We are very pleased to announce that Natural Capital Advisory Ltd (NCA) has recruited two new team members to help deliver EFG’s growth. Digby Sowerby joins NCA as Operations Officer and Elena Porter joins as Administrator. The NCA provides EFG’s daily operations and management, and Digby and Elena join Christopher Sparrow (Managing Director of NCA) to run this executive function. Find out a little bit more about them both below:
Digby joins the team as Operations Officer.
Digby has most recently spent two years working at a fast-growing ‘altnet’ – Wessex Internet. The Dorset-based company was born out of a family farming estate and has nearly tripled in size over the past few years. As Project Team Manager, Digby’s main role was in leading the agriculture and aquaculture work package of the 5G RuralDorset R&D project which looked at the benefits connectivity can bring to the industry. He also managed a team of four delivering improvement projects as the company grew.
Prior to this, Digby spent two years on the MDS management graduate programme, which took him to work at Syngenta’s HQ in Switzerland, potato fields across the UK for PepsiCo, an apple and pear factory in Lincolnshire and a cherry farm in Herefordshire in various roles. Digby has a BSc (Joint Hons) in International Management and French from the University of Bath and enjoys wild swimming, triathlon, water polo, tennis and travel. He was brought up on the family arable farm in North Lincolnshire.
As Operations Officer, Digby will be putting his experience to work to build and manage systems and operations to ensure the EFG can grow smoothly. For any questions which relate to operations, please be in touch on: dsowerby@gwct.org.uk.
Elena joins the team as Administrator.
Elena has very recently joined the National Capital Advisory (NCT) team after spending the last four years studying at The University of the West of England, where she graduated with a BSc (hons) in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation Science.
While studying, Elena chose her dissertation project to be a feeding behaviour study at Bristol Zoo of the endangered White Clawed Crayfish – native to our local waterways. She has spent a lot of time volunteering for different projects, her favourite having trained AI for a beta software ‘wildlife insights’ where camera trap images from around the world are automatically categorized into species that have been captured in the image.
Elena grew up on a small holding in Wakefield, New Zealand surrounded by animals where her passion for wildlife was ignited. She emigrated back to England with her family as a teenager and continued her education. Elena loves all animals and has a keen interest in plants and gardening.
As Administrator, Elena is looking forward to building on her University skills set and learn all about the world of work. For any administrative queries, please be in touch with Elena on: eporter@gwct.org.uk.