SBP Board

Francis joined SBP as its first independent, non-executive chair in July 2018.

With a background in environmental science, specialising in forestry and land use, Francis spent the first 16 years of his career with WWF, the conservation organisation, in various leadership roles within WWF-UK, WWF International and WWF Netherlands. During his time with WWF, Francis played a major role in establishing the Forest Stewardship Council.

Moving to HSBC, the multinational bank, Francis spent 14 years as a Senior Adviser leading the bank’s work on integrating sustainability and climate change mitigation perspectives into the business.

Francis holds a BA (Hons) in Agriculture and Forest Sciences and an MSc in Forestry and its Relation to Land Use from St John’s College, University of Oxford, UK.

Arnie is recently retired from his position as President of the Public and Private Workers of Canada, a British Columbia based pulp and forestry union. He has worked with indigenous communities and environmental organisations to promote sustainable forestry and environmental stewardship to save old growth forests on Vancouver Island.

Winner of a 2019 Delta Clean 50 Award, which recognises clean capitalism and sustainability of industrial output in Canada. He has been involved for most of the last 20 years promoting the Forest Stewardship Council of Canada. Much of that time was spent as a sitting board member of the Social Chamber.

Martin is the Executive Chair of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL). Martin joined CISL from the European Climate Foundation, where he was working as Europe Group Co-ordinator from 2015, and also led their Industry and Innovation programme.

Martin has a long track record of working on industry, environment and sustainability issues. He is also an expert advisor to the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 on climate and resource issues, a representative on the Economic and Social Committee’s Commission on Industrial Change, and a member of UCL’s European Institute Advisory Board.

Annawati (Anna) is a green growth professional with almost two decades of international experience integrating the value of nature in economic and financial decisions. Her work with various international NGOs and the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) has covered projects in the Asia Pacific, Africa and Latin America regions.

Anna has a long track record of working with governments, business and communities to design investment and policy solutions that shape resilient and sustainable landscapes, where biodiversity is valued and climate risks are managed. She holds several advisory roles in support of boards, committees and expert coalitions, including the Predator Free Hauraki Coromandel Community Trust, The International Advisory Council on Global Bioeconomy, and the Natural Capital Working Group at the Green Growth Knowledge Platform.

Anna holds an MSc in Geo-information Science and a BSc Hons in Environmental Science. Anna is of Dutch/ Indonesian origin and sees herself as a citizen of the planet. She spent many years living in remote parts of Papua New Guinea and the Indonesian archipelago, followed by Europe, Australia, China, and South Korea. She is currently based in New Zealand.

Mihkel is the Chief Sustainability Officer and a Management Board Member at Graanul Invest, one of the biggest pellet producers in Europe and one of the largest independent renewable energy producers in the Baltic Sea region.

In his role, Mihkel is responsible for overseeing value chain sustainability and ESG aspects in all four countries that the company currently operates in. He is also responsible for the group’s quality management systems and contract execution.

Mihkel holds a BEng (Hons) in Civil Engineering from the University of Exeter and an MSc in Environmental Management and Cleaner Production from the Tallinn University of Technology.

John is a co-founder and the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Enviva, the World’s largest producer of woody biomass fuels. The company’s portfolio of facilities includes approximately 3.5 million metric tons of production capacity with more under construction and ships its product to customers around the world from purpose-built and third-party marine terminals in the US Southeast and Mid-Atlantic regions.  In April 2015, John led Enviva Partners, LP (NYSE: EVA) to its initial public offering on the NYSE, making it the first publicly-traded company in the industry.

John understands sustainability’s place at the core of Enviva’s business and the industry at large. In 2016, Enviva introduced its Track & Trace ^TM program, a state of the art tool that identifies the source of every ton of purchased wood. He also led the creation of Enviva’s Forest Conservation Fund, a program dedicating $5 million over 10 years to the protection and conservation of critical bottomland forests in the Southeastern US.

John holds a BA in Political Economy from the University of California, Berkeley and a MBA from the University of Virginia, both located in the US. He is frequently sought out as a speaker and thought leader at industry and financial conferences.

David has been an Executive Director of PIO Hardwoods since 2002 and an Executive Directive of Rainbow Pellet since 2016. He has 20 years’ experience of manufacturing and export of timber products to Europe and South Africa, and since 2014 has been involved in wood pellet production.

David oversaw the construction of Rainbow Pellet’s four pellet production facilities, which make the company the largest wood pellet producer in Malaysia. Managing the export of wood pellets to Europe and Asia is amongst David’s responsibilities.

Since 2019, David has been a committee member of the Timber Exporters Association of Malaysia.

David has a BSc in Marketing and Finance from the University of Bradford, UK.

Alan has over 30 years’ experience of working with global companies and governments on sustainability. In April 2021, he joined Drax as the Group Director of Sustainability. Drax is the largest producer of biomass for energy, and has the ambition to be the world’s first carbon negative power station.

Prior to that, for seven years Alan was in the steel and mining sectors as the Global Head of Sustainable Development for ArcelorMittal. He was Co-chairman of Responsible Steel and served on the steering board of the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance. Alan created and chaired the Ebola Private Sector Mobilisation Group, which was a collaboration of over 100 companies sharing best practice and coordinating the corporate response to Ebola in West Africa. For this he was made a Clinton Global Citizen honouree in 2015.

Alan has also served as the Sustainability Director for Business and the Community (BITC) where he oversaw all their Corporate Sustainability Programmes. He advised the Virgin Group on sustainable development for seven years. He worked with global companies as diverse as B&Q where he led their entire Sustainability programme for 10 years. He was instrumental in founding and developing the Forest Stewardship Council. He held similar roles in the Parent company Kingfisher and SABMiller, the multibillion brewery company.

For nine years he was a commissioner of the Sustainable Development Commission and introduced the concept of “choice editing” into the product policy debate.  He was awarded an OBE in June 1998, in 2005 the US-based Rainforest Alliance presented him with a lifelong award and in 2013 he was made an Honorary Fellow of the Society for the Environment.

Thomas is the Director and Head of the Fuel and Logistics teams in Ørsted Bioenergy. He has more than 15 years’ experience from different commercial and management roles in Ørsted (formerly known as DONG Energy).

Previously, Thomas worked as a consultant to the energy sector at PwC and Deloitte.

Thomas is a trained economist from the University of Aarhus, Denmark.