AGM

Richard has spent his career in the sports industry, previously in coaching and education roles within professional football spanning the West Midlands, and more recently working to use sport as a vehicle for education and behaviour change for climate and environmental action. He has experience in both charity and business settings, and has supported more than 100 professional sports clubs and organisations on their sustainability journeys.

Richard has run regional, national and international sport and climate initiatives and is the founder and Director of Final Third, a business providing support and guidance to the sports sector on their sustainability journeys, he also sits on the steering group for Green Football Weekend, the world’s biggest sport and climate campaign and has collaborated with senior government officials including a former Prime Minister and two Secretaries of State. He holds an MBA from the University of York. Richard is passionate about climate action and the environment, and enjoys spending time with his young family outdoors in nature. 

Katie has lived in Birmingham since 2021, after moving here to take up the post of Learning and Engagement Officer at Birmingham Museums Trust. In that role she worked across two of the Trust's historic properties, Soho House and Aston Hall, to deliver educational programmes, events and activities that connected schools and communities with their local cultural heritage and green spaces. She enjoyed creating opportunities for people to explore and enjoy the greenery attached to the properties where she worked, doing this gave her greater awareness of the enormous benefits of green spaces, and the great inequality in access to them. 

Katie later moved from the Trust to work for the University of Oxford (a bit of a commute!) where she works as a Development Officer at the Faculty of Law. In her current role, she builds philanthropic partnerships between the Faculty of law and donors, particularly corporate partners, in order to raise funds for student support and graduate scholarships.

She has a track record of fundraising successfully from corporate donors, and has developed experience in commercial awareness, donor relations, strategic planning and project management. 

She lives in the Jewellery Quarter and loves exploring the green spaces that surround the area, particularly the canals and the cemeteries; she is always amazed by how nature can thrive in unexpected places! 

She is an advocate for protecting nature in all contexts, but feels particularly passionate about making space for nature to flourish in urban areas across Birmingham and the Black Country.

She strongly believes in the transformational power of nature: for mitigating the impact of climate change, for health and wellbeing, for social cohesion and for  encouraging people to feel invested in their local area.

She sees trusteeship of the Birmingham & Black Country Wildlife Trust (BBCWT) as an opportunity to use her skills, experience and enthusiasm to the benefit of the Trust and, in so doing, contribute in a significant way to a cause she cares about.

With 10 years of community engagement at grassroots level in Birmingham, and significant experience of strategic planning as a trustee and board member in Birmingham for a wide range of organisations, including nature focused education and primary school education, Clare is excited to be considered for the Board of the Birmingham and Black Country Wildlife Trust.

Her career has not been a linear one, and that has enabled her to combine an entrepreneurial mindset with proven process and procedural organisational skills with a deep commitment and love of the natural world. 

Her board level work a saw her taking a tech start-up and floating it on NASDAQ so successfully that it was bought out by Google.

Afterwards she worked at a senior capacity within the financial industry developing commercial projects and credit vehicles as well as implementing early e-commerce solutions including the worlds’ first mobile payment system. 

This work included working closely with contracts, partnerships and project management and has influenced the quality of her work ever since.

She retrained as a Forest School practitioner 10 years ago when she realised that working to educate and enthuse people about nature and address the Climate crisis was a greater reward than working in the finance industry. 

She has a professional history in working closely with people of all ages and cultures to engage in activities, fundraising and volunteering programs which place restoration of nature at the forefront of the agenda.  This eventually led her to working at a global level on the Climate Crisis and she has just left Cambridge University, Hughes Hall, where she was the Global Engagement Manager for the Climate Governance Initiative and created 31 Country level Chapters.  The purpose of this was to deliver the World Economic Forum’s Principles of Climate Governance to Non-Executive Directors. 

This has given her a good insight into how a Boards can support the transition of organisations towards a carbon zero position. 

Alex has lived in the area for most his life, growing up in Walsall before recently moving to Sutton Coldfield.

His career has been in Mental Health and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion within the Higher Education sector, and he is currently an EDI Project Manager at the University of Birmingham.

Alex is keen to ensure that the diverse communities in Birmingham and the Black Country have equitable access to natural spaces, and hopes that the Trust will be able to draw on his experience of engaging local communities for this purpose and to the advantage of their wellbeing. He hopes his professional experience will support the strategic goals of the Trust.

He completed a Geography degree at Royal Holloway University of London, with a mix of Human Geography, conservation, and human and animal evolution. This mix of human and environmental geography allowed him to access some great opportunities, such as travelling to rural Kenya to undertake a project on wildlife poaching.  He has maintained links with Geography since his degree, primarily by acting as a mentor to Geography students of colour through various programmes.

He has a keen personal interest in the natural world and tries to spend as much free time as possible in the outdoors, whether it’s hiking, trail running, or encouraging his children explore nature. If the weather doesn’t allow going outdoors, he’ll often be found watching wildlife documentaries on the TV.

Ramandeep is currently studying a Zoology degree at the University of Reading and hopes to utilise her knowledge of wildlife and climate as well as her skills in fundraising, events management, community and volunteer engagement for the benefit of the Trust.

She co-founded and co-led the University's Hedgehog Society. The ran more than 30 successful events and had a team of 70 active members. 

Ramandeep was one of two senior representatives for the School of Biological Sciences at Board level and she also represents student voice as one of only four students’ representatives for the University Senate this year. 

Ramandeep has recently been actively engaged in working with local communities and stakeholders as a youth representative for British Trust for Ornithology and chair their youth working group focused on equality, diversity and inclusion. 

Over the last two years she has also developed skills in policy, digital engagement and campaigning as she is the Key Organiser for UK Youth for Nature.