Alice Weston

Finance Officer

Alice began her career in the financial sector, working for University of Oxford and Thames Valley Police. She decided to change direction and spent over 10 years working as a horticulturalist, and 2 years as a tutor for the BMC’s course in Regenerative Horticulture. She has now turned full circle and is the Finance Officer for the BMC while still maintaining a passion for horticulture and the natural world.

Ben Rawlence

Chief Executive

BMC co-founder and CEO. Ben is an award-winning writer, activist, and former speech writer to Sir Menzies Campbell and Charles Kennedy. B. He was a researcher for Human Rights Watch’s Africa division, worked for the Social Science Research Council in the USA, the Liberal Democrats in the UK and the Civic United Front in Tanzania.

Read more about Ben’s latest book, ‘The Treeline’, and order your copy here.

Christianne Wakeham

Chief Operating Officer and HE Admissions Tutor

Christianne led the foundation year in science and was a Lecturer on the Biomedical Science programme at the University of Worcester, as well as an admissions tutor for first year students. She will be delivering some of the science elements within our Degree, and keeping a close eye on student well-being as well as overseeing both Higher and Further Education operations.

Deborah Lloyd

Administrator

After graduating with an art degree, Deborah has worked in education for almost 14 years, in both a creative and administrative capacity. During her 11 years working in a wide variety of roles within a University environment, she has joined BMC as our Administrator, where she looks after the degree course, supports finance and facilities, and is secretary of BMC Committees.

Ellie Curran

Creative Media & Communications Officer

A Marine and Natural History Photography Graduate from Falmouth University, with a love for the natural world. Ellie is passionate about protecting our national parks and preserving their wild spaces. At BMC, she specialises in design, social media, website management, photography, and a variety of visual content creation.

Falesha Lewis

Student Recruitment & Events Coordinator

Specialising in customer facing roles, Falesha has had a keen eye for ensuring the client is happy and that expectations are met. Falesha has experience in organising digital events, as well as travelling internationally for IT Events across North America. Currently working on both internal and external events, acting as the face of BMC for student recruitment.

Fenella Lloyd

Student Support Coordinator

Fenella is our Student Support Coordinator with over 20 years of experience working in Arts education in academic mentoring and as a Disability Officer. Fenella works closely with our students, creating positive solutions and supporting personal empowerment and positive change, utilising multi-sensory and holistic approaches.

Helen Kell

Development Director

Helen is an experienced charity leader who has a keen understanding of the internal and external factors that enable charities to grow.  Able to make authentic and emotionally compelling cases to funders, she has 10 years’ experience of charity fundraising, development and governance at a senior level, and 10 years’ experience of grant giving to individuals, charities, and business.  A full member of the Chartered Institute of Fundraising, where she is also a member of their Cymru Committee, Helen is the Vice Chair and Treasurer of Welsh Women’s Aid.

Lewis Williams

Facilities Manager & Teaching Assistant

Former BMC graduate and college ambassador, Lewis hopes now to inspire students through teaching and support of the further education courses.

To the classroom he brings an Arts degree and design industry experience, Royal Horticultural Society qualifications, and a combined passion for woodland creation and heritage crafts. Beyond their studies, as the college’s Facilities Manager, Lewis continues to serve the students as a bridge between each cohort, their tutors and the college as a whole.

Magda Petford

Public Education Officer

Magda is dedicated to creating learning infrastructure that supports communities across both urban and rural environments to gain skills and knowledge for resilience amidst the climate crisis. Collaborating with interdisciplinary teams, she has facilitated both physical and digital spaces that strive to build capacity for people to reimagine their neighbourhoods in a future where people and the planet are thriving together. As a designer and illustrator, Magda finds joy in crafting visual artefacts that bring a sense of hope to complex concepts. At BMC, she supports the team to design and orchestrate learning programmes and short courses.

Prof. Keri Facer

Professor of Public Education

A Professor of Educational and Social Futures, and co-investigator on the ‘Transforming Education For Sustainable Futures’ network at the University of Bristol, visiting Professor in Education for Sustainable Development at Gothenburg University, and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. A member of the core team of UNESCO’s Futures of Education Commission who has spent 20 years researching the relationship between education and disruptive change.

Ria Carter

Senior Administrator

Ria brings more than 13 years’ experience in Further Education to her role as Senior Administrator at BMC.

With qualifications in Mental Health First Aid, she is passionate about Safeguarding and promoting well-being, she’s dedicated to creating a safe and supportive environment for students and staff alike. Her strong organisational skills ensure the day-to-day activities at BMC run smoothly and efficiently.

Vicky Curran

Marketing Manager

A first-class graduate of Cardiff Metropolitan University in Events Management, with a focus on Sustainable Events, Marketing, and HR. Vicky has been with BMC since the first-year launch, managing office and academic operations, and has been responsible for promoting further education courses, short courses, and our new degree, driving student recruitment. Vicky now manages internal and external communications.

Ben Kelleher

Coppicing and Greenwood Trades - Talgarth

A green woodwork and coppicing craftsman, who started as a forestry student looking for an alternative route into the world of trees and wood. He learnt his trade through an apprenticeship with the Greenwood Centre and the Bill Hogarth Memorial Apprenticeship Trust, and has since formed his own business.

Jed Needs

Coppicing and Greenwood Trades - Talgarth

Jed is chair of the Talgarth Community Woodland Group and a director of The Green Valleys CIC. Jed is a passionate advocate for community energy and local energy resilience, keen to pass on knowledge and experience of coppicing using sustainable methods and low impact techniques. He has a wealth of experience in Allotment Management, Woodland Management and Community Engagement.

Joanne Price

Core Skills Tutor

A teacher, facilitator, and artist with thirty years’ experience, Joanne works with students to become resilient, confident, and lifelong learners. She’s worked as an education writer and teacher trainer for non-profit organisations such as ActionAid and recently shifted to eco-poetic activism. Her doctorate in tree lore explores a Welsh cultural approach to surviving and thriving amidst climate uncertainty.

Peter Lee-Thompson

Nature Recovery Tutor

Peter grew up in rural Wales and has over 15 years’ experience of working in the environmental sector. He started his journey as a Nature Conservation apprentice on Gower, before studying BA Tourism and Countryside management in the Peak District. Since then, he has worked for organisations including The National Botanic Garden of Wales and Tircoed, delivering landscape restoration projects, and heritage skills training to a diverse group of students.

Rashid Benoy

Regenerative Horticulture - Talgarth

A passionate horticulturist with a love for the plant world and the joys it brings. Rashid has a breadth of experience gained in the horticulture industry and is the founder and Director of Flora Cultura, a charity which aims to improve people’s well-being through social and therapeutic horticulture.

Andre Pusey

Programme Lead

Andre is an experienced academic based on the borders of Wales with a background in environmental social movements and cooperatives, and an interest in critical pedagogical approaches. A geographer by background, his research and teaching has focused on social movements, the commons and social justice. He has published on grassroots movements for climate justice, urban activist struggles for the right to the city and the production of the commons and struggles around the purpose and future orientation of higher education. Andre has a broad range of teaching and course leadership experience having taught across an array of undergraduate and postgraduate courses and been a Course Leader for several programmes. In the School of Geography at the University of Leeds, where he completed his PhD he taught on the innovative MA in Activism and Social Change program.

Dr. Debojyoti Das

Lecturer

A social scientist, geographer and science policy commeasure by training. He has introduced research-led summer school, workshops, exhibitions and field trips as extracurricular activities to engage students in critical pedagogy and multimedia projects. A believer in practice-based learning and learning by doing to enhance students’ education experience, he uses interactive and reflexive pedagogy to promote group thinking. Currently working on climate adaptation and sustainability issues among marginalised littoral communities in the Indian Ocean region. He has worked at SOAS, Sussex, Yale, Manchester and Bristol universities.

Dr. Natalia Eernstman

Public Education and Creative Practice Lead

Natalia is an artist and educator, interested in creating transformative learning spaces through artful, performative and experiential means. She holds a doctorate in community learning, climate change and the arts; and has taught in various community settings and across higher education (Arts / Environmental Education at graduate and post-grad levels). She specialises in creating spaces where communities can learn their way into an uncertain climate changed future. At BMC she teaches the creative modules as part of the Degree course, and manages the residential short courses for a very diverse set of audiences: from young people, to fund managers, parish councillors, faith leaders, artists, community leaders and everything in between.

Dr. Rachel Sweetman

Degree Tutor & Lecturer

A social science researcher by training, she has studied varied educational systems and practices, always with a focus on how students relate to and experience their education. She is interested in how we learn, how we can shift how we frame and interpret the world and how learning can transform us. She holds a doctorate in higher education research and has taught in undergraduate and post-graduate courses, as well as in forest school settings. She has also trained in Regenerative Horticulture at BMC.

Prof. Tom Sperlinger

Academic Lead

Tom Sperlinger is Professor of Literature and Engaged Pedagogy at the University of Bristol, author of Romeo and Juliet in Palestine and co-author of Who are universities for? He has set up a range of programmes aimed at students who have not followed a conventional route through education, and is currently academic lead for civic engagement at Bristol’s new Temple Quarter campus.

Ali Taherzadeh

Trustee

An activist, facilitator, community organiser, and an agroecology researcher. Their activist and research work is based on the belief that we can create empowering, radical, and non-hierarchical spaces of learning and action through grassroots and community organising.

Chris Blake

Trustee

Director of Green Valleys CIC renewable energy company and energy entrepreneur.

Eric Lybeck

Trustee

Eric is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the Manchester Institute of Education (MIE) and Manchester Urban Institute (MUI) at the University of Manchester. Working in the emerging field of Critical University Studies, his work draws on processual and civic approaches to social knowledge and practices to make new connections between the disciplines of sociology, education, and creative placemaking. His doctoral research at Cambridge explored the history of the social and legal sciences during the late 19th century transfer of university models from Germany to America. He is currently developing a regeneration project in a Grade II listed Victorian Arcade in Southport called the Engine Room.

Joanne Roxburgh

Trustee

Joanne is a consultant and advisor in innovation in tertiary education. She has been on the founding teams of several new higher education institutions in the UK and abroad and is currently researching startup universities. Additionally, she has played a key role in establishing two online programme management companies in the UK, partnering with over 60 universities, and benefitting tens of thousands of learners. Committed to supporting sustainability initiatives through education, Joanne has also advised sustainability think tanks and is Chair of London’s only specialist environmental college.

Karl Wills

Trustee

Karl is a serial inventor and entrepreneur who has started, built, developed and sold a number of highly innovative businesses, and has a strong background in management, information technology, logistics, raising investment and bringing products to market.

Martin Burke

Trustee

Martin has spent his life and career in finance, ranging from asset management and investment banking, through to private banking, financial planning and investor sales and relations. He now lives locally, within the Black Mountains, with his wife and family.

Ruth Potts

Trustee

Ruth is an arts-activist, facilitator and researcher based in Bristol, UK and is a Senior Research Associate on Imagination Infrastructure at the University of Bristol. Previously she was Head of Regenerative Economics at Schumacher College, was project lead for Radical Ecology’s Equilibrium project and has worked on Values in the Media for the Common Cause Foundation. Ruth is a member of the secretariat for the Global Alliance for a Green New Deal and was a senior advisor for the UK’s Green MP, Caroline Lucas.

Shirish Kulkarni

Trustee

Shirish is an award-winning investigative journalist, researcher and community organiser, with 25 years’ experience working in all the UK’s major broadcast newsrooms. More recently he’s worked on a variety of journalism innovation and inclusion projects, and on the People’s Newsroom Initiative at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

Sophie Howe

Trustee

Described by The Guardian as ‘the World’s First Minister for the Unborn’ and by The New Statesman as leading a Welsh plot to save the world, Sophie Howe was the the first Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, the only role of its kind in the world. She held Government to account on how their decisions affect future generations and has influenced other countries to follow suit including the UN.  Named as one of tne UK’s Top 100 Changemakers and at number 5 in the BBC Women’s Power List, she is not afraid to call out the madness of short term decision making and is known for a being a straight talking and inspirational advocate for those yet to be born.

Usha Ladwa-Thomas

Trustee

Usha is deeply committed to social justice, equality, and co-production, and has made a significant impact on fostering relationships between citizens and governance. As a distinguished civil servant, she played a crucial role in developing the Anti-racist Wales Action Plan, aimed at promoting racial equality and justice. Now, as a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Cardiff University, she continues her reflective work on the Plan. Her contributions to the Welsh Government have been pivotal, notably in the establishment of Academi Wales and in advancing place-based work models for climate change and environment.

Usha was awarded an OBE in the King’s New Year Honours 2024 for her work with Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic communities in Wales, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Ethnic Minority Welsh Women Achievement Association in 2023, and the Civil Service Award in 2023 for work on Welsh Government’s Diversity and Equality in Public Appointments Strategy and the orchestration of the Anti-racist Wales Action Plan in 2022.