TCV

Connecting people and green spaces

David Attenborough with TCV staff and volunteers

Governance

The Conservation Volunteers Chief Executive – Rebecca Kennelly MBE

Rebecca joined TCV from The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award (DofE), where she served as the Executive Director of UK Operations since July 2021. Prior to that, she was the Director of Volunteering for the Royal Voluntary Service.

At DofE, Rebecca was responsible for significant growth, extending the Award to many new schools, prisons, charities and Local Authority providers, especially targeting growth in new organisations that support young people from marginalised backgrounds. Prior to that she was at Royal Voluntary Service, one of the country’s largest volunteering organisations where she was Director of Volunteering. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she was responsible for the delivery of NHS Volunteer Responders, a scheme mobilising over 600,000 volunteers to support vulnerable people and the NHS. To date, the programme has successfully delivered over 1.8 million volunteer tasks. Rebecca was awarded an MBE in the 2020 honours list for her service to the COVID-19 response.

Prior to joining Royal Voluntary Service, Rebecca was Chief Executive of Basingstoke Voluntary Action working in the areas of youth work, young carers support, community work, homelessness, mental health, and voluntary sector support.

Rebecca enjoys working with communities and is passionate about the power of volunteering and placed based community action. She chairs Hampshire and Isle of Wight Community Foundation and is a local Parish Councillor where she lives in Hampshire.

The Board and its sub-committees

The Conservation Volunteers is governed by a Board of Trustees, supported by two sub-committees: Audit and Risk Committee (ARC); and Governance and Remuneration Committee (GRC). The Board and its sub-committees each meet four times per year.

The Board is responsible for setting overall policy for The Conservation Volunteers and monitoring progress towards achieving our strategy.

The Trustees are: 

We always welcome interest from prospective Trustees, particularly from people from black, Asian and minority ethnic communities, and other under-represented groups.

The purpose of ARC is to assist the Board of Trustees in discharging its oversight responsibilities by:

  • Considering and reviewing matters relating to the control environment and risk management in The Conservation Volunteers
  • Considering and reviewing matters raised by and relating to external audit
  • Considering the key areas of risk by assessing reasonable levels of management control and frequency of review.

ARC comprises some Trustees and some independent members.

The purpose of GRC is to advise the Trustee Board on all matters related to governance (including the appointment of Trustees) and employee pay and other reward. GRC comprises some Trustees and some independent members.

Jon Towler – Chair

Jon graduated in 1991 from Reims Business School with a double degree in International Business Administration and then spent the early part of his career in international sales management. He moved into general management roles in the late 1990s, spending 8 years as a Director of the UK’s leading wholesaler of office products. He was part of the management team which led a management buyout, successfully re-selling the business three years later. This private sector career incorporated functional responsibility for sales, marketing, operations and logistics, HR and organisational development.

Subsequently, Jon has been supporting the public sector for almost fifteen years, chairing both NHS Nottinghamshire County and the East Midlands Ambulance Service. He is currently Vice Chair of the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Integrated Care Board, a statutory NHS organisation with an annual budget in excess of £2billion. For a number of years, Jon has been a strong advocate of the need for public bodies and third sector organisations to work together in an integrated manner and he is therefore passionate, in particular, about TCV’s work with people and communities.

Jon is married with two sons, lives in Nottinghamshire and spends much of his time in and around Sherwood Forest.

Neal Ransome

Neal qualified as a chartered accountant and corporate financier with PwC and as a partner led their Pharmaceutical & Healthcare Corporate Finance business. He was also Chief Operating Officer of PwC’s Advisory Services division, and a member of the firm’s Corporate Sustainability Governance Board. He left PwC in 2013 and is now a non-executive chairman and director of three investment trusts focused on healthcare and early-stage companies.

With a keen interest in environmental conservation, Neal is a former Trustee and Council Member of the RSPB. Neal has worked as a volunteer for the RSPB, the London Wildlife Trust and, more recently, TCV.

Andrew Walker KC

Andrew is a practising barrister and arbitrator. He was appointed as King’s (Queen’s) Counsel in 2011. He was an elected member of the Bar Council of England and Wales for many years, eventually serving as its Vice-Chair (2017) and Chair (2018), following several years as Chair of its Ethics Committee. His areas of legal expertise include property and company law, and he continues to advise and act for a very wide range of clients across the country.

In 2009, he was awarded the Bar Pro Bono Award for some of his free professional work with the homelessness charity, Shelter. He has been involved in the governance of a number of organisations, both charitable and non-charitable, and has had lifelong passion for conservation and the environment.

Uilani Dines

Lani Dines is a Fundraising Manager for Action for Conservation, a UK youth-focused conservation charity. Lani is passionate about conservation and protecting UK nature. She has a BSc in Environmental Science from the University of Birmingham and has worked in the environmental field for most of her career at WWF, Vegware, IKEA and the John Muir Trust. She is an alumnus of the Climate 2050 – Young Leadership Programme and is passionate about equality and diversity in the environmental sector. Lani brings experience in trusts and grants fundraising, corporate partnerships and project management.

Lani is inspired to work with TCV to broaden her knowledge and experience and is interested in how young people are engaging with environmental organisations, especially when it comes to young trustees and decision-making roles. Lani is also a trustee for a small environmental charity – Forest of Hearts.

Emma Aspinall

Emma Aspinall currently works for the NHS as a Children Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) Commissioning Manager. As a registered Social Worker she has been committed and motivated to ensure safe and quality services are accessible for all those requiring care and support throughout her professional career.

Underpinning her work has been a focus to develop partnerships and links across organisations, ensuring supportive services are offered to children, young people and vulnerable adults. Emma has over 30 years’ experience working in health and social care, with the majority of that in the charity sector with Barnardo’s and Acorns Children’s Hospice, with 13 years at an Executive Director level.

Emma Aspinall is delighted to be a member of the Board, working alongside likeminded people committed to the environment and well-being of their local community. Emma believes living through the pandemic has been a truly life changing experience for everyone and reinforced the value of outdoor spaces and the importance of connection with other people and supporting those around us. Emma hopes to support the work of TCV with her experience of Governance Frameworks at an Executive Director level and her knowledge and skills of working with people as a social worker and current work in the mental health field.

Katie Bowyer

Katie is an experienced senior leader in the charity sector, currently Director of Fundraising Strategy at the British Red Cross where she is responsible for developing an ambitious transformation programme for fundraising and supporter engagement. In the past she has held senior fundraising roles at Diabetes UK and Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity and has worked in a range of other UK charities including NSPCC and Bliss. She is a member of the advisory panel for Missing People.

Her interest in conservation grew throughout the pandemic as she realised what a lifeline our green spaces are, and she sees the positive impact of volunteering every day in her current role.

Dr Joanne Gilbert

Jo has worked in nature conservation for approaching 30 years in both the charity and education sectors with experience in UK and international conservation. She has held the post of Conservation Programmes Director at the RSPB since 2017, overseeing the strategic direction of nature reserves acquisition and management, landscape-scale restoration and species recovery. Prior to this she was Head of Reserves Ecology for the RSPB. Jo is a board member of the Saving Asian Vultures from Extinction partnership, a committee member for the Key Biodiversity Areas partnership, and was formerly a volunteer leader at TCV. She is passionate about taking practical action from local to global scale to restore nature and stop the climate crisis.

Shipra Gupta

Shipra currently works in Responsible Investment with a large institutional investor leading on the Stewardship strategy, plan and initiatives. Her role encompasses engaging with the investment industry and investee companies on their environment, social and governance policies and practices, and advocating for the right public and regulatory policy in this space.

She brings with her over 23 years of experience working in Management Consulting, Financial Services, Healthcare and also a social entrepreneurial venture across a range of geographies and functions. Of these, the last 13 years or so has been specifically spent in embedding sustainability in business-as-usual and developing new propositions in sustainable finance. In addition, Shipra chairs her local community primary school and contributes to an external Investment Committee as an impact specialist.

As someone equally passionate both about people and biodiversity, she believes TCV is an organisation that is right at the heart of the sustainability agenda and what the world needs more of. She hopes to contribute to the organisation’s growth and development with the aim of establishing TCV as best practice for other entities to emulate while herself learning and growing from the experience.

Keith Connal

Keith’s Civil Service career included operational delivery and international engagement for the Ministry of Defence in London and Washington DC, policy development and advice in the Scottish Government and business management in the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. Keith is a geographer and cartographer by background, and he is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

Keith has considerable experience in natural heritage policy, including biodiversity, and he led an award-winning programme which completed the devolution of forestry. Since retiring, Keith has undertaken management consultancy, and he is an independent panel member for Scottish Government public appointments. Keith is committed to supporting organisations deliver practical benefits for people and the environment, including through serving as a Trustee at TCV and Edinburgh & Lothians Greenspace Trust.

Dermot Toberty

Dermot trained as an accountant and qualified whilst living up in the North East.

He moved to Chesterfield with his wife and two daughters in 1988 to work for Royal Mail.

Following a wide variety of finance roles across the UK he moved to HR in 2003 to set up and run the largest HR Shared Service Centre in Europe.  He remained there up to his retirement in 2017.   

Outside of his Royal Mail career, Dermot has also worked with a wide variety of local organisations such as Surestart, Parkside Community School, Pathways of Chesterfield, Business in the Community, East Midlands Ambulance Service, Bluebell Wood, Ashgate Allotment Society and Ashgate Hospice.

Dermot now has a wide variety of interests usually involving outdoor activities.  He is a keen walker in the Peak District, allotmenteer and football supporter. Dermot is married with two daughters and two grandchildren and can often be found somewhere in transit between Chesterfield and Newcastle.

Patron, President and Vice-Presidents

The Conservation Volunteers is also supported by our Patron, President and Vice Presidents who help to champion our interests and raise public awareness of the organisation.

Patron of The Conservation Volunteers – His Majesty King Charles III 

The Conservation Volunteers is honoured to have His Majesty King Charles III as our Patron. The King has long been a dedicated advocate for the conservation of our natural world, and he follows in the footsteps of his late father, Prince Philip, The Duke of Edinburgh, who was our Patron for more than half a century.

The King’s patronage comes at a critical time for nature, climate change and biodiversity loss, alongside huge challenges facing communities. The King’s role as Patron is vital in championing the role of charitable and volunteering organisations in addressing these issues, as well as inspiring more people to connect with green spaces.

President – Sir Jonathon Porritt CBE

Sir Jonathon Porritt, the leading sustainability expert, took over the Presidency in April 2014 from The Lord Norrie.

Jonathon was a Vice President of TCV, and has supported the organisation in many capacities over time. He is the co-founder of Forum for the Future, and is an eminent writer, broadcaster and commentator on sustainable development. Established in 1996, Forum for the Future is now the UK’s leading sustainable development charity, partnering some of the world’s leading companies.

He has previously provided high-level advice to Government Ministers as Chairman of the UK Sustainable Development Commission. In February 2012 he was installed as the Chancellor of Keele University in February 2012.

Jonathon received a CBE in January 2000 for services to environmental protection.

Vice President – Sir David Attenborough OM, CH,CBE, FRS

Sir David Attenborough is naturalist and natural history broadcaster with an honours degree in Natural Sciences from Clare College, Cambridge. He has had nearly a 70-year career helping the nation understand the lifestyles and behaviours of the living world and was knighted for his services to broadcasting in 1985.

Sir David has visited every continent on the globe throughout his career, starting with BBC’s Zoo Quest in search of animals from different countries, to his most recent work with Netflix ‘David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet’ and his advocacy work to halt climate change.

Sir David is an ambassador for many fellow environmental charities and has achieved a huge amount in raising awareness of the sector and our causes. He has supported TCV since 1970 and in 2016, TCV helped to celebrate his 90th birthday with a celebration event in Camden park, where Sir David planted an Elm tree.

Vice President – Dr William Bird MBE

With more than three decades of experience in practising medicine and first-hand knowledge of the need to develop preventative measures to stop people developing diabetes and COPD, William is one of the UK’s leading experts on physical activity and building active communities.

William has helped transform the health of millions of people across the UK through innovative initiatives he has developed. As a family GP, he began to get his patients more active by setting up the first Health Walk scheme in April 1996. This led to him creating TCV’s Green Gym one year later as he realised that companionship and contact with nature were major driving forces in keeping people active.

As CEO and Founder of Intelligent Health, William developed the hugely successful Beat the Street programme which has encouraged more than 500,000 people across the world to get moving and improve their health. In 2010, he was appointed MBE for services for health and physical activity.