Fauna & Flora International Council

Andrew Sykes

Chairman

Andrew Sykes has worked in the financial services industry since 1978, and was a director of Schroders plc from 1998 to 2004, with responsibility latterly for private banking and alternative investments (property, private equity and hedge funds). He is now a non-executive director of a number of public and private companies in the fields of banking, insurance and fund management. In addition to these commercial activities, he supports or works with several charities in addition to FFI, focusing principally on the environment and conservation, including the BBC Wildlife Fund.

Andrew was elected to FFI's Council in 2005 and served as Treasurer prior to becoming Chairman in 2007. He also chairs a number of Council sub-committees, including the Executive Committee.

Professor Paul Racey ^(FRSE)

Vice Chairman

Paul Racey retired as Regius Professor of Natural History at the University of Aberdeen in 2009 and moved to Cornwall where he is Visiting Professor, Centre for Ecology and Conservation, University of Exeter, Cornwall Campus. He is a mammalian ecologist, reproductive and conservation biologist with a particular interest in bats and Madagascar.

Professor Racey first joined the Council of FFI in 1990 and has been a member of the Executive Committee since 1993. He was elected Vice Chair in 2006 during his third term of office.

Philip Prettejohn

Treasurer

Philip Prettejohn is senior partner of Rawlinson & Hunter chartered accountants and of Rawlins & Hunter International. He joined the firm in 1968, qualified with it and became a partner in 1978. Philip specialises in international tax planning for individuals and substantial family trusts. Philip is a Fellow of the ICAEW and a member of STEP.

He was elected to FFI's Council in 2006, becoming Treasurer and joining the Executive Committee in 2007.

Virginia Drabbe-Seemann

Council member

A former American life-science journalist turned banker, Virginia lived in The Netherlands for 18 years and now makes Switzerland her home. She travels widely and has visited on FFI business in Mexico and South Africa. She is currently a consultant, using her varied career in science, writing, finance, and cultural organizations. Virginia is a trustee on The Solti Foundation in Brussels , Belgium and The Textile Research Center in Leiden, The Netherlands.

Virginia joined FFI's Council in 2005 and was re-elected in 2009.

Stephen Georgiadis

Council member

Stephen Georgiadis was born in Kenya and educated at Ampleforth and Oxford, where he obtained a degree in Jurisprudence from Brasenose College. He began his professional career in investment banking with Hill Samuel & Co. and subsequently joined Apax Partners, the private equity group. He was part of the management team that developed Altium, the mid-market investment banking group, from an early-stage business (initially as part of Apax Partners) through to a third-party sale. Altium was subsequently re-acquired by its management team in an MBO and has since grown to become a leading pan-European investment banking and stockbroking group serving mid-market companies.

He has always retained a strong interest in natural history with a particular affinity for tropical butterflies

Stephen was elected to Council in November 2010.

Charlotte Grezo

Council member

Charlotte Grezo has been Group Director, Corporate Responsibility Strategy at Centrica since September 2009. Reporting to their General Counsel and Company Secretary, and working closely with the CEO, the Centrica Executive Committee and the Chair of the CR Committee, her remit is to shape and lead the company's CR agenda.

Throughout her career Charlotte's focus has been on sustainability strategy and policies & performance in major multinationals. She established and led sustainability teams at BP, Vodafone and Lehman Brothers.

Charlotte has wide experience at Board and Executive Committee level and a global network of contacts in NGO's, government organisations and multinational companies. She is a member of the BBC Sustainability Advisory Group, a Trustee of BGCI (Botanic Gardens Conservation International) and is an FFI life member.

Charlotte was elected to Council in November 2011.

Dr Sandra Knapp

Council member

Dr Knapp is a Merit Researcher in the Botany department of The Natural History Museum which she joined in 1992 to manage the international project Flora Mesoamericana - a synoptic inventory of the approximately 17,000 species of plants of the isthmus of Central America. She specialises in the taxonomy of the nightshades - Solanaceae - a plant family with many agriculturally and culturally important species such as potatoes, tomatoes and tobacco.

Sandy has written books with the British photographer Nick Knight (Flora) and about the Victorian naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace (Footsteps in the Forest). Her book, Potted Histories, is an artistic voyage through plant exploration. She is also published extensively in journals on a variety of related topics and is a member of numerous professional societies.

Sandra was elected to FFI Council in 2004, re-elected in 2008 and is currently serving as a member of the Audit Committee.

Professor Nigel Leader-Williams

Council member

Professor Nigel Leader-Williams is Director of Conservation Leadership at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Churchill College. Having originally trained as a veterinary surgeon, Nigel then went on to specialise in applied ecology, conservation biology and conservation policy, with a focus on large mammals that conflict with human interests. Before taking up his current post at Cambridge, Nigel was Director of the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology at the University of Kent. Professor Leader-Williams has worked closely with IUCN on a variety of issues and is a member of their Africa Rhino Specialist Group. His most recent publication Trade-offs in conservation: deciding what to save was co-edited with Professor Bill Adams and Dr Bob Smith.

Nigel previously served two terms of office from 1998 to 2006, and was re-elected to Council in 2008.

Professor E.J. Milner-Gulland

Council member

E.J. Milner-Gulland is Professor of Conservation Science, at Imperial College London (ICCS) where her research is at the interface between ecology and human behaviour. This is motivated both by the challenge of understanding the dynamics of ecological and social systems and by the desire to ensure that interventions to conserve biodiversity are effective and robust to uncertainty.

A particular ongoing research interest of the ICCS group is the ecology and conservation of the saiga antelope, together with the effects of changes in the rural economy on land degradation in Kazakhstan, and on broader issues of conservation in Central Asia, including red listing.

Professor Milner-Gulland is also a trustee of the Saiga Conservation Alliance, the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and serves as a Vice President of the World Pheasant Association. She is a member of the IUCN Sustainable Use and Antelope Specialist Groups and serves on the editorial boards of a number of conservation publications including FFI's Oryx: the International Journal of Conservation, the Journal of Applied Ecology and Saiga News.

Philip Merricks ^{MBE, DL}

Council member

Philip Merricks farms in Kent and East Sussex, and was the first UK farmer to own and manage a National Nature Reserve. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Farming & Wildlife Advisory Group and is the Executive Chair of RURAL – a Government sponsored land use policy development institute. In addition he is a Trustee of the Stapledon Trust and of the Romney Marsh Research Trust.

Philip served as High Sheriff of Kent from 1998 to 1999 and is currently a Deputy Lieutenant. He was appointed MBE for services to conservation in agriculture in 2001.

Philip was elected to Council in 2004, re-elected in 2008 and serves as a member of the Nominations Committee.

Professor Callum Roberts

Council member

Professor Callum Roberts is a marine conservation biologist in the Environment Department at the University of York. Currently, his research focuses on human impacts on marine ecosystems. While his interests in marine conservation have blossomed over the years, his field research remains firmly rooted on coral reefs.

Professor Roberts is the author of The Unnatural History of the Sea, Shearwater Books, (2007) and also serves on the Board of Seaweb, a communications-based non-profit organisation that uses social marketing techniques to advance ocean conservation.

Callum joined the FFI Council in 2006 and was re-elected for a second term in 2010.

Diana van de Kamp

Council member

Diana van de Kamp was educated in the US at William and Mary University where she received a BA in Philosophy and Political Science. She worked for a US Senator in Washington focusing on environmental legislation, specifically the passage of the Alaskan Wilderness Act. She then continued her studies in Philosophy at King's College London, prior to starting her professional career in New York with Kreab Gavin Anderson, an investor relations and strategic communications firm. She then joined Institutional Investor/Euromoney in New York and moved to be Director of Sales in the London office focusing on developing membership participation in Europe and Asia for the European Institute of Institutional Investors and the global Institute of Infrastructure Finance.

She is the Founder and Director of WildInvest which is a UK and US wildlife conservation charity. WildInvest utilises its members expertise and funds to donate to early stage conservation projects led by locally based scientists who work in their native countries to save endangered species. She is also a Trustee of the Awana Catchment Trust on Great Barrier Island, New Zealand.

She has been affiliated with FFI since 1997 and was elected to FFI's Council in 2005.

Charles Whitbread

Council member

Charles Whitbread is the great grandson of Samuel Whitbread MP, one of the founder members of FFI and Charles previously lived and worked on a private nature reserve in South Africa. His family have a long-term interest in nature conservation and Charles was a member of FFI's former Founders' Circle.

Charles was elected to FFI Council in 2005, re-elected in 2009 and is currently serving as a member of the Remuneration Committee.

John Wotton

Council member

John Wotton joined the international legal practice, which is now Allen & Overy LLP, in 1976 and became a partner in 1984. He headed the Antitrust Practice in London and the International Public Procurement group. He became a consultant to Allen & Overy in 2007. He specializes in UK, EC and international competition and trade law, energy and water regulation and broadcasting and communications law.

John is President of the Law Society of England & Wales and a member of the Cooperation & Competition Panel for NHS Funded Services.

He was elected to FFI's Council in 2006 and currently chairs the Audit Committee.