Our Trustees

The Commonwork Trust is a registered charity. We are governed by a board of trustees, who meet four times a year. They are responsible for ensuring all activities funded by the Trust meet its registered charitable aims. They also oversee, monitor and evaluate the organisation's work to ensure activities efficiently and effectively serve these aims. Trustees are unpaid positions. 

Our trustees work closely with our Chief Executive and Senior Management Team to ensure that the Trust is accountable, making the right decisions that reflect our strategic commitments.

We are very fortunate to have such a dedicated team of trustees with such a broad breadth of experience. 

Anna White

Trustee

Anna grew up on a farm that was an early adopter of sustainable agricultural practices, from solar PVs to rainwater harvesting, instilling in her a commitment to sustainability and innovation. Anna has 20+ years of legal experience across the public, private and charitable landscape. Having spent the earlier part of her career at law firms and corporates in Sydney, New York and London, since 2016, Anna has devoted her time, expertise and energy to a professional life focused on innovation, sustainability, education and other societal challenge/impact-driven work. As General Counsel of EIT Climate-KIC, Europe’s leading public/private initiative for climate change innovation, research and education, she built the legal and procurement functions from scratch and in 2021 was shortlisted for In-house Legal Team of the Year under the ESG and Sustainability Category by the Financial Times. In late 2021, seeking a new challenge, Anna joined Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, now the largest NHS Foundation Trust in the UK, to lead a legal department and team focused on innovation and commercialisation.

She joined Bore Place as a trustee as part of this trajectory and to further fulfil and deliver on her passion and capability for strategic leadership of legal, compliance and risk matters across a diverse, complex and multi-stakeholder landscape.

Anna has a great personal interest in shaping and supporting Bore Place - an organisation local to her and her family – and contributing to its focus on innovation, sustainability and education.

Edward Wates

Trustee

Edward has been involved with Bore Place since its formation through his parents who set up the charity. He became a trustee in 1985 contributing his knowledge of the corporate business environment and his experience of running large, global teams. Edward’s professional experience was in academic publishing, where he held responsibility for the operational management of 1600 learned journals across all the major academic disciplines as Vice-President and Director at Wiley. 
 
Edward is passionate about exploring better ways to farm regeneratively, social justice and connecting people to the countryside.  
 
Since leaving Wiley, Edward has concentrated on making handmade books which have been exhibited widely and are held in collections in the UK, US, Pakistan and Germany. He is a member of the Letter Exchange, a churchwarden and Chair of trustees of the Crafts Study Centre.  
 
Edward is a member of the People Committee. 

Emma Renals

Trustee

Emma lives in the neighbouring village to Bore Place and joined the board of trustees in 2022 inspired by its commitment to connect people to nature, as well as its mission to foster and improve biodiversity across its 500-acre estate. Emma has extensive delivery experience having led complex regulatory projects at UBS, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse in both London and New York, focusing on both derivative trading and corporate finance. Emma moved into Asset Management 5 years ago and is currently serving as the Chief Operations Officer of Rathbones Asset Management division, overseeing £13 billion of investment.
 
Emma is excited to use her delivery experience to support Bore Place to achieve its strategic plan. She also attends the Finance, Risk and Audit Committee.

Hannah Bird

Trustee

Hannah Bird is a Wellcome Trust Clore Fellow with 15 years’ experience of developing new programmes and strategy across cultural, educational and scientific organisations.

She is delighted to support Commonwork Trust in their strategic ambition to ensure visitors to Bore Place consider their relationship with and impact on the natural world. She brings experience of leading cross-disciplinary climate change expeditions in the Arctic and Andes for Cape Farewell - producing artworks, events and films with the BBC, Southbank Centre, Tate, Eden Project and Natural History Museum, directing the Culture & Climate Change Networked Residency Programme for Open University and University of Sheffield, and undertaking a residency at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab exploring the role of creativity in the pursuit of scientific knowledge.

Hannah has a keen interest in encouraging good governance and leadership across the Charity Sector. Her governance and leadership consultancy includes work with cities, large and small arts organisations, museums, universities, funders and creative businesses including National Theatre, Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature, Midlands4Cities and Clore Leadership Programme. She enjoys working within a rich network of cultural leaders to bring the right people and ideas together to imagine new and better solutions to complex challenges.

Jas Rai

Trustee

Jas is Head of People at the British Library. Jas has a wealth of experience in all aspects of HR, leading on organisational design, development, workforce planning and talent management. She joined the British Library in August 2020 after six years with Sony as Global Head of Talent & Development based at their headquarters in Japan. Joining in the midst of a pandemic was incredibly challenging but was a great opportunity to put HR at the forefront of change, leading on mental health, wellbeing, diversity, inclusion and future ways of working.

Jas joined Bore Place as a trustee as she was attracted by its ethos of people and nature together. She hopes that her role as trustee will help reinforce efforts to support people through education, whilst prioritising the environment, as well as helping to shape the organisation’s own people strategy. Jas is the Chair of the People Sub-Committee.

Jenifer Wates

Trustee Emeritus

With her husband Neil Wates, Jenifer founded The Commonwork Trust in 1976 to explore how to live and work sustainably, understanding and recognising the interconnectedness of the environmental, social, economic and political aspects of sustainability. Having worked in several voluntary organisations and as a juvenile court magistrate in inner London, as well as establishing a family day care programme in Brixton, Jenifer had become concerned about the powerlessness and waste of talent of ‘ordinary’ people and was convinced that the exploitation of natural resources, unfair world trade and the materialism of our culture would lead to an environmental disaster unless our whole attitude changed.

Neil and Jenifer gifted the Bore Place estate to the Commonwork Trust and established the organisation to help facilitate this. After leading the organisation for two years, Jenifer became a trustee in 1978, taking a second degree in Public Policy Studies at Bristol University’s School of Advanced Urban Studies, to better equip herself for this, receiving a Master of Science. 

Since February 2017, Jenifer has been a trustee emeritus at Bore Place. Her founding principles remain at the heart of the organisation today. 

Linda Davies

Trustee

Linda brings to Bore Place a wealth of knowledge and experience in ecology, environment and waste issues, public services, contract management and 'public good' projects.

Linda’s professional experience was as the former Director of Environment and Waste at  Kent County Council (retired 2012).

As well as being a trustee at Bore Place, Linda has several other voluntary capacity roles, including as a conservation volunteer. She is passionate about wildlife and ecology and has played a huge part in establishing historical surveying of species at Bore Place, as well as advising on land management practices and helping direct the organisation’s environmental direction.  

Lindsay Pamphilon, Dr (Vice-chair)

Trustee

Lindsay Pamphilon joined Bore Place as a trustee in 2019 to help shape the organisation’s education programmes and work with young people. Having worked in further education for over 25 years, and as a senior manager for more than 12 years, Lindsay brings to Bore Place a wealth of experience in safeguarding, working with marginalised young people, devising educational programmes and leadership. 

Lindsay originally trained as an environmental scientist and carried out her PhD in biological control. She is committed to realising the benefits of young people learning outside the classroom and connecting people with the countryside. 

Lindsay is the Vice Chair of the Trust, and the CEO of a group of further education college in Surrey and South Croydon covering further & higher education and apprenticeships.

Mark Fairless

Trustee

Mark is the lead Finance Trustee at Bore Place. He is a chartered accountant who has spent most of his career in large financial services organisations in London, focusing on commercial finance roles across Investment, Corporate and Retail Banking, as well as asset management and life insurance. His experience has included the running of large transformation programmes as well as strategic business partnering. 

Mark is currently Group Chief Financial Officer and a board member of ClearBank, where he also heads up the responsibility for Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance.
 
Mark was attracted to become a Trustee at Bore Place because of its dual focus on sustainability and educational programmes for children who have a particular need for them, along with the desire to give something back to his local area.   
 
Mark is the Chair of the Finance, Risk and Audit Committee.

 

Paul Turner

Trustee (Chair)

Paul is the Chair of the Board of Trustees and brings a wealth of experience in sustainability leadership and development. Paul was attracted to Bore Place as he shares its commitment to exploring sustainable ways of living, connecting people with nature and encouraging young people to engage with the countryside.

After holding senior positions at the Lloyds Banking Group, Paul later became its first Sustainable Development Director, before taking on a role with responsibility for business ethics, vulnerable customers, ‘green economy’, third sector partnerships and social entrepreneurship, working closely with the bank’s board, investors, the government, key suppliers as well as corporate clients. He was also interim CEO of the Lloyds Bank Foundation for England and Wales.

Paul has also been a Senior Associate and Academic Tutor at the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, the Deputy Chairman of the London Sustainable Development Commission, and an elected member of the steering group of the UN Environment Programme’s Finance Initiative. He is also a graduate of the Harvard Business School Advanced Management Program.

As well as currently being the Chair, Paul also sits on the Finance, Risk and Audit Committee.

William Waterfield

Trustee

I spent my early career in direct farm management both with the private farmers and also with the Co-operative Wholesale Society.

Since 1992 I have worked as a farm advisor and for the last 18 as an independent consultant. I specialise in providing advice to organic dairy and arable farming businesses, helping clients to develop their organic farms to remain profitable but deliver the wider benefits of organic farming in the form of high quality food, enhancing bio diversity and reducing the harmful effects of agriculture.

I have been involved at Bore Place as a technical advisor to the farm for over 10 years. More recently this has also included providing more strategic advice to the Farm Manager and Director.

I became a Trustee at Bore Place in 2017, and in addition to my professional role I am keen to see greater engagement between farmers and the general public, helping farmers to communicate the benefits of organic farming.

Away from work I am a keen walker and cyclist and have a passion for the natural environment and conservation of our landscape.

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