Governance
Link to BTCV Corporate Information and Governance page.
BTCV Group Chief Executive - Tom Flood CBE
Prior to joining BTCV as Marketing Director in 1986, Tom worked for A.E. Herbert Ltd (machine tools), WS Atkins and 3M UK. He became BTCV Group Chief Executive in 2001. He has sat on a number of government boards including the Home Office Volunteering Group, the New Deal Taskforce, the UK Biodiversity Steering Group, and was a board member of ACEVO (Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations). He is a member of the Joint Agency Forum for Cleaner, Safer, Greener communities. Tom is a regular conference speaker on environmental and social issues and was delighted to see BTCV's work recognised when he was appointed CBE in the 2004 Queen's Birthday Honours.
Our Trustees
BTCV is governed by a Board of Trustees elected by our members. The Board meets around six times a year. It is responsible for setting overall policy for BTCV and monitoring progress towards achieving our goals.
We are always on the lookout for new trustees - especially those with a financial or management background - and would particularly welcome interest from people from ethnic minority communities and other under-represented groups.
The Trustees are elected by the members of the trust.
Trustees
Rupert Evenett - Chair
Kay Hallenbeck (nee Ritchie)
Peter Hirst
Alan Strickland
Barney Tallack
Roger Clarke
Sir Hugh Sykes
Jane Stevensen
Paulette Cohen
Philip Mulligan
Rupert Evenett
Rupert has held leadership roles across each of the private, public and third sectors.
In a career of some 20 years in investment banking and corporate finance, he advised clients from small start-ups to market-leaders and was part of a small team building a leading equity advisory business advising nearly a third of the UK’s leading FTSE100 companies. In his last five years as a banker he raised £10billion for corporate clients and advised on £30billion of mergers and acquisitions. As a senior civil servant, he was a founding director of a new Whitehall unit, the Shareholder Executive, advising on applying shareholder disciplines to publicly owned enterprises.
After semi-retiring to help bring up his children, he has pursued interests in voluntary and charitable work. As well as BTCV, board positions include being non-executive director of Futurebuilders England, vice-chairman of Queen Elizabeth’s Foundation for the Disabled and governor of leading south London sixth form college, Christ the King SFC. He is also completing PhD research at the London School of Economics in political theory, into the role of community in politics and global justice. Aged 44 and married with two small (and active) children, Rupert lives in Greenwich, one of the greenest areas of inner London, is a keen walker and life-long supporter of popular access to and involvement in the environment.
Kay Hallenbeck (nee Ritchie)
Kay combines substantial experience of volunteering and the youth perspective with good general experience of Boards, governance and organisational efficacy in large not-for-profit organisations.
On the volunteering and youth side, over the past 18 years, she has been heavily involved in youth volunteering organisations, from organising holidays for 7-10 year olds to becoming the Chair of the British Youth Council (BYC). She has worked extensively with the European Youth Forum and the Commonwealth Youth Programme and has experience of youth organisations across the globe.
Strongly committed to BTCV's environmental volunteering and with a background in youth participation, peer-to-peer training methods and facilitating group working, combined with leadership of the Board of BYC gives Kay the skills needed to play an effective role on the BTCV Board and in contributing to the continuing development of its strategy.
Kay currently lives in Garforth Leeds, enjoys walking, getting involved in youth work, volunteering, advocacy and representation.
Peter Hirst
Peter believes strongly that people should be helped to re-connect with the places where they live and work. He originally became involved with BTCV through the Advisory Board of the People and Places Programme. He is a keen advocate of sustainable communities and developed his thinking in this area towards the end of a long career spanning teaching, youth work, social work, and community development. He worked for local authorities and national NGOs including the Community Development Foundation and ENCAMS where he was Director of Policy. Most of his time was spent trying to build bridges between organisations specialising in either 'people' or 'environment' and he has sat on several boards of local and national organisations. His last post before becoming a consultant with LINK4Sustainability was in the Local Sustainability Team at the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA).
Peter is married with two grown children and lives in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, where he has spent the last 25 years developing a large garden, growing food, encouraging wildlife and generally enjoying himself.
Alan Strickland
Alan is interested in how to connect people and policy to create social change. He is senior policy officer at Volunteering England and previously worked for v, including on the development of a new national volunteering programme and on campaign management at Comic Relief.
With experience as a social entrepreneur, Alan helped connect young activists from around the globe as founding chair of 'Young People Change the World! Ltd' and as director of a training organisation. He has worked with young people in India, China and Bangladesh. Alan spent a year as president of Oxford University Students' Union where he led an organisational reform programme and served as a director of the union's commercial subsidiary. He is Labour's general election candidate for the Berwick-upon-Tweed constituency, England's largest rural constituency.
Alan is deeply committed to environmental regeneration and has visited many BTCV projects since becoming a trustee.
Barney Tallack
Now living in Oxford, Barney gained an MA in medieval studies from Leeds but felt deeply that he would like to ‘make the world a better place’ and commenced volunteering with Oxfam after university, with whom he remains today. He works as Deputy Trading Director (supporting Oxfam's 21,000 volunteers in 730 shops) and also as Head of New Income overseeing Oxfam’s e-commerce, virtual gifts, community fundraising, festival stewarding and events businesses (involving another 10,000 volunteers) as well as Oxfam's fundraising innovation unit.
Barney first encountered BTCV at sixth form and has always been impressed by BTCV's practical "getting things done" approach. The combination of BTCV's mission for people (social justice) and places (the environment) is what drew him to wanting to volunteer as a Trustee.
With 16 years of experience behind him Barney has been a Trustee of International Health Exchange and is still a director of the Association of Charity Shops as well as Oxfam Activities Limited (their commercial entity). He brings with him experience in structural development for non-profit organisations where change management or long term financial security are needed; knowledge of public fundraising, charity governance, codes of practice for fundraising and reporting and accountability.
His two children are also BTCV supporters - and his three year old has volunteered on several very muddy occasions.
Roger Clarke
Roger Clarke has a lifetime’s interest in the relationship between people and the environment, and in the search for sustainable patterns of living. He was CEO at the Youth Hostels Association from 2000-2008. He was Policy Director at the Countryside Agency from 1984-1999. He began his career as a community worker in the west of Scotland and from 1976-1984 was a Director at the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations. He has served as a non-executive Board member at Natural England, the government’s natural environment conservation agency, and before that, as a Council member at English Nature. He was a Board member of the European Federation of Youth Hostel Associations from 2001-2008. He is chair of DEA [Development Education Association] which promotes learning for a just and sustainable world, working mainly with schools and youth organisations. He is a Board member of the Woodland Trust, BTCV [British Trust for Conservation Volunteers] and Woodbrooke, the national Quaker study centre. He is Alternate Chair of the People and Rural Environment Forum, which advises the Rural Economy and Land Use research programme. He is a member of the Expert Panel at the Heritage Lottery Fund.
Roger has a first class honours degree in geography from Oxford University and a PhD from McGill University, Montreal. He is married with two sons and lives in Derbyshire. His interests include climbing mountains, vegetable growing, marathon running, making music, and travel.
Sir Hugh Sykes
Sir Hugh Sykes trained as an accountant and has been a leading figure on the Yorkshire and national Commercial and Public/charitable scenes for many years.
Sir Hugh's current public service includes Chairman Renaissance South Yorkshire, Director of Creative Sheffield and Director of the Institute of Directors, Chairman of the Industrial Trust (school/business interaction). Sir Hugh is active in helping people into employment through Action for Employment (A4e) and historically through his publications such as Welfare to Work – The New Deal – Maximising the Benefits.
Jane Stevensen
Jane Stevensen started her career as an exploration geologist with BP and soon found herself managing the environmental impact of the drilling of deep gas wells in the protected rare Jarrah forests of Western Australia. After a stint in London with the North Sea Development Group she moved to Enterprise Oil plc, and managed their European exploration programme, developing a code of practice and the definitive guidelines for operation in Italy’s Parchi Nazionali (National Parks).
Subsequently she spent a year in France on the INSEAD MBA programme and after graduating moved to the USA to join the global Environmental Consultancy the ERM Group in their management consultancy business. Her move to the London office a year later saw her setting up Environmental Management Consultancy in the UK and becoming a Technical Director of the firm. She went on to become Managing Partner in a specialist niche environmental consultancy for the energy sector (oil and gas, nuclear and mining), and now consults independently. She is a Course Director for Cambridge University’s Institute of Continuing Education in Environmental and Earth Sciences. She was made a Non-Executive Director of BTCV in 2008 and is also a trustee of TRUE, the London Trust for Urban Ecology.
Paulette Cohen
Paulette Cohen brings to BTCV high-level experience of major charities. Currently Deputy Chief Executive of Windsor Leadership Trust, from 1999 to 2005 Paulette was Communications Director and Head of Communications for Save the Children and before that Head of Publicity for VSO. Earlier in her career Paulette was National Publicity Manager for BTCV and a research officer for the Countryside Commission. Besides her experience in the environmental field and in top management, Paulette will strengthen BTCV’s Board of trustees through her qualification in marketing and an in-depth experience in public and media relations.
Paulette has been a trustee of Tree Aid for the past six years.
Philip Mulligan
Philip Mulligan has been Chief Executive of Environmental Protection UK since 2006. Before that Philip was Country Director for VSO in Indonesia and earlier in his career he was an academic researcher and tutor and an active supporter of several environmental causes. For several years he served BTCV as a conservation project leader. Among Philip’s current appointments are Vice-Chair of Defra’s Third Sector Advisory Group and International Board member on the International Union of Air Pollution and Prevention Associations.
Philip brings to BTCV and its Board of trustees extensive environmental qualifications both academic and practical, together with a keen enthusiasm to pursue BTCV’s objectives to change lives through environmental volunteering and to lead in charity governance.
Our Patron, President and Vice-Presidents
BTCV's Patron is HRH The Duke of Edinburgh KG, KT
BTCV is also supported by our President and Vice Presidents who help to champion our interests and raise public awareness of the organisation.
President of BTCV - The Lord Norrie
Lord Norrie has been president of BTCV since 1987. Following a military background, Lord Norrie started a successful nursery and garden centre business and has gone on to be an environmental advisor to a number of multinational companies.
During his parliamentary career in the House of Lords, he was a member of the EC Environment Committee for four years and sponsored the National Parks Bill, later incorporated into the Environment Act. In 1993 Lord Norrie won the House of Lords Green Ribbon Political Award for Services to the Environment.
He is currently working with the Albertan Government in Canada on resolving water-related issues. He remains a Vice President of both the Council for National Parks and the Tree Council.
BTCV Vice Presidents
Sir David Attenborough
Prof David Bellamy
Dr William Bird
Robert E Boote
Andrew Brown
Aitken Clark
Prof Michael Dower
Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava
Dame Barbara Kelly
Baroness Hilton
Baroness Miller
Rob Morley
Bill Oddie
Jonathon Porritt
Richard Williams
