Helena’s words of wisdom will appear here soon….

I am a journalist, a teacher and a director of a non-profit news company that works with the mission of bringing to focus people less seen, voices less heard and
perspectives less argued. I sit on the ASP board as part of a sub-committee for alumni of the Responsible Business Msc offered at Bath and Ashridge (1996-2018).  We are fortunate to have among us citizens from all corners of the globe. This wealth carries the potential of driving our initiatives in exciting new ways and directions. I seek to bring to the ASP board a point of view from outside of Europe. I’m based in Mumbai, India. After leading newsrooms for over two decades, I now write edit page columns and engage with MBA participants in a very different kind of B-School, teaching and learning in areas like Ethics, Business & Society, Communications and Sustainability. I try to ground myself in my idea of the 3Cs of good living: contribution, connectedness and compassion.

Linda Works for the Ruskin Mill Trust,  a charity helping young people with special needs to reimagine their potential. Linda manages the Field Centre, the hub and home of the Trust’s research programme.

A life-long environmentalist, Linda has worked in environmental protection and sustainable construction at corporate and SME scale. Linda completed her Masters in Responsibility and Business Practice at Bath in 2004 (RBP 6).

I ‘retired’ in 2008, after 40 plus years in water engineering worldwide. The University of Bath MSc in Responsibility and Business Practice inspired my work since: writing on Sustainable Infrastructure, and teaching the ‘how’ of change for sustainability.
My hands-on roles are currently in living in an eco-designed community at Lancaster Cohousing, and developing affordable sustainable housing, as chair of the Lune Valley Community Land Trust. While accepting that we face a potentially catastrophic future, ‘Active Hope’ keeps me going, taking every opportunity for change. We have plenty of examples of the sustainable solutions we need; our challenge is how to share and adopt them everywhere. This is where the ASP must play its vital catalyst role, and why I am a Director.

Rob Barnard-Weston has lived in Bath for forty years, thirty of them working in social and environmental responsibility. He co-founded Bath’s first eco-hotel; an eco-artisan bakery company; a commercial scale composting company; the UK’s farmers’ markets movement (starting with Bath’s farmers’ market); a farming apprenticeship scheme for vulnerable school-leavers in one of the region’s most economically disadvantaged rural communities; a local environmental charity; a local exchange and trading system; an award-winning community-supported agriculture scheme and an international social responsibility consulting company. He is also a founder investor in the innovative regional banking initiative Avon Mutual.
With degrees in Philosophy (Southampton) and
Responsibility and Business Practice (Bath), he’s published three books on ethical enterprise and taught the subject at both of Bath’s universities.
Rob and his wife Karen have five grown up children and now host Corporate Social Intrapreneurship workshops at Bloomfield House to explore innovative solutions to today’s wicked problems at local, national
and global levels.

I took the initiative to propose ASP in 2004, gathering, coordinating and leading the development of the emerging form in my capacity as a trustee of the New Academy of Business. As a director since day one, I’ve been constant and consistent in my advocacy for applying nature’s most basic principles to our thinking, our form and our actions.

It’s my hunch that by paying close attention to nature’s ways, we give ourselves the best chance of prospering within nature’s means.

In my experience with ASP to date, the challenge we face is less about grasping the nature of nature, and much more about overcoming conventions of thought based in the science of previous centuries.

I’m a facilitator and ‘opportunity maker’ who brings people together to achieve greater things.

My passion is facilitating change, shifting people’s World views so that there’ll be a World for the the next generation.  Dartmoor is a passion for me and my new business is to take people there to connect emotionally with nature, using John Muir philosophy and the Work that Reconnects (Joanna Macey’s work).

I’ve spent over 20 years as an Environmental Consultant working across Europe,  North America, New Zealand and South Africa, helping multinationals to become more environmentally aware, more sustainable in the true sense of the word, and to shift the way they approach the World.

I taught Sustainable Development and Environmental Management at the University of Bath, taking students and business people to Schumacher college to stretch their minds and enable a seismic shift in their thinking.

Currently I am a Director of the South West Learning for Sustainability Coalition and Company Secretary for the Tamar Energy Community, as well as running an Environmental law course for Exeter University.

We’re all driven by values. Understanding and communicating the values that motivate our perspectives, decisions and behaviours is key to achieving our visions and ideas.  The messages of sustainability, though appealing are often complex, which is a challenge I relish.  My role with ASP is to help unearth, embed and articulate the values of sustainability practitioners across different cultures and settings

I’ve enjoyed ASP since attending the ‘Walk Your Talk’ gathering of 2005. A sustainability strategist, communicator and activist, I originally trained as an engineer at Cambridge. During the 90’s I led the BREEAM team at BRE. My passion for radical sustainability led me to go solo as the carbon coach in 2005, making the case for climate leadership personal. In 2014 I won the edie Sustainability Leader of the Year Award.
I stood for Parliament in 2015. Our home is the Marlow Superhome (70% lower CO2) and, notably, I don’t fly. As well as public speaking I’m a visiting lecturer (Cambridge, Reading, City and Loughborough Universities) and an ambassador for Embercombe, Riversimple, the Global Good Awards, Sustainable Stand Up and In Mind In Body. I host and produce a weekly radio show on Marlow FM.
Back in 1982 I was selected for Team GB in rowing. Now I’m working with a number of Olympians who are speaking out courageously on sustainability.

A world in which all enterprise serves society would be good wouldn’t it?  Purpose-led enterprise. That’s my current passion, drawing upon over 25 years’ experience in international corporate business and many years as an independent consultant gaining a deeper understanding of sustainability.

I work from the premise that sustainability is a quality of the outcome, rather than a process, a career, or a subject to be studied. I’m learning that it arises from increased consciousness and awareness.  It’s a way of living that emerges when we acknowledge what we care for and then learn how to nurture that.  Making it an ethical issue tends to alienate people and can be counter-productive. We all care for something – that’s what unites us. Some of us have a larger circle of care than others.

Learning how to live our lives – every aspect of them – in ways that nurture, rather than deplete and diminish, the things we care for, is the big challenge.