I have 10 years of experience in animal welfare and conservation ranging from project management, work plans, and managing implementation partners to fundraising, strategic partnerships and communications.  I'm also a registered veterinary nurse with knowledge and experience in zoonotic disease/one health. I've done work in Zambia, Africa as well as on many elephant conservation campaigns.  My special interests are community conservation, counter wildlife trafficking, poaching , human-wildlife conflict, wildlife protection and behavior change. 

I have over 30 years of experience of species conservation and protected area management; human–wildlife conflict mitigation; countering the illegal wildlife trade; conservation-related research; biodiversity surveys; monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL); impact evaluation; and wildlife policy formulation, including the writing and implementation of action plans. Much of my time since 1988 has been spent in Asia and, from 2007, Asia and Africa. I spent the 1990s living and working in protected areas in Java, advising on their management with a particular focus on ungulates, wild dogs, and leopards. From 1998, I focused on elephants, particularly on the development of reliable monitoring methods, human–elephant conflict mitigation, and, since 2004, the ivory trade and the illegal killing of elephants. I worked for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) for 18 years, working to conserve elephants in partnership with other NGOs, communities, and governments, and ultimately coordinating WCS’s elephant conservation work in Asia and Africa. In February 2018, I co-founded the NGO, Asian Arks, and served as its CEO until September 2020 with the aim of replicating and extending models of directly managing protected areas under long-term agreements with governments and communities, which the NGO African Parks and others have shown to be successful. From early 2018, I also worked as an independent consultant, partly to support the work of Asian Arks, which as a start-up was unable to pay for full-time staff. Consultancy projects completed include advising the Government of Mozambique on CITES policy, development of a threat monitoring protocol for protected areas and biodiversity offset sites in the Lao PDR, and a human–elephant conflict mitigation strategy for the Government of Gabon. Since December 2021, I have been employed by ZSL to lead the development of a robust conservation planning process to help ZSL’s teams design effective and adaptive long-term conservation strategies and deliver conservation impact.

I help run a UK charity that builds the capacity of conservationists to plan, implement, monitor, and report on their work. I also have a fair bit of experience in tiger and sea turtle conservation.

I now work for the National Biodiversity Network Trust as Partnership Officer on the Better Biodiversity Data project, which aims to improve infrastructure and access to biodiversity data in Scotland.  I recently worked with WildTeam UK engaging conservationists with its training and resources, and supported WildTeam Bangladesh in their work on the conservation of the Sundarbans mangrove forest and Bengal tigers. I have previously co-ordinated conservation research for a UK-based woodland charity, completed a PhD on phenology in plants and trees that involved a lot of citizen science, and have done many short-term research and conservation jobs over the years.

Joined WCS 10 years ago, spent most of my time in the Congo Basin. Working on community development and social science, monitoring & evaluation, theories of change. Helping our teams to collect, manage & analyze data in the most efficient way. Member of the Conservation Measures Partnership and the Conservation Social Science Partnership.