Sue is the Chief Executive of the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission. Sue’s background is in leadership and organisation development for systems change, working with leaders across public, private and not for profit organisations, especially on complex partnership projects. Sue has been researching, writing and practising whole systems change for over 30 years. 

She is an independent Governor at Royal Agricultural University, a Trustee of St George’s House Trust, Windsor, and a member of the government’s Net Zero Council.

Sue and her family live in the heart of Monmouthshire in Wales, raising livestock and farming for conservation.

Tony is a sustainability leader with extensive cross-disciplinary experience spanning economic policy, business strategy and financial services. He has published research on a range of topics from the economics of agroecology, local economic regeneration and the resilience of financial systems.

As Chief Impact Officer he is responsible for effective implementation of FFCC’s strategy and oversight of its financial and operational resources.

He was previously the Managing Director of Sustainability at the British Business Bank and had led policy research programmes on sustainable finance, business and economics at the Royal Society of Arts and the New Economics Foundation.

Tony has held several non-executive and advisory board positions including for the UK Government’s Regional Growth Fund Advisory Panel, the ICAEW Sustainability Committee, the grassroots sustainability charity Transition Network, and Liontrust Asset Management.

Tony has a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University, an MSc in Environmental Assessment & Evaluation from the London School of Economics, and is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.

Rebecca is a stakeholder, marketing and communications specialist with experience across the creative industries, higher education, arts, and charity sectors. She began her career in public relations, but has specialised over the years into developing brand narratives, advocacy and communications strategies for purpose-led organisations. She worked for many years at Channel 4 and then moved to working in higher education and for a range of charities including the Dartington Trust. She is particularly interested in how to build a community around an organisation so that they develop a shared purpose and mission.

Mhairi is a Registered Nutritionist specialising in public health and food policy who is passionate about creating healthy food systems that support the health of people and the planet. She leads food and health work for the Commission, including the Food Conversation. Prior to joining FFCC, she led policy and international workstreams at Consensus Action on Salt, Sugar and Health. There, she developed and advocated for policy proposals to reduce excess and unnecessary levels of salt and sugar from foods and drinks sold in the UK, and collaborated with stakeholders in Malaysia, Morocco, China and Peru to translate this work globally.

Mhairi holds a BSc in Environmental and Sustainable Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh and a Masters in International Public Health Nutrition at the University of Westminster. She is now a PhD candidate with Queen Mary University of London, evaluating food and health policies in the UK.

Outside of work, Mhairi can often be found hiking, gardening, and dedicating a disproportionate amount of time to preventing her cats from interrupting work calls.

Charlie is an experienced researcher and writer with a professional and personal background in food and farming.

He has a PhD in History from Birkbeck, University of London, specializing in food production, trade and consumption in the past. Before joining FFCC, he was a research fellow at Trinity College Dublin, part of an international project on the history of food and drink in Ireland. His first book, on London’s street food sellers, was published in 2023.

Previously, Charlie worked as a business and farming journalist. He was a reporter at Farmers Weekly, mainly covering the dairy, beef, sheep and pig industries, and his writing has appeared in a range of national and trade publications.

He was brought up on his family’s dairy farm in Devon, where they make very good ice cream. He now lives with his partner and son in North London.

Georgie leads the Land Use and Countryside programme at FFCC. She advocates for a Land Use Framework to help meet the UK’s climate, biodiversity, food and housing policy goals with limited land, and supports equitable and resilient rural development.

With a background in climate and food, she has campaigned at the intersection of Agriculture, Food and Land Use (AFOLU) and climate policy for many years. Prior to joining the FFCC, she worked at the Global Alliance for the Future of Food and the European Climate Foundation, focusing on the UN biodiversity and climate summits, as well as land use change in developing countries - particularly in Latin America, India and China.

Georgie has a master’s degree in Governance, Development and Public Policy from the Institute of Development Studies, where she focused on bottom-up approaches to climate policy and polycentric governance to tackle wicked problems. She lives in the West Country and spends as much time as possible walking moors, hills and coastal paths.

Ella has an MSc in Food Policy from City, University of London – her dissertation focused on whether urban food policy is adequately addressing issues of food justice.

She’s also a volunteer and cook at Sitopia Farm in south east London, a judge at The Great Taste Awards, and an occasional writer on food policy issues. She spends as much time as possible on the west coast of Cornwall and Ireland.

Joanna provides support to the Chief Executive and to the Commission's Board, and is working with the team to assist the FFCC’s transition to an independent charitable organisation.

With a background in operations management, Joanna joined the FFCC from the Royal Household and has a wealth of experience in events and hospitality, alongside supporting senior executives.

Amanda joined FFCC as their Office Manager in March 2024.

Previously she’s worked in a broad range of roles with organisations creating and advocating for social change and education, including Social Investment Business, Big Issue Invest, the Healthcare Commission, CityLit, Morley College, and the RSA, where she supported the development of the project from which FFCC would one day be born.

Outside work, she loves live music, photography, and exploring new places.

Hayley is a public health nutritionist with a background in research, youth and community engagement.

She recently completed an MSc in Global Public Health Nutrition at the University of Westminster, where her research focused on urban food growing, exploring access to growing opportunities and how different contexts relate to fruit and vegetable consumption.

Alongside her work at FFCC, Hayley is the founder of Nourish Club. A project bringing together nutrition, urban growing and community through practical workshops, designed to make growing food more accessible.

Before moving into food and public health, Hayley worked in youth and community engagement, including as Engagement Manager at My Life My Say, where she is now a Trustee. She is also a Trustee of Croydon Commitment, helping to connect local people with opportunities through corporate social responsibility.

Hayley is also a keen grower herself, with a particular interest in syntropic farming and the potential for regenerative growing approaches in urban environments.

Dan is the Director of Nature Service Wales, a fledgling organisation being ‘incubated’ by FFCC through its initial development phase. Nature Service Wales aims to build a national movement in service of nature, while creating a stronger foundation for nature recovery through bringing greater visibility, accessibility and cohesion to the sector.

As a freelance ecologist and director of Spectrum Ecology, he has provided ecological services across Wales, including regularly providing advice and services to the film industry when shooting at ecologically sensitive locations.

Passionate about reconnecting people with the magic of the natural world, Dan has also designed and delivered creative landscape interpretation schemes at sites across south and mid Wales. He is also a Green Flag Award judge and a TEDx speaker.

When not engaged in these pursuits, Dan will be somewhere out in nature with his family, or busy tending to his wildlife garden at his home near Porthcawl, South Wales.

Professor Tim G. Benton is an independent advisor on food systems, food security and sustainability. Formerly he was Distinguished Fellow in the Environment and Society Programme at Chatham House, and served as Research Director and head of the Centre 2019-2024. He first joined Chatham House in 2016 as a visiting fellow, at which time he was also dean of strategic research initiatives at the University of Leeds. From 2011-2016 he was the ‘champion’ of the UK’s Global Food Security programme which was a multi-agency partnership of the UK’s public bodies (government departments, devolved governments and research councils) with an interest in the challenges around food.

As a leading expert on food security and advocate for food systems transformation, he has worked with UK governments, the EU, G20 and a range of other governments around the world, as well as leading businesses and civil society organisations. He has been a global agenda steward of the World Economic Forum, and was an author of the IPCC’s Special Report on Food, Land and Climate (2019), and the UK’s Climate Change Risk Assessment (2017, 2022).

He has published more than 200 academic papers, many tackling how systems respond to environmental change. His work on sustainability leadership has been recognized with an honorary fellowship of the UK’s Society for the Environment, and a doctorate honoris causa from the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium. He is also Professor Emeritus at the University of Leeds.

Dr Dolly van Tulleken is a policy consultant and Visiting Researcher at Cambridge University's MRC Epidemiology Unit where she completed a PhD and postdoctoral research position examining UK government obesity policy. Dolly runs her policy consultancy Dolitics, mainly focused on food and health policy. She co-founded 50:50 Parliament's cross-party #AskHerToStand campaign which helps women in the UK get selected and elected. Dolly is also Vice President of ex-offenders employment charity Tempus Novo and an ambassador of military veterans charity Forward Assist.

Adele Jones is an expert in food, agriculture, climate and sustainability issues. Previously Executive Director of the Sustainable Food Trust where she served for 12 years, Adele is now working as a freelance consultant helping companies and organisations develop strategies for accelerating the adoption of regenerative agriculture. She is the current Chair of the True Cost Accounting Accelerator and an active farmer of sheep and cattle on the Welsh borders near Hay on Wye. 

Fabian Wallace-Stephens is a research and evaluation specialist with over a decade’s experience of working across public policy and social innovation. As an independent consultant, his work brings together participatory research, data analysis and evaluation approaches to help organisations make sense of change in complex systems. 

Fabian was recently a visiting researcher at Defra, where he led a Social Return on Investment (SROI) analysis of support services delivered by the rural voluntary and community sector, including home energy advice and social prescribing programmes. Prior to this, he spent 8 years at the RSA in a range of research and strategy roles, including organisational lead for strategic foresight and senior researcher for the future of work programme.