Speakers

Born in Paisley in 1985, Tom Arthur was first elected to the Scottish Parliament for the seat of Renfrewshire South at the 2016 election, holding the seat in 2021. He joined the Scottish Government as Minister for Public Finance, Planning and Community Wealth in May 2021. He was appointed as for Minister for Community Wealth and Public Finance in March 2023.

Ian is Chair of Land Securities plc, Chairman of Channel 4, Chairman of Spire Healthcare Group Plc, Chair of King Charles III Charitable Fund and Senior Advisor to Ardea. Ian is also the Chair of We Mean Business Coalition.

Previous appointments were Chairman of Debenhams and Barclays Bank UK, CEO of Kingfisher plc, B&Q, Chairman Maisons du monde, Lead Non-Executive Director for the Government and Non-Executive Director of BT Group plc. He was Chairman of the British Retail Consortium, Chairman of the Prince of Wales Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change, President of the Business Disability Forum President’s Group and chaired the Ecosystem Markets Task Force and GR Task Force. Sir Ian was knighted in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to Business, Sustainability and the Environment and is a Chevalier of the Ordre National du Merite of France.

Mary Creagh was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on 18 July 2024. She was elected as the MP for Coventry East in July 2024.

She has more than 20 years of experience as a Labour Councillor, MP, and Shadow Cabinet Minister, campaigning for environmental and social justice, and tackling poverty and climate change.

Angelika Delen is Mercer’s Head of Impact Solutions (Europe, IMETA and Asia) and is committed to creating and deliver profitable strategies and portfolios for institutional investors while generating quantifiable benefits for both people and the planet.

Alongside her team, she has developed an impact framework, conducted impact assessments and alignment with SFDR, and she is a part of the Investment Committee for Global Impact.  She is responsible for reflecting our impact philosophy and frameworks across both listed and private markets. She works closely with our asset class pillars to source highly rated impact-oriented managers and implements our intellectual capital and best practice frameworks for impact investing.

Angelika has been involved in various green finance and impact working groups at both the international and national levels, including local governments. She chaired the Global Compact Network Austria working group on sustainable finance and is a member of the Austrian Standards committee (TC 322/Sustainable Finance) and the International Organization for Standards (CEN/ISO).

Angelika holds a Master’s degree in International Business Administration from the University of Vienna and CFA UK Certificate in Impact Investing.

James joined the partnership at Knight Frank in 2021 and brings a wealth of experience to his role. Excited by the challenges of the post-Brexit era, James is committed to enhancing the lives of those he works with, shaping a future of shared growth, happiness and prosperity whilst ensuring that estates are not only relevant in this new era but also thrive into the 22nd century

Rob is CEO and Co-founder of Rebalance Earth, combining Nature and finance to protect and restore Nature at scale in the UK, to mitigate the key risks and impacts of climate change, biodiversity loss and other Nature loss.

His 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur and investor include co-founding Redington and Mallowstreet, two globally recognised pioneering B-Corps dedicated to transforming the investment and pensions landscape with a strong emphasis on sustainability. He also served on the Executive Board of SJP, managing £150 billion in investments for one million clients.

Tom works in the nature team at Palladium. For the last four years he has been working with farmers and conservation teams across the UK to develop projects that restore nature and generate balanced economic returns for land managers, investors and communities. He has also worked on projects to converse tropical rainforests, tackle illegal timber trading and scale up investment into sustainable land use.

With 30 years in the sustainable forestry, environmental conservation and renewable energy sectors, Andy is a chartered forester who has worked in public, private and non-profit sectors. He is currently Head of Climate and Landscape in Soil Association Certification. He leads a team providing validation and verification services for nature-based solutions, supply chain integrity and due diligence.

Anastasia has been a sustainable investment specialist with over 17 years’ experience, 10 of which were at the United Nations-supported Principles of Responsible Investment, where her last role was as Director of Northern Europe Middle East and Africa, leading a team supporting over 200 asset owners in their implementation of ESG criteria in investment strategy, allocations, and stewardship decisions. She has previously worked at Euromoney Institutional Investor and Fidelity. She sits on the advisory board at Pensions for Purpose and is a working group member on the Glasgow Financial Alliance on Net Zero (GFANZ). She holds a master’s degree in economics and statistics from the University of Warwick.

As Managing Director of Little Blue Research, Stephanie oversees the development and implementation of projects. She has over 15 years of experience in sustainability consulting and research with an emphasis on environmental and social impact analysis. Stephanie has enjoyed a varied career spending more than 15 years addressing sustainability challenges. She supported the Natural Capital Coalition as its Technical Director overseeing the development of the Natural Capital Protocol and Sector Guides. She also led KPMG’s UK sustainability services team work on True Value (a method to measure social, environmental and economic impact). She is on the advisory board of the Capitals Coalition, the technical working group for the ISSB, a member of the BSI committee on Assessing and Valuing Natural Capital and a fellow of the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA) and BANC steering Group.

Hosein is a private equity investor, VC, & philanthropist in the UK and California. He’s been a Senior Advisor to McKinsey & Company for the past 25 years, has a PhD from the University of Cambridge, and continues as a judge for the university’s annual prize for Social Entrepreneurship.

Dr. Craig Mackenzie has had a long investment career focused on climate and nature investing. He now researches the UK nature finance value chain at the University of Edinburgh Business School – which he posts about on LinkedIn. He holds non-exec roles with the Scottish Land Commission, the Scottish Government’s Nature Markets Framework, RSPB Scotland and the UK Financial Reporting Council.

Graham is Head of Operations North in NatureScot, leading the operational team in protecting and restoring natural ecosystems across northern Scotland. He is also the Delivery Plan lead in our work to attract private sector investment into nature finance initiatives and is interested particularly in peatland restoration with biodiversity conservation based initially on carbon projects. His role includes governance, due diligence, and partnership management for nature-based solutions.

A key achievement in his career is serving as the Bid Leader for The Flow Country Partnership’s successful bid for UNESCO World Heritage Site status, and he continues to lead strategic nature investment work in The Flow Country through the Flow Country Green Finance initiative.

Graham holds an MSc in Rural and Regional Resources Planning from the University of Aberdeen and an MA in Geography from the University of Glasgow. His experience includes a variety of roles within NatureScot, both in operational roles and developing organisational design approaches to enhance operational agility.

Beyond his professional roles, Graham enjoys a range of outdoor pursuits with swimming and cycling as favourites, and music, with a long-standing involvement as a Royal Navy Volunteer Band musician.

Dr Sam Sinclair is a co-founder and director of Biodiversify, a consultancy which specialises in developing landscape-level plans for nature and supporting the private sector in developing nature-positive strategies. Sam spent a decade working in conservation across Africa which culminated in a PhD at Imperial College London where he studied the social factors in biodiversity decision making. He drew from this expertise to help lead Biodiversify to the forefront of biodiversity sustainability.

Since mid-2023 Rachel has been Executive Director at the Aldersgate Group, a cross-sectoral alliance of businesses and other organisations championing a prosperous, environmentally sustainable economy.

Rachel has 22 years’ experience of working in environment and climate policy, as a civil servant (including as policy lead on the Climate Change Act) and in other sectors, with her last role being in KPMG’s energy transition team. Drawing on this experience, she works with Aldersgate Group members to develop robust recommendations and press the Government for change in vital areas across climate and environment policy.

Susannah joined the then, UK Infrastructure Bank in February 2023 and has 20+ years’ experience in investing in infrastructure assets. Her last role was at Aviva Investors in the infrastructure debt team where she worked for more than 8 years.

Susannah has invested across a wide range of assets classes with experience in renewable energy, rolling stock (trains), social infrastructure, ports, interconnectors, OFTOs, regulated assets, anaerobic digestion plants, smart meters, last mile connections and fibre.

Originally from New Zealand and after degrees in Zoology and Civil Engineering, she worked as a graduate engineer in Auckland for 3 years before moving to Sydney.  There she undertook a Masters’ in Engineering Science (Water), after which she worked at a boutique engineering consultancy in Coastal Engineering and Hydrology.

At the National Wealth fund, Susannah is the Director responsible for the Natural Capital and Digital Sectors.  She has closed six transactions to date and invested more than £750million, across the storage, digital and Natural Capital sectors.

Kerry ten Kate 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 Strategic Advisory Group on Nature Investment Standards for the British Standards Institution.

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 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’.

She was policy adviser at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Director of Investor Responsibility at asset manager Insight Investment.

Holly Story FAAV is Head of Nature Based Solutions at National Parks Partnerships (NPP), where she works closely with the fifteen UK National Parks to harness green finance for nature recovery. Before joining NPP, Holly set up and led an environmental consultancy team for a firm of rural land and property specialists in the North of England. Holly is also Chair of the CAAV’s Environment and Land Use Committee.

Based in North Yorkshire, Holly recently returned to live on the family farm where she runs a pasture-fed livestock business.

Mark Thompson has been investing on behalf of pension schemes for more than 35 years and currently works for the retirement funds sponsored by UBS, M&G and Lloyds. He is also a member of the Scottish Widows Independent Governance Committee. For almost a quarter of a century, Mark held several senior investment roles at Prudential, which included being a trustee of its pension scheme. He then spent eight years as Chief Investment Officer of HSBC’s UK pension scheme.

Susan Twining leads the CLA Land Use team based in London. The team covers policy issues and advice related to agriculture, forestry and woodland, and the environment. This includes issues such as future agriculture policy, natural capital and carbon markets.

Prior to joining the CLA in 2017, Susan was an associate director of the sustainable food and farming consultancy business at ADAS, with broad experience in practical farming, agronomy advice, research and policy. Susan grew up on a beef and sheep farm in Scotland.

Alex joined the British Chambers of Commerce as Director of Policy and Insight in March 2022 and is responsible for the policy positions adopted by the Chamber network and for BCC’s research programme including the UK’s largest business survey. Prior to joining BCC, Alex was the Deputy Director – Public Policy at Logistics UK; worked as an industry secondee at HMRC/HMT; and spent several years in the rail industry in various roles in London, Paris and Brussels. Alex’s early career was in the environment sector in the USA and UK. Alex is a Chartered Member of IEMA and CMI

Dr Stuart Wainwright OBE took up his position as Chief Executive of the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) in June 2023. UKCEH is a world-leading independent research institute whose ambition is to make the world a better place through science addressing climate change, promoting biodiversity, and creating sustainable ecosystems. Stuart has extensive experience of leadership, strategy, science and policy from several roles across government. He was Director of the Government Office for Science from 2019 to 2023, and has held senior roles concerning science, security, resilience and the environment in Cabinet Office and Defra.

Darran leads the at WYPF Alternatives team to deliver diversified, risk-adjusted returns aligned with long-term themes and beliefs critical to West Yorkshire Pension Fund and its members.

WYPF allocates 5% of total assets across alternative equity, debt and absolute return pillars, targeting energy transition, natural capital, living sectors, urban infrastructure and venture growth with an emphasis on the UK and place-based regional opportunities, in line with our prioritised UN SDG beliefs; Climate Solutions, Sustainable Cities & Communities and Growth & Innovation.