As a lover of maps, data and the outdoors, I have worked in the rural sector for almost the past decade providing support and mapping expertise to land managers across the UK. I enjoy working with customers to understand their pains and to help design a solution using technology. Our aim is to make that initial step in accessing nature based opportunities easier, taking a matter of moments rather than weeks. A recent General Visual Line of Site certificate also finds me capturing photogrammetric and LiDAR models to help visualise, analyse and monitor sites.

Over the past 25 years, I’ve tried to build technology solutions that genuinely matter. This journey has brought me across various landscapes, from Artificial Intelligence and financial institutions to retail and environmental organisations. As the CEO of Rethink Carbon, I lead a dedicated team of five as we gear up for our exciting November launch of our SaaS software platform. We have an ambitious purpose—to empower landowners and consultants to fully realise the potential of their land, including carbon sequestration, income generation, biodiversity, community engagement, and sustainability. Our company is based in Aviemore in the Highlands of Scotland. With every endeavor at Rethink Carbon, I’m driven by a deep-seated passion to create not just another technology solution, but a lasting legacy that truly makes a difference.

I’ve over 15 years of experience of interdisciplinary research into sustainability challenges. I aim to provide insights on the ‘joined-up’ governance of complex socio-ecological systems, i.e. how we can govern inclusively, adaptively and holistically. Much of my current work focuses on how we can encourage new actors and resources to support equitable nature management, and if the idea of ‘natural capital’ can help to achieve this. Related to this, I am keen to carefully examine what data and other forms of knowledge are – and are not – helping bring stakeholders together to safeguard nature.  Disciplinarily, I build on ideas from post-normal science, systems thinking, policy sciences and science & technology studies, ecological & institutional economics.  In 2022 I was named one of Scotland’s Leaders in Biodiversity Conservation Science

I am an environmental scientist with over 15 years’ experience working on the science and implementation of nature-based solutions. My work focuses on evaluating the effectiveness of these approaches in the land and water sectors, and engaging with policy makers at international to local levels to enhance policy impact. My recent research has concentrated on the integration of land and water management in the UK, the implementation of natural flood management, and the role of the natural capital approach. Prior to academia I spent a decade heavily involved in the development of global policies to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation (REDD+) and related climate change policies, working with the Overseas Development Institute, UN agencies, and governments in the global North and South.