Council members

Chair of Country Advisory Committee for Northern Ireland.
Oct 2020-25

Judith has provided consultancy services on countryside access, recreation and tourism development and management for the past 27 years following an early career in outdoor recreation provision and policy. She is based in the Mourne Mountains in Northern Ireland.

She has chaired two ministerial committees, the Northern Ireland Biodiversity Group, and the Irish Deer Management Forum, setting strategic directions with Government and stakeholders and coordinating programmes of action.

Within the RSPB Advisory Committee for Northern Ireland and as chair of the Search and Rescue Dogs Association Ireland North she has had a close involvement in the voluntary sector and understands the financial challenges and the need to stay relevant and prepared for change. She holds an MBA and has research interests in environmental economics.

Judith is a keen participant in walking, climbing, sailing and kayaking in the outdoors and in observing wildlife. She has long been an advocate for sustainable agriculture, effective landscape partnerships and the retention of vibrant rural communities

Chair of Council
Oct 2024-27

Andrew has been closely involved with international conservation efforts since the 1970s, when he helped negotiate the UN Law of the Sea Convention. He was a civil servant focussing on agriculture, the EU and diplomacy, as well as working at the heart of Whitehall in the Cabinet Office for most of the 1990s.

He completed his public service by running the Government department responsible for trade and investment for six years. He has been a Trustee of the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, chair of WWF(UK) and a member of the Global Board of WWF, chair of Birkbeck University, a founding governor of the Institute for Government and a trustee of the Gatsby Charitable Foundation for 26 years. He has also been a non-executive director of various commercial organisations such as Lloyd’s of London.

Oct 2022-27

Ben is the founding Director of the Oxford Sustainable Finance Group at the University of Oxford Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment. At the University of Oxford, he is the inaugural Lombard Odier Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow of Sustainable Finance, the first ever endowed professorship of sustainable finance, and a Supernumerary Fellow at Oriel College, Oxford.

Ben is also the founding Director and Principal Investigator of the UK Centre for Greening Finance & Investment (CGFI), established by UK Research and Innovation in 2021 as the national centre to accelerate the adoption and use of climate and environmental data and analytics by financial institutions internationally.

He serves on the UK Climate Change Committee’s Adaptation Committee, UK Export Finance’s Export Guarantees Advisory Council, DBS Bank’s Board Sustainability Committee, and is a Co-Director for the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery where he leads its work on finance.

Treasurer; Chair, Finance Committee
Oct 2018-23, 2nd term Oct 2023-25

Robert was a Partner in Ernst & Young (EY) for 25 years, initially as an Audit Partner specialising in financial services, and latterly as the Global lead advisor to one of the largest banking organisations in the world. He held various leadership roles within EY, including responsibility for Banking on the EMEIA and UK leadership teams He has strong financial, risk, governance, advisory and strategic experience. He is Chairman of Mohara, a technology provider, and provides executive coaching.

A keen birder all his life, he is determined to visit many of the Reserves across the UK that he does not know.

Chair of Communications & Engagement Advisory Committee
Oct 2024-27

Susanna has held several leadership positions in the world of broadcasting, most recently as the Global President of Animal Planet for market-leader media company Warner Brothers Discovery, based in London and New York, where she worked with many organisations in the world of conservation. Reporting directly to the CEO and President, David Zaslav, she was a member of the global leadership team. Prior to this, Susanna was MD of Discovery’s business in the UK & Ireland. Before joining Discovery, Susanna spent 10 years with Channel 5, rising to Strategic Planning Director, having begun her career at MTV Networks.

Since January 2022, Susanna has worked as a media and strategy consultant for RethinkX, is an advisory board member for the LEAD Curriculum – supporting young, less-advantaged people rise to leadership positions – and partners with the Isle of Wight Literary Festival. She has served as chair of COBA (the Commercial On-Demand and Broadcasting Association) and on the board of All3Media Group.

Her passion for wildlife and conservation is life-long and she supports many charities who are working at a local and global level. She still gets excited when a woodpecker visits her bird feeders!

Chair of Audit & Risk Committee
Oct 2024-27

Catherine is a qualified chartered accountant. From 1988 to 2002, she worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers, latterly as an audit partner based in Johannesburg.

For over 20 years, Catherine has developed an extensive portfolio career, working across a range of complex public, charity and healthcare organisations. She has a passion for nature and conservation and has worked as a trustee of both Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and WWF UK, and is currently a board member of Natural England, the Government’s adviser on the natural environment. She has worked in the NHS since 2012 across acute and mental health providers and now holds non-executive roles at Hertfordshire and West Essex Integrated Care Board and Cambridgeshire Community Services NHS Trust. She was formerly vice chair and trustee of Action for Children and Chair of Victim Support, and a board member of Housing 21, a leading not-for-profit provider of retirement living and extra care for older people of modest means.

Catherine loves spending time outdoors and in nature, whether walking or spending time gardening. She is a keen but amateur bird watcher and is looking forward to visiting many reserves and learning more about bird species and observing wildlife.

Chair of Conservation Advisory Committee 
Oct 2018-20, 2nd term Oct 2020-25

Kerry is an independent consultant, advising governments, companies and civil society organisations on how best to integrate the natural environment into economic decision-making. She is a non-executive board member of Finance Earth and chairs the British Standards Institution’s Strategic Advisory Group on Nature Investment Standards. Kerry is a member of the Aldersgate Group, Conservation Fellow at the Zoological Society of London and a member of IUCN’s Commission on Ecosystems Management. 

She was on the board of Natural England and a member of the Natural Capital Committee. Formerly a barrister, Kerry served on the Secretariat of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992 (the 'Rio Earth Summit'). She was policy adviser at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Director of Investor Responsibility at asset manager Insight Investment. She founded and directed the international Business and Biodiversity Offsets Programme (BBOP) at Forest Trends, in which 100 organisations worked over fifteen years towards ‘Biodiversity Net Gain’. 

Oct 2022-27

Jim co-owns and manages the Lowther Estates in Cumbria. His work at Lowther has focused on diversifying the estates’ businesses away from the historic production of commodities (such as timber, minerals, and agricultural products) to the provision of ecosystem services; commercial landscape project management; the operation of leisure facilities and visitor attractions - most notably Lowther Castle; and the conservation of historic property.

As a mountaineer, Jim has explored and climbed in the world’s greater ranges – including Greenland, the Himalaya, Karakoram, Tibet, and the Alps – and has made many first ascents of unclimbed peaks. Witnessing how other cultures have treated their landscapes has come to influence Jim’s thinking about how the Lowther Estates could be repaired and Lowther is currently at the centre of two of the largest conservation schemes in the UK.

Chair of Country Advisory Committee for Scotland
Oct 2021-25

John was a senior civil servant in both Whitehall and Scotland for over 25 years. During his time with the Scottish Government, John held a range of policy and delivery senior posts including Private Secretary to the First Minister and the environment/sustainability portfolio during which he delivered the then world leading Scottish Climate Change Act and attended COP15 in Copenhagen.

He has a wealth of experience in dealing with private, public and voluntary organisations and was widely involved in delivering many Scottish major sporting events including the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and the Ryder Cup at Gleneagles, both in 2014.

John was awarded the CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours list in 2015 for public service to Business and Major Events. John has held many voluntary board level posts in the environmental, sporting, heritage and arts sectors in Scotland. He has been a member of the RSPB Advisory Committee for Scotland since 2017 and currently is a Trustee of the Scottish Civic Trust and Chair of the Linlithgow Burgh Trust.   

Chair of Country Advisory Committee for England
Oct 2024-27

Jane has been a valued member of the England Advisory Committee since she joined in 2022. She is currently a trustee of the Green Alliance and the RBG Kew Foundation and was previously a member of the Finance and Resources Committee at RBG Kew, governor and vice chair of the Legal Aid Foundation, and the University of Lincoln.

She has a background in legal and policy engagement, working as SVP for Thompson Reuters, and Senior Counsel at Taylor Wessing. She brings expertise in legal compliance across sectors, with experience in public policy, global government affairs and networks across corporate and policy makers across the UK and globally.

Oct 2023-27

Bill is Professor of Conservation Biology at the University of Cambridge. Much of his original research was on applying ecological models to answer applied problems but over the last fifteen years he has focussed on improving the effectiveness of conservation practice especially though embedding evidence in policy and practice.

He was president of the British Ecological Society, is a highly cited researcher, has written over 500 papers, is an author of six books and edited another ten and has just been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was made a Commander of the British Empire in 2021 ‘for services to evidence-based conservation'. Bill was awarded the COSMOS prize in 2024 and established the YouTube Channel ‘Bill Sutherland’s Conservation Concepts’ https://www.youtube.com/@Bill_Sutherland