Sustainability Strategist

My background is marketing and communications, particularly in the ethical arena. This means that I am skilled in making things simple to understand and explaining the benefits of acting in a particular way. I also work on my own and so I am able to be unbiased in my recommendations. My aim is to empower small to medium sized businesses to get involved in sustainability in ways which are affordable and actionable.

I have tried to live an ethical life for over 20 years.  My interest started from a place of health, moved on to social justice and then on to climate change.  In short, I am a conscious consumer myself - the food I eat, my clothes, my mobile phone, my energy supplier, my household products, my car. And it is not a compromise.

My own enlightenment took place in the early 2000's when I discovered the amount of chemicals we are all exposed to in our daily lives, particularly in food and other everyday products.  I learnt so much about agriculture and the problems of pesticides and habitat loss at a time when there was not widespread concern or understanding.

This resulted in the launch of my own social enterprise in 2007 to educate women about breast cancer prevention.  I focused on areas such as the importance of diet, exercise, managing stress and avoiding certain hormone disrupting chemicals. Topics which are now widely adopted but at that time prevention was not top of mind.  I was able to increase my reach when I partnered with Breast Cancer UK and developed my educational programme for them through a national network of Ambassadors. 

In 2012 I launched as a freelance marketer with my focus on ethical marketing.  I worked with social entrepreneurs, campaigning not-for-profits as well as commercial businesses in the organic sector.  As a sustainability strategist, the marketing plans I developed for my clients have always included ethical objectives alongside financial and marketing KPIs.  At that time, these were often more difficult to define and measure but they were what brought meaning, purpose and a unique identity to the business.

Find out more about my experience and expertise from my LinkedIn profile