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Trustees, Patrons and Advisory Board

Trustees

Cliff Jordan, Chair
Cliff has been involved in group processes and facilitation for some 25 years. He holds a degree in Philosophy and Politics and has worked as a carpenter, gardener, farmer and father. He also ran a Retreat House before becoming the Director of Braziers Park School of Integrative Social Research. He currently lives in Oxford and wonders about the times we live in.
 
Emma Howell

Emma is a writer based in Oxford and is currently working on a large scale public engagement project around low carbon living. Previously, she has worked on a range of issue based drama projects and is interested in the way the arts have engaged (or not !) with issues of climate change. She also teaches Creative Writing at Ruskin College where she has tried to embed sustainability across the Further Education curriculum.

She has been involved with COIN for several years and was delighted to have the opportunity to work more closely with an organisation she admires.

Kate Lonsdale

Kate’s work for the UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP) currently focuses on adaptation to climate change in organisations. Previously she was a Lead Author on a technical paper for the United Nations Development Programme’s Adaptation Policy Framework and has recently managed a 2-year project investigating the social implications of catastrophic sea-level rise in the Thames Estuary. Other recent work includes training for the Red Cross in Sri Lanka on participatory vulnerability and capacity assessments. Kate has been an active member of the Local Agenda 21 team of Oxford City Council, now ‘Building Alternatives’ through which she was been trained in the facilitation and design of inclusive meetings and events. She has recently completed a post-graduate diploma in ’Change Agent Skills and Strategies’ at Surrey University.

Previous jobs have included working as a scientific adviser for a group of environmental lawyers in Bangladesh, setting up an environmental resource centre, and running a summer programme in Budapest on Environment and Policy for mid-term professionals from Eastern and Central Europe. 

Advisory Board

George Monbiot. Radical Invesigative Author and Columnist
George Monbiot is the author of the best selling books Heat: how to stop the planet burning; The Age of Consent: a manifesto for a new world order and Captive State: the corporate takeover of Britain; as well as the investigative travel books Poisoned Arrows, Amazon Watershed and No Man’s Land. He writes a weekly column for the Guardian newspaper. He lives in mid-Wales with his daughter Hanna.
Dr Rajat Gupta. Journalist, Broadcaster and Visiting Fellow of Green College, Oxford
Dr Rajat Gupta is a Research Fellow in the Department of Architecture, and an active member of Oxford Institute for Sustainable Development at Oxford Brookes University. Rajat qualified as an Architect in India and London, and has a Masters in Energy Efficient Building and a Doctorate from Oxford Brookes University. His doctoral study developed an innovative GIS-based domestic energy, carbon-counting and carbon-reduction model (DECoRuM), the working of which has been widely published in academic journals and newspapers alike. DECoRuM is now being developed as a toolkit for carbon emission reduction planning for use by UK local authorities. Rajat has recently co-authored a book, Closing the loop: benchmarks for sustainable buildings. He has also developed the Climate Change Action Plan for the City of Oxford.
 
Rajat is an able computer modeller and has been a judge on a number of international design competitions. He has been awarded research grants from the European Commission, Energy Saving Trust, Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors Education Trust, Pilkington Energy Efficiency Trust and South East Proof of Concept fund. Rajat is a fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts, a member of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, an associate of the Institute of Learning and Teaching in Higher Education and an incorporate member of the Chartered Institute of Building.
 
David Ballard.  Director, Bath Consultancy Group
David is principal of a consultancy on strategy and human change for environmental sustainability and is also currently project managing a substantial industry: university joint project to encourage the industrial adoption of low carbon technologies.

David has a strong background in business having spent his early career in increasingly senior roles in Finance, Strategy and Marketing with the Royal Mail, Esso Europe Inc. and THORN EMI. On leaving THORN he worked as an Environmental Consultant until 1995. He was then invited to become a Director of Bath Consultancy Group, one of the UK's most respected organisational learning and strategic change consultancies. Here he deepened his ability to work with complex human responses to environmental issues.

Since 1998, David has devoted his professional life to the challenge of sustainable development, with a particular interest in human responses to issues such as climate change. As a sustainability consultant, he worked for several years for one of the UK's leading construction companies and is now widely in demand for leading edge work on behavioural change. He is also a Visiting Fellow at the University of Bath, where he teaches on its innovative MSc in Responsibility and Business Practice.
Susan Ballard

Following a successful career as a BBC Programme Maker, and a high-profile climate change web project for Oxford University, Susan became Owner and Co-Director of Alexander Ballard Ltd in 2006.

This consultancy helps Business and the Public Sector to improve their strategic response to climate change using the Performance Acceleration Climate Tool (PACT) developed with Hampshire County Council and their partners in the European Spatial Planning and Adaptation to Climate Events (ESPACE) consortium.

Susan Ballard. Natural Environment Research Council
Susan has now moved from managing communications for a low carbon technology project at Bath University to a new part-time role based at the Natural Environment Research Council where she is keen to get the latest scientific findings on environmental change embedded in policy.

Susan continues to advise, train and coach senior scientists and government departments in communication.

 
Dr Elizabeth Fisher
Lecturer in environmental law and fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
 
Lucy Ginsberg
Primary school teacher with ten years experience of working with children from ethnic minorities.
 
Eka Morgan
Radio journalist and environmental consultant. For five years editor of Friends of the Earth International's magazine "Link".
 
Dr Anna Lawrence
Academic working with the Oxford based Environmental Change Institute.
 
 

Patrons

 
The Rt. Hon. Michael Meacher MP: UK Minister for the Environment 1997-2003
Penney Poyzer: Community activist, campaigner for lifestyle change and presenter of BBC2 series "No Waste Like Home"