Facilitators
Minni Jain, The Flow Partnership
Minni is the Operations Director of the Flow Partnership (TFP) (www.theflowpartnership.org) a UK based NGO working to rejuvenate landscapes and counter the increasing threat of floods and droughts through community collaboration. In partnership with communities and using their innate, local wisdom, TFP helps them build natural infrastructure which serve to slow surface rain water runoff, allowing it to filter and store, helping minimize erosion, recharge aquifers, regulate localized weather patterns and create wildlife habitat. With the increasing threat of climate change and global heating, the Flow Partnership’s work is ever-more needed. Current projects are in India, the UK. and Slovakia and the setting up of an open source global Water School where these methods of rejuvenating landscapes will be freely available. Minni is also a Trustee of Earthinks UK, a Trustee of the Agroforestry Research Trust and on the board of the Berkana Institute (USA)
Leslie Berger, ADAS
Leslie is a Senior Sustainability Consultant with over 25 years of experience working with global agri-food supply chains focussing on a range of topics including sustainable and ethical sourcing, boosting agricultural productivity, reducing food waste, and building climate resilience. Leslie engages with clients at both the strategic corporate level and at all stages within the supply chain including working directly with farmer groups. Her understanding of the challenges faced by food producers has been influenced by direct farm management experience gained through co-managing a family farm in East Anglia. Leslie has worked in both developed and developing country environments and has a keen interest in the challenges faced by smallholder farmers. She is currently leading ADAS’s business development outreach work in India which has led to new partnerships with NGO’s banks and commercial businesses. For the past five years Leslie has held a board position with a non-profit organisation providing development assistance to farmers in Burkina Faso, West Africa.
Catherine McCosker, 3Keel
Catherine McCosker is a senior consultant at 3Keel, where she leads 3Keel’s Resilient Agriculture practice area and specialises in research and evaluation efforts in agriculture and the wider food system. A former farmer herself, she’s especially passionate about amplifying the farmer voice within supply chains. She also helps to facilitate and deliver Landscape Enterprise Networks (LENs) projects across the UK, working to develop ecosystem services market opportunities, and currently sits on the Soils Working Group for the Cool Farm Alliance. Before joining 3Keel in 2014, Catherine spent seven years working on and managing small- and medium-scale farms in the United States, including dairy, horticulture, and small livestock. She still misses the satisfaction of finishing a day and seeing the physical results of her work - but not necessarily the below-freezing early dawns!
Anne Schiffer, Leeds Beckett University
Dr Anne Schiffer explores how design thinking can help tackle local and global real world challenges, including in the areas of sustainable energy transitions, energy and water access. She is the author of Reframing Energy Access: Insights from The Gambia.
The interdisciplinary nature of her research brings together participatory/ co-design practice, urbanism, feminist development theory and design anthropology. She holds a PhD from Queen’s University Belfast that critiques the role of designers in international development
Prior to joining Leeds Beckett University, Dr Schiffer led the Scottish part of Community Power, a European funded project that aimed to improve policy and legislation to speed up the development of community-owned renewable energy.
She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) and until recently served as Senior Independent Director on the board of Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland.