To promote the conservation, protection and enhancement of nature
Dr. Robin Bidwell
Alasdair Poore
Andrew Powell
Jim Sloane
Dr Mette Løyche-Wilkie
Suraya Mailvaganam
Saleha Williams
Seth Rogers
Professor Bhaskar Vira
Kate Jones
Jonathan Hughes is the Chief Executive Officer of WCMC, responsible for the charity’s strategic vision, organisational health, and global impact. He leads the development of strategy and oversees governance, risk management, and people functions to ensure WCMC remains an effective, inclusive, and values-driven organisation. Jonathan reports to the Board of Trustees and is the principal point of liaison with UNEP on the collaboration arrangements that underpin UNEP–WCMC. Under his leadership, the organisation has strengthened its role as an authority at the science–policy interface and focused on achieving long-term impact.
Jonathan previously served as Chief Executive of the Scottish Wildlife Trust and has held influential roles on the IUCN Council and as the founding chair of the IUCN Urban Alliance. He continues to show leadership in the conservation sector more broadly through board-level, philanthropic, and advisory roles, championing evidence-based decision-making and the cross-sector partnerships essential to conserving and restoring nature at scale.
The Articles of Association is a formal document that contains information about what we do and how will we do it, our governance, and the process for amendment. It also contains information on how our trustees will run the charity and the arrangements for meetings, voting and financial administration here.
Robin joined the WCMC Board of Trustees in 2016.
Robin Bidwell CBE built and led the global environmental consultancy firm, Environmental Resources Management (ERM). He currently chairs LOC (a London based global marine engineering consultancy), the investment committee of Insitor (an Asia focused social impact fund) and is on the board of two Kenya based charities.
His previous positions include chair of the Green Alliance, member of the Gas and Electricity Markets Authority (OFGEM) and chair of their smart grids R&D funds and adviser to ZSL Conservation Programmes. He received a CBE for services to the environment in 1999.
He built and led the global environmental advisory firm, Environmental Resources Management (ERM) and currently chairs LOC, a global marine and engineering consultancy.
Alasdair joined the Centre’s Board of Trustees in 2001.
After qualifying as a barrister Alasdair worked for seven years on patents and licensing within Shell UK. He was a partner in a City of London law firm specialising in intellectual property before returning to Cambridge to join Mills & Reeve. Alasdair has substantial experience on the exploitation of and protection of ideas and research emanating from both public institutions and private companies.
Alasdair is President of the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys and is a registered trade mark attorney as well as a European design attorney. He is a member of the Licensing Executives Society and the International Trade Mark Association. He has experience of dealing with a wide range of issues; from patents to brand protection, computer systems to pharmaceutical products, and from special issues in higher education to the commercial drivers in the biotechnology industry.
Alasdair read law and natural sciences at Cambridge.
Andrew joined the WCMC Board of Trustees in 2015.
Recently retired after 11 years as the Bursar of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University, Andrew previously had a long and varied career in branch and large corporate banking, project and risk management at Barclays Bank. Major projects included the implementation of the Euro as a new currency, and the introduction of Basel II, the international system for regulating capital in banks. Andrew has also worked with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, conducting a review of the UN-sponsored ‘International Assessment of Agriculture Science and Technology for Development’.
A graduate Pembroke College, Cambridge, Andrew read Natural Sciences at leading to Part II in Zoology specialising in Vertebrate Palaeontology.
Andrew is chair of the Wicken Fen community user group and a trustee of the Jean Grove Trust.
Jim Sloane joined the WCMC Board of Trustees in 2019.
Jim has over 30 years’ experience in business consultancy, working for a number of multinational and UK-based organisations. He was a partner at Deloitte for almost 20 years and has also held the position of Vice Chairman and a variety of senior national and international management roles. Prior to Deloitte, he worked for the consultancies Robson Rhodes and Arthur Andersen.
Since 2011, Jim has combined an ongoing advisory role with Deloitte with a variety of interests in the environment, education and charity sectors both in the UK and internationally. Jim also serves as a senior advisor to Conservation Capital’s leadership team, an organisation that develops financial and business-driven solutions to support the world’s most important conservation areas.
Mette joined the WCMC Board of Trustees in January 2022.
Mette recently retired from the position of Director of the Forestry Division within the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), where she lead the forestry programme and co-lead the planning and implementation of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. She has a background in Forestry and in Environmental Management and over 35 years of experience in providing scientific evidence and policy advice to governments, partner organizations and international conventions on issues related to the environment and development nexus with a focus on the sustainable management of forests and other natural resources. She commenced her career in Africa and Asia before joining FAO in Rome, Italy in 1998. She held several different positions in FAO over the next 16 years before moving to Kenya where she was Director of the Ecosystems Division for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) for four years. She returned to FAO in 2018 and retired at the end of 2021.
Suraya is a Director at Google, the multinational technology company, whose mission is to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Suraya is Google’s Head of Employment Legal for the Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA) region. Prior to joining Google in January 2023, Suraya was Managing Director and Associate General Counsel for JPMorgan Chase, the leading US multinational financial institution. Suraya worked for JPMorgan for 15 years, and was the Global Head of Employment Law for the Corporate & Investment Bank, and Employment Law for the EMEA, LatAm and Canada regions. Suraya was also JPMorgan’s Global Employment Law lead for Mergers & Acquisitions and prior to that was their Global Head of Corporate and Regulatory HR Law.
Previously, Suraya worked as an employment lawyer at the international law firm DAC Beachcroft advising on all aspects of employment law for a wide range of clients across both private and public sectors. Suraya qualified as a solicitor in 2001 having read Law at Cardiff University and studied at the University of Law, Guildford.
Saleha Williams is CEO and Founder of SW Inc., a strategic technology advisory company based in the UK, advising Tech CEOs, CTOs and CPOs across EMEA, APAC and the USA. She has over 30 years of digital business experience, leading global strategy, marketing, thought leadership and client engagements with Fortune/FT 100 companies, including Google, Cognizant, BT, Siemens, BBC, the London 2012 Olympics and UK Government.
A multi-award-winning thought leader and tech evangelist, she has delivered over 100 live talks, webinars, panels, debates and interviews, including Talks at Google, Spotify, BBC, Royal Television Society, Cambridge University, INSEAD, IBC Show Amsterdam, and with leading industry analysts Gartner, Forrester, HFS, Everest and ISG world-wide. She is a passionate ESG thought leader and minority advocate, ally, and champion and was named in the Financial Times' Top 100 Most Influential Technology Leaders Driving Change in the UK Tech sector.
Educated at Harvard, Henley and Cambridge, Saleha has an MBA specialising in Digital Transformation & Innovation and a Master of Science in Applied Psychology specialising in Neuroscience & Inclusive Leadership: she was awarded Harvard’s Disruptive Innovation & Strategy Certification and Global Sustainable Business Certifications in 20022/2023.
Born in the UK, Saleha has lived and worked across the globe, including London, Paris, Amsterdam, Munich, New York, Boston, San Francisco, LA, Washington DC, Singapore, Sao Paulo, and Mumbai. She currently lives in the UK with her husband and 3 year old Hungarian Vizsla ‘Banffy’!
With over 30 years in finance and technology consultancy at multinational and UK-based organisations such as KPMG, Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank, Citi, UBS, BT, BP, HSBC, NatWest Group, Morgan Stanley, Google, Apple, Meta, and OpenAI, Seth brings extensive experience in finance and technology.
Since 2023, Seth has combined his advisory role at OpenAI with diverse interests in the environment, open source, open data and charity sectors, both in the UK and internationally. He also serves as a senior advisor in various technical roles: Open Data, Cybersecurity, AI, Open Source.
Kate Jones, Professor of Ecology and Biodiversity is an ecologist whose interdisciplinary research investigates the interface of ecological and human health. Her research understands the impact of global land use and climate change on ecological and human systems, with a particular focus on emerging infectious diseases from animals. Kate’s work also focuses on generating better tools for monitoring the status of wildlife populations, developing some of the first applied artificial intelligence tools for monitoring ecosystems, and further understanding how citizen science data can be used to understand biodiversity trends.
Kate is the Director of The People and Nature Lab at UCL’s new cross-disciplinary campus in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park (UCL East). Kate has held appointments at the Zoological Society of London, University of Cambridge, Columbia University, University of Virginia, and Imperial College London. She has written over 150 articles and book chapters in prestigious journals, is a UK government scientific advisor, chaired The Bat Conservation Trust for 5 years, and served as an expert advisor to the UK’s Climate Change Committee. Kate won the Leverhulme Prize for outstanding contributions to Zoology in 2008, and in 2022 won both ZSL’s Marsh Award for Conservation Biology and British Ecology Society’s Marsh Award for Ecology.