Global Director of Impact

Background

As Forum for the Future’s Global Director of Impact I lead Forum’s programmatic work, with a focus on ensuring and increasing our impact on the world. I lead the Global Impact Team, which works across four geographies. The Global Impact team holds the leadership, technical expertise and strategic direction on Forum’s three areas of programmatic focus: Food, Energy and the Purpose of Business; our ‘Practice’ (or our unique approach to change-making, which embodies our systems change approaches and applied futures); and finally, overall programmatic quality and MEL (monitoring, evaluation and learning). 

Before joining Forum I held various leadership positions at Economist Impact, which is part of The Economist Group (publisher of The Economist newspaper). I was the head of Economist Impact’s World Ocean Initiative, inspiring bold thinking, new partnerships and the most effective action to build a sustainable ocean economy. I also led Economist Impact’s Sustainability, Climate Change and Natural Resources practice in the EMEA region and was the editorial lead of the award-winning Sustainability Project. Over the years I have directed many sustainability-related research and thought-leadership projects with partners in business, government, academia and civil society, in areas such as: 

• food sustainability, 
• decarbonising technologies for cities, 
• getting to net zero, 
• the circular economy, 
• ESG and real-world impact, 
• social impact, 
• building a sustainable ocean economy,
• the ocean and the SDGs,
• electric vehicles, and
• advanced plastic recycling.

My previous roles at The Economist Group include managing editor, global health lead and Europe editor at The Economist Intelligence Unit.

As part of my wider engagement on sustainability, I am a trustee of the New Economics Foundation (a think tank focusing on social, economic and environmental justice), a member of the Advisory Committee for the UN Environment Programme’s Global Environment Outlook for Business, a senior rapporteur at World Water Week, and a faculty member in the Food & Sustainability Certificate Program provided by the European Institute of Innovation for Sustainability. I earned a bachelor of economic and social studies in international relations from Aberystwyth University and a master’s degree in diplomacy and international relations from the College of Europe.

Dream project

Given my passion for the ocean I love to work on projects that harness the ocean’s capacity to address the three interconnected planetary crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. One area that I am particularly passionate about is the future of blue foods. By harnessing the potential of food derived from aquatic animals, plants or algae we would not only be able to build the foundation for a regenerative ocean economy, but we could also address wider global challenges in areas such as food security, chemical pollution and deforestation.

What floats my boat outside work

I have been an active Latin dancer since 2014, specialising in salsa and cha cha cha. This passion has taken me around the world. Wherever I go I first tend to look for a place to dance salsa. I have performed with various dance teams (such as Caramelo, OtraDanz and Pexava) mainly in London and other parts of the UK but also globally (including in Amsterdam, Antalya, Berlin and Marrakech).

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