My Background

Education:

Masters of Forest Science, Oxford University, 1990-91. Russell Grimwade Scholar

Bachelor of Forest Science, First Class Honours, Australian National University, 1984-1987

Certified Forest Therapy Guide, March 2021, Association of Nature and Forest Therapy.

Corporate Coach International, Association of Coaching, 2020

Level 7 Certificate in Coaching & Mentoring, Institute of Leadership & Management, In process, 2020

Awards:

Jubilee Prize for Excellence, Oxford Forestry Institute, 1991

The World Bank Development Marketplace, Innovations for Livelihoods in a Sustainable Environment, Winner 2005

The Tech Museum Awards, Katherine M. Swanson Equality Award, 2007 Laureate, Tropical Forest Trust

Immersed in Nature

I grew up in rural Australia, on the outskirts of Melbourne. I learned to love Nature, most particularly as it was represented by my four beautiful dogs but also in my everyday surroundings. I learned the value of solitude but also the joy of mates.

My self-reliance and love of Nature became a very deep, personal connection with forests. Having listened to a very old, very wise man on the radio, I dedicated my life to forest conservation.

I studied forestry at the Australian National University where I was privileged to have the opportunity to work for three months in the Middle Hills of Nepal, an experience that changed my life. Living and working with families, studying trees, forests, people and Nature, I knew then that my life choice had been right.

I worked as a forester in Fingal, Tasmania, a small town set apart from much of the rest of the world, but surrounded by mountains and forests and inhabited by very fine people. Luck shone on me and I won a scholarship to complete a Masters at the University of Oxford. After a brief spell back in Tasmania, I set sail to work in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, researching the best way to get forests back into a landscape denuded by human suffering, imbibing the culture and much rice wine, delicious food, sounds, smells, worms, parasites and bacteria. A truly unique experience that established my love for the country and its people.

A spell in consulting had me visiting more countries, experiencing more of the natural world and a lot of the human one too. I moved to the UK where a European wide NGO campaign against garden furniture made in Vietnam from wood harvested illegally in Cambodia led me to found the non-profit, Tropical Forest Trust (TFT) in March 1999. As TFT expanded beyond the tropics, it became The Forest Trust.

TFT was a beautiful vehicle for 20 long years. I worked in more than 60 countries, meeting many wonderful people and a few “less wonderful” souls, creating many ‘firsts’ and much innovation along the way. I established forest conservation and social livelihood programs working with thousands of companies and NGOs in Europe, the US, in West Africa and the Congo Basin, in the Brazilian Amazon, other parts of Latin America, in China, Indonesia and Malaysia, and across South and South East Asia. At the end of 2015, when I stepped aside as CEO, TFT had 260 people working in 48 countries from 16 different national offices, affecting more than $1 trillion in supply chain turnover in 20 different commodities.

I have spent much of my life living between two worlds. In work, that’s meant navigating the often stormy seas that chop up between companies and NGOs. I’ve mediated many major disputes that have led to profound and unprecedented breakthroughs - the world’s first certified forests in many places, the world’s first No Deforestation commitments in others. At home, I’ve spent more than twenty five years living outside of my native Australia.

I have learned the truth of my early inklings around the importance of living according to your fundamental values; of living connected to that inner voice inside you. As I look back on my work, I realise that big changes happened, often amidst deep crises, only when I was able to help people find their own connection. When I couldn’t do that, nothing changed.

I believe that if I can help as many people as possible to find that connection and live from that true place inside them, then I can have a far greater impact than working project by project. The world could be a better place, for all of us, for our relationships, and for Nature but only if we can get connected to that inner wisdom, or as Australian philosopher and cartoonist Michael Leunig describes it, our Duck.