COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT | HUARAZ & CUZCO | 2004-2007

For three years, I led teams working on community-developed building and teaching projects in Andean communities, children’s homes and hospitals. This led to in-depth knowledge of local realities, fluent Spanish and a broad network of community and social work partners in Cuzco and Huaraz. 

EDUCATION | CUZCO | 2007-2021

In 2007, I founded Latin American Foundation for the Future, a UK-registered charity supporting marginalised children in Peru to access education. Over the next 15 years as Executive Director and Chair, I oversaw strategic direction, programmes, finance and fundraising, communications and relationships. Funding from trusts, corporates and individuals helped us to build dormitories, install solar water systems, run career days for disadvantaged youth and put 100+ children through school and vocational training courses.

COMMUNICATIONS | SULAWESI | 2010-2012

From a South Sulawesi base, I spent two years supporting grassroots organizations with their fundraising and communication strategies. Full immersion in the community working alongside local activists gave me invaluable insight into life across the archipelago, from Sulawesi to Nusa Tenggara and Timor. We used participatory tools to develop communications and fundraising strategies around visual storytelling to raise awareness and funds for complex, often-interlinking issues like watershed management, deforestation, pollution, environmental education, livelihoods, gender and disability. I also learnt to motorbike megacities and mud roads like the best of them. Photos of my work can be found here, here, here and here. 

RESEARCH | KALIMANTAN | 2013

I spent several months doing ethnographic research with forest-dependent communities in Central Kalimantan, where we explored issues of access and exclusion to forested areas under the protection of international schemes.  

FUNDRAISING | JAVA | 2013-2014

Trees became a central theme in my life. At the Center for International Forestry Research in Bogor I supported the CGIAR research center to reach annual budgets of USD 50 million. I worked with global interdisciplinary science teams to coordinate and streamline major grant proposals. This made for a crash course in all things trees - from peat swamps to carbon footprints, forest foods to livelihoods.