The best way to understand what I do is to see it in context. These are real situations: the kinds of briefs that come to me, the problems underneath them, and what actually happened. Details have been changed to protect confidentiality.
My work in practice
I. Strategy and workstream leadership
Governance gap in a multi-party carbon investment
An investment team has committed capital to a carbon project portfolio. The structure looked simple - funder, developer, local implementer. In practice, roles weren't clearly defined, expectations didn't fully align, and trust between parties was uneven. The ask was to map the governance structure, define accountability across the three parties, and build an operational roadmap everyone could work from — starting broad and becoming more specific as the picture cleared.
Strategic review for a nature-tech start-up
A nature-tech company relaunching has a technically strong team and a coherent internal strategy - but nobody who could translate what they'd built for investors, partners or clients. The starting point is a structured review of positioning and framing - identifying the gaps between how the team understands the product and what different external audiences need to see - before moving into communications architecture and go-to-market structure.
II. Communications and facilitation
Structuring a complex project narrative before investment
A project developer with multiple overlapping workstreams - certified commodities supply chains, carbon credits, community engagement, industrial partnerships - is concluding an investment phase. Each workstream has a different narrative, and the risk of fragmentation or over-claiming is real - and closely linked to compliance. The brief is to structure the core narrative across all components, build a simplified theory of change, map the stakeholder landscape, and identify where the narrative was most vulnerable - producing a practical framework the team could use consistently across investor, partner and government conversations.
Impact storytelling programme for an international certification organisation
A certification organisation wants to document real-world impact across its global supplier / project network. The challenge isn’t writing - it’s that contributors often struggle to articulate their additional impact story and why it matters beyond compliance. I coordinate the programme end-to-end, develop a framework for evaluating genuine additionality and impact, and work directly with contributors to help them think through their theory of change. The result is a portfolio of credible, evidence-based stories that hold up to scrutiny. A win-win for the certification body and the project owners.
III. Nature intelligence and markets
Ecosystem services strategy for a forestry certification body
An international certification organisation wants to integrate biodiversity and ecosystem services into their framework and market positioning. They have an idea of nature indicators and now want to understand how data can be collected to report on indicators in a way that is scientifically credible, operationally feasible for smallholder forest owners, and relevant to emerging market expectations. I assess monitoring approaches, remote sensing options and technology readiness across multiple dimensions, and produce prioritised strategic guidance - a clear basis for next steps rather than a technically impressive framework nobody could implement.
Nature-based solutions markets orientation for an impact advisory firm
A global advisory firm expanding into nature-based solutions needs asset-level expertise for specific proposals - understanding what carbon and biodiversity markets look like at project level, what the standards require, and what holds up under scrutiny. The arrangement is flexible: joining their team as a specialist resource when a mandate requires domain depth or Spanish-language capability.
Specialist workstream lead for a nature-based solutions advisory team
An NbS advisory firm supporting a project developer needs senior-level capacity for social safeguards and biodiversity components of a complex certification project. The need is real but episodic - not a permanent hire. The arrangement: available as a specialist resource to lead specific workstreams independently as projects arise.
Are you facing a similar challenge?