2010 it provides an informal dynamic, free and open-access fringe event to Skoll, bringing leading entrepreneurs and activists with huge experience into conversation with those who had less experience, but no less passion.
View ProjectSarah Dodds Fund
Since her death in June 2008, I have, alongside Sarah’s sister – Rachel Dodds, been managing a fund of £100,000 that we raised in memory of Sarah. The fund makes small social investments on an annual basis and currently has an active portfolio of investments.
View ProjectHackney Pirates
In 2010 through 2012 I assisted the founder, Catriona Maclay, from conception, through development and pilot to launch of Hackney Pirates, which is probably the UK’s most innovative and impactful out-of-school-education provider.
View ProjectBlue Ventures
Over the course of five years I worked with Blue Ventures, the award winning marine conservation organisation, to develop their global strategy, assisted their winning the prestigious Buckminster Fuller Challenge (2013) and the Skoll Award (2015) and served as a trustee (2011 – 2012).
View ProjectShared Assets
In 2011 I co-founded Shared Assets, a new organisation championing social enterprise delivery of urban and rural regeneration through the management of environmental assets. I continue to maintain an advisory role after moving from an executive to a non-executive function during 2013 and then stepping down from the board in 2014..
View ProjectConsulting Projects
I have worked for a range of clients delivering consulting projects using a Systems Psychodynamics approach. Clients I have worked for include a major London housing association, a charity working in the homelessness sector and a small retail social enterprise.
View ProjectLondon CRN
Between 2000 and 2006 I founded and grew London Community Recycling Network (London CRN, with the RE now turned from Recycling to Resource) to 16 staff members and a turnover of £850,000; was instrumental in securing over £85 million of funding for the sector; supporting social enterprises to secure nine large-scale public sector contracts totalling more than £35 million p.a. turnover; and leading the start-up of six large-scale new Community Recycling providers, each with year one turnovers of between £600,000 and £1million.
View ProjectAshoka
From 2006 to 2009 I was responsible for all aspects of Ashoka’s work in the UK, establishing the office, raising in excess of USD$5 million from the UK’s business and finance community and providing support to more than 150 international social entrepreneurs resulting in numerous substantial financial and capacity building outcomes.
View ProjectBigger Boat
Big, intractable problems need inventive, multi-faceted solutions. Bigger Boat worked with change agents across sectors to support them to better understand – and act collectively to address – these big, intractable problems of our time. Bigger Boat combined an understanding of design thinking, psychology and systems and organisational dynamics, with practical, community-led support to incubate and launch real-world solutions to these problems. Bigger Boat ran from 2014 – 2017.
View ProjectOxfordJam
In 2010 I instigated OxfordJam, the fringe to the Skoll World Forum to provide the U.K. with greater access to world-class actors in the social enterprise sector. Today OxfordJam is established and important part of the social enterprise ecosystem in the UK and internationally. In 2015 we transformed OxfordJam into Marmalade. It’s still coarse cut, and spread evenly…
View ProjectImpact Assets
During 2011 and 2012 I led the R&D efforts of ImpactAssets, (the US’s only 100% impact investment focused donor advised fund) to replicate in the UK and Europe. Funded by Nesta the objective was to create a new Donor Advised Fund to disrupt the estimated £3 – £3.5 billion under management in DAFs in the UK and begin to move this mass of capital towards investments designed to deliver significant social impact. Ultimately the project did not succeed due to the substantial inertia across philanthropic assets under management. The business plan and background research is available for inspection should any organisation wish to investigate the possibilities of setting up a new DAF in the UK or Europe.
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