Meet our team
Our staff team
Introducing the amazing group of Staff and volunteer Trustees who are passionate about supporting London as the world’s first National Park City.
Mark Cridge
Mark Cridge is the Executive Director, he works five days a week, and likes nothing more than hearing about the great things Rangers are up to in London and helping support the growth and development of the movement in London, the UK, and around the world. You can reach him here on the site or via email at mark.cridge@nationalparkcity.org.
Becky Daniels
Becky Daniels is our Community Director, responsible for the Ranger Community as a whole, and working 3.5 days a week. General working days are Monday to Wednesday! Feel free to get in touch with Becky via email at becky.daniels@nationalparkcity.org at any time.
Rochelle Shanthakumar
Rochelle Shanthakumar is our Programme Manager, working five days a week. She’s your go-to person for our Small Grants Programme. You can reach her at rochelle.shanthakumar@nationalparkcity.org.
Tarah Reed
Tarah works administratively across the organisation with most of her time spent helping Rochelle with the small grants program.
She has a career spanning the charity sector, working in both frontline advocacy and operations roles.
You can email her at tarah.reed@nationalparkcity.org
Michael Shilling
Michael Shilling will be known to many of you as a Ranger himself, and he’s also one of our Communications Managers, and is supporting Rangers in our local Westminster programme. He’s a whizz with photography, film-making, podcasting, and organising events and Festival Weeks like Walking Month. You can reach him on michael.shilling@nationalparkcity.org.
Sadim Garvey
Sadim Garvey is another of our Communications Managers, and she also works three days a week, usually Monday to Wednesday. Her main focus is on our website and platform development, with a particular focus on user experience. She can help add new pages and content to our site, update volunteering locations and advise on how we can support our Community with some of their technical requirements. Her email is sadim.garvey@nationalparkcity.org.
Rose Down
Rosie Down is our Communications and Content Manager, working across email, web and social media to deliver top-class comms and impactful content to London National Park City supporters, new and old.
With experience working in the outdoor, adventure, and sport world, she has always focused on work that takes her outside. After living in New Zealand for two years, she now tries to incorporate the outdoors into as much of London life as possible.
Encouraging others to enjoy nature and help protect it is very important to her, both personally and professionally. Coming from a copywriting and storytelling background, Rosie helps highlight the stories at the centre of London National Park City, and the people behind them. You can reach Rosie by email rose.down@nationalparkcity.org
Our trustees
Navdeep Deol, Chair
Navdeep joined as Chair and Trustee in December 2022.
Navdeep has been active with local community groups in West London for over four years, initially through litter picking but now championing street and tree champions, encouraging collaboration across London and drawing links between direct community action and local government policy on important issues such as the loss of biodiversity, water and waste management, enhancing the urban landscape and linking communities to nature.
Navdeep has always lived in London and is incredibly proud of the city, its diversity and landscape. It’s a place to discover and he is keen to encourage people to create and use the many green and blue corridors to explore the full potential of the city and our neighbours.
Emily Brennan
Emily is Forest Research’s Head of Science Centre where she oversees the provision of science, data and evidence to inform government decisions.
Emily has varied experience in natural and cultural heritage with roles at The National Trust, the South Downs National Park Authority, as Director of Conservation, Education and Outreach at London Wildlife Trust and conservation and project roles with ZSL, Butterfly Conservation, the Natural History Museum and WWF-UK.
Emily has completed a Clore Leadership Fellowship, the internationally- recognised programme for developing leaders in the heritage and cultural sectors and helped assure the sustainability of the Olympics and Paralympics as a Commissioner for the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012.
Melissa Miners
Melissa has been working in sustainability strategy for over 12 years. She is currently at Unilever, with a remit of driving business action in support of and aligned with public policy relating to nature and climate adaptation.
Previous roles have included Sustainability Communications Manager at the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, sustainability manager at the PR firm, Hill & Knowlton, advising clients such as WWF, HSBC, IHG. She previously took a sabbatical in New Zealand working for the Department of Conservation on indigenous bird conservation and for the Green Party, New Zealand. She has a masters degree in Publishing and a Bachelor’s Degree in English and Linguistics.
Claire Eagle
Claire is a policy and strategy professional focused on cities and net zero. In her current role at the Connected Places Catapult, Claire is helping to scale innovation-led urban regeneration projects across the UK. Previously, she worked on transport policy at the Greater London Authority on London’s transport policy, supporting the Deputy Mayor for Transport in public transport-related areas.
Claire came to London six years ago to pursue a Masters of Public Administration at the London School of Economics. Previously she lived in three different cities in Canada, where she worked in strategy consulting with KPMG. Claire credits her experience across cities with sparking her passion for accessible, green, and wild spaces in urban environments, as she has felt firsthand the impact that these spaces have on urban life.
Jo Dimitri
Jo is a Senior Programme Manager for the National Trust, leading their programme in London to address unequal access to nature, beauty and history. Over 11 years with the charity, she has built up extensive experience delivering major infrastructure and improvement projects within heritage settings as well as leading large partnership initiatives in Birmingham, including the restoration of Roundhouse Birmingham and future plans for Moseley Road Baths.
A project professional for over 20 years, Jo started out in the events industry managing corporate, private and charity events across the UK before making the move into the cultural and heritage sector. Prior to joining the National Trust, she worked at the Natural History Museum on major public engagement events, projects and exhibitions, including the Ice Rink and Wildlife Photographer of the Year; and managed government investment into museums in the West Midlands, South West and London as part of the former DCMS Renaissance programme.
Alice Harrison
Alice has over fifteen years’ experience as a campaign strategist working to persuade governments to protect our climate and environment. She currently sits on the Strategic Leadership team at the campaigns group Global Witness, which exposes how the industries fuelling the climate crisis profit from destruction and stands with the people fighting back.
Previously Alice worked at the non-profit Transparency International, where she worked with a global team based across Latin America, Africa and Asia to ensure climate finance was reaching those who needed it most. She began her career as a news writer at Deutsche Welle, Germany’s state broadcaster.
Alice has taken more of a hands-on approach to protecting nature too, organising a group of volunteers to clean up a waterway that ran through her community in London. She also liaised with her MP, the council and local conservation groups to tackle sources of pollution and educate residents across the borough in the benefits and joys of protecting nature.
Shereen Chung-Blake
Shereen is the Future Gardeners Program Coordinator and Safeguarding Lead at Bankside Open Spaces Trust. The Future Gardeners programme has won two industry recognised awards from The Royal Parks Guild and the Chartered Institute of Horticulture and has supported more than 300 students since the course began in 2016.
A PGCE qualified teacher and senior leader with seventeen years experience in education and a BA Hon(s) in Marketing, Shereen transitioned into the Horticulture Industry just over two years ago after founding a community garden and allotment in her local area and then deciding to pursue qualifications in Practical Horticulture, Environment Conservation, Sustainability and completing an RHS Bursary Study Tour exploring Community Gardening in Housing Developments across Scotland.
Shereen is passionate about the Future Gardeners Program and the opportunity it presents to address social inequalities in the Horticulture Sector and wider society. As Southwark Council Healthy Environment Champion and included in the “Hort Week Heroes of 2024” and “Hort Week 100+ Women In Horticulture” lists, Shereen believes in community engagement and empowerment through education, art and horticulture. Shereen has lived in Washington DC, Porto – Portugal, Lagos – Nigeria and Amman Jordan but her home will always be Queen’s Road, Peckham!
Sylvia Perrins
Sylvia has worked as a Non-Executive Director and Trustee on a variety of charity boards over the past 25 years. She has been a NED for an acute London Hospital Trust, a Trustee for the British Pilgrimage Trust and is currently Chair of Trustees for a multi academy Trust in South East London.
She is particularly interested in strong governance and financial probity to ensure a charity can fulfil its purpose and mission. A qualified teacher and professional accountant with a Masters in Business Administration, Sylvia has combined these skills in past roles such as CEO of the National Skills Academy for Financial Services to help older students and young adults improve their personal money management. She recently stepped down as Finance and Strategy Director for two charities to enjoy her retirement and increase her voluntary work.
Sylvia has lived and worked in and around London all her life and truly values the diversity and open spaces the city has to offer. She is committed to maintaining the environment and encouraging more people to access the outdoors to improve their health and wellbeing.
Kalpana Arias
Kalpana Arias is a guerrilla gardener, technologist, nature rights activist and food grower, writer, speaker and the founder of Nowadays, a social enterprise fighting for urban nature. Alongside Nowadays, Kalpana campaigns for the right to grow and nature rights through urban gardening projects and tech policy reforms.
She has been researching technological ecologies for over 7 years, delivered a global TED talk, spoken at the United Nations, featured on Evening Standard’s 30 under 30 list of Climate Activists On A Mission To Save London and alongside National Park City she is also a Trustee for the GROW charity.
In addition to her not for profit work, Kalpana is an environmental consultant for corporations and governments and works with leading charities, institutions, brands and grassroots change-makers.
Special Advisors and former Trustees
Daniel Raven-Ellison
Dan provided the founding vision for National Park Cities. A self confessed guerrilla geographer, a National Geographic Emerging Explorer combining creative exploration, geography and communication to tackle social and environmental challenges.
Dan has walked across all of the UK’s national parks and cities and recently founded the Slowways project mapping walking routes across Britain. He has climbed the equivalent height of Everest using stairs in London buildings, authored children’s books and is a regular speaker on adventure, exploration, play, education, conservation, technology and cities.
Paul de Zylva
Our former Chair, Paul is Friends of the Earth’s Senior Sustainability Analyst and lead specialist on nature, biodiversity and ecosystems. Paul devised the Defend Nature campaign to protect the most precious wild species and habitats in Europe; The Bee Cause, catalysing UK and global action to reverse bee and pollinator decline; and saved London’s top wildlife haven at Rainham Marshes from being destroyed.
A founding member of the London Sustainable Development Commission (LSDC) which was central to the winning, staging and legacy of the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics. Paul chairs the award-winning Quaggy Waterways Action Group and is a Fellow of the RSA.
Ben Smith
Ben is Director and London Group Leader for Climate and Sustainability Services with the global engineering firm Arup, where he is also the Partnership Director for the firms partnership with C40 Cities.
A Chartered Environmentalist Ben is an environmental consultant with 20 years’ experience from projects in the UK, Europe, Middle East and Australia.
Ben has specialised in sustainable development, energy strategy, climate change (mitigation and adaptation) and urban resilience. Ben was previously Director for Sustainable Development at AECOM.
Luis Alvarado Martinez
Luis works at the intersection of climate, government relations, city innovation, politics and youth empowerment. He advises the World Economic Forum and Mission Possible Partnership helping leading companies decarbonize across heavy industries, accelerating the transition to a carbon neutral future.
At WEF he builds philanthropic-public-private alliances to derisk climate tech investments at scale, and works closely with governments and the UNFCCC High Level Climate Champion to accelerate private sector climate action.
He helped establish Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities, working with cities and mayors to advance urban resilience and sustainability strategies, and managed relations with the EU as head of public policy.
He has held elected civil society positions in Brussels working with the EU, Council of Europe and UN – including president of the European Youth Forum, representing 150 million young people. He advised former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing’s incubator of political ideas, Re-Imagine Europe.
Emily Hamilton
Emily is a built environment sustainability professional with over 15 years of experience. Her current role is as Head of Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) at Savills Investment Management, where she leads the global ESG team and sustainability transformation efforts.
Emily is passionate about nature and accessible high quality green space. She is an avid bird watcher and pond enthusiast. Her passion for wildlife led her to a career in sustainability and she has worked and advised on air quality, biodiversity enhancement and green spaces, climate action and resource use, and how organisations in the built environment can deploy and gain from sustainable practices, including through sustainability knowledge transfer among professionals.
Emily has also served Vice Chair of Friends of Burgess Park and organised numerous community events including pedal powered park film festivals.
Steve Pocock
Educated as an astrophysicist and working in innovative technology startups surfing several waves as product manager, CTO, and COO, Steve has built companies, teams, and complex “big data” music, information, entertainment solutions in the US and UK for Silicon Valley firms and high street names including Vodafone, Sony, Samsung and Sky.
Steve’s latest venture is Revolution Consultancy & Design. Its Forward Movement Platform, a technology platform to help people notice and explore their surroundings can be seen in action in TreeTalk a joint project with Paul Wood (TheStreetTree) and CPRE’s #GoParksLondon. In his spare time Steve is exploring London’s wilder corners, and working on the Great West Hedge, a pollution busting hedge along the A4.
Angela McDermott
Angela is Head of Programmes and Impact at WasteAid, which works with entrepreneurs and municipal councils to tackle waste in the Global South. Alongside this she is a consultant on partnership development, project management and training. She is also chair of the Humanitarian Innovation Fund’s funding committee at ELRHA. Prior to this she spent 15 years in the humanitarian sector leading work to improve the quality, speed and effectiveness of emergency responses. She has also managed a number of emergency programmes in countries including Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Angela has chaired the Board of the Remakery in Brixton, a reuse and repair community cooperative. She is also active with William Morris Big Local in Walthamstow, a resident-led initiative that includes a work stream to improve outdoor spaces.
Julian Tollast
Julian is Head of Master Planning and Design at Quintain with more than 30 years’ experience, including 17 at Farrells, working on significant and varied design and development projects.
Julian’s experience in leading projects from both the client and consultant side brings the ability to relate to and realise opportunities scaling from “ District to Doorknob” using project leadership, management and construction skills to integrate economic, social and environmental aims.
Dr Steve Head
An invertebrate zoologist and general ecologist with a particular interest in wildlife gardening and helping people at every level to understand the importance of garden wildlife. He was a founder member of the Wildlife Gardening Forum, and managed the Forum and its conferences for several years.
Steve was a lecturer and Associate Professor in Oxford, Jamaica and the Sultanate of Oman, where he became Deputy Dean of Science, lecturing in subjects including reef ecology, marine ecology, invertebrate zoology and environmental physiology. He is a former Chief Executive Officer and trustee of several UK environmental charities and was for 8 years a Secretary of State Member of the Exmoor National Park Authority.
Professor Edward Truch
Director of the National Park Research Centre and a visiting Professor in Management Science at the Lancaster University Management School.
He is founder of the Knowledge Management Forum at Henley Business School and an expert in strategic planning, organisational development and technology-led innovation. Edward advises multinational corporations and governments, including the UK Government, on public administration reform and development of knowledge based economies. Research includes the social capital of green spaces and national park governance.
Lucy Livesley
Lucy is Policy & External Affairs Director at Reall, an innovator and investor in climate-smart affordable housing in cities across Africa and Asia. She has over 16 years’ experience in international urban development, sustainable cities and green buildings, operating at the intersection of the not-for-profit, public and private sectors.
Having spent over a decade of her career at Reall, Lucy has played a key role in shaping Reall’s emergence as a market-leader delivering green housing and community resilience solutions for people on low-incomes. Lucy has held leadership roles spanning strategy, operations, impact investment, fundraising and policy, and is a passionate collaborator around city initiatives that jointly deliver for people and the planet.
Alison Barnes
Alison has spent 25 years in roles linking the natural environment with people, currently as CEO New Forest National Park Authority and Chair of the Green Halo Partnership; and she leads on Health and Wellbeing and Nature Recovery on behalf of all the National Parks.
Previously she was Director for Natural England Team in London, championing London’s green spaces, their enhancement and benefits for the social and economic fabric of the Capital; London Sustainable Development Commissioner between 2008 and 2014 where she initiated ‘Sowing the Seeds’ – reconnecting London’s young people to their green and blue city spaces.
Alison began her career with the RSPB and led on local biodiversity policy within Defra for 4 years, shaping policy, legislation and delivery partnerships. She is a Fellow both of the RSA and Landscape Institute.
David Cope
David is a freelance consultant helping purposeful organisations grow their impact and improve how they function, and has deployed this experience in public, academic and charity sectors. He is also employed as Head of Sustainability at the Duchy of Cornwall.
David’s early career was in academia, researching the conservation of a range of animal species, before working in the UK government, first as an analyst, then as a policy maker and supporting performance improvement as a senior civil servant.
David was Director of Strategy and External Affairs at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and more recently as Director of Strategic Change and Planning at Oxford Brookes University. He is also a Trustee of the John Spedan Lewis Foundation and is a voluntary advisor on sustainability to the England Touch Association.
Tim Webb
Tim is a founder Trustee of the National Park City, is on the board of the charity London Parks and Gardens, and secretary of the UK Urban Ecology Forum.
An award-winning news editor and former broadcast journalist. Tim established and managed the UK’s first all-digital radio newsroom for Talk Radio UK and was coordinator for both the London Environmental Educators’ Forum and of London Sustainability Weeks, transforming it into Love London Week.
With expertise in sustainability, food and farming, Tim moved from journalism to conservation; working with London Wildlife Trust and the RSPB. He is Manager of the BSI’s Sustainability Standards Network, ensuring all British Standards deliver the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and move the world closer to Net Zero by 2050.
Eilish Kavanagh
Eilish is Director of Finance & Operations at B Lab UK, and is a qualified accountant with an extensive background in the commercial and charitable sectors, including Friends of the Earth. Eilish specialises in financial management, organisational development and board governance, and has led several transformation programmes. She draws on executive and board experience in strategy, planning, compliance and financial management as a Trustee, Treasurer and as Company Secretary. With a life-long passion for nature and the environment, she has a MSc in Marine Biology and a Masters in Environment, Society & Policy.
Eilish is also a trustee, Treasurer and Chair of the Operations Committee at Outward Housing and is a Non-Executive Director of the Schools Energy Cooperative. In the past she has been a board member with the Women’s Environmental Network, the Chartered Institution of Water & Environmental Management, No More Landmines Trust and Greater London Action on Disability.