The NBN Trust has appointed two new Trustees, Vanessa Neill and Dr Katie Leach to its Board. Vanessa and Katie’s experience adds significant expertise in sustainability, including nature-related risks and opportunities, finance, corporate partnerships and strategic communications and marketing.
Vanessa will be joining the Finance and Audit Committee and Katie will be joining the Data and Technology Committee.
Vanessa Neill
Vanessa is a senior sustainability consultant, practitioner and adviser with more than 25 years’ experience in strategic communications and sustainability strategy. She co‑founded Ochre Partners and has advised public and private sector clients globally, including private equity firms, on embedding sustainability to protect and build long-term value. Vanessa is also a Non‑Executive Director of CVC Income and Growth Limited, a closed-ended investment company, where she leads on sustainability for the board.
She has previously been a Partner at Kekst CNC and Head of Communications for the Investment Banking and Capital Markets Division at Credit Suisse.
She completed a postgraduate master’s level Diploma at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainable Leadership (CISL) in 2023 where some of her research included the role of the private equity industry in addressing the preservation and conservation of biodiversity and nature.
Dr Katie Leach
Katie brings technical expertise in biodiversity and nature-related risk. She is currently Head of Nature at Lloyds Banking Group and was previously Head of Biodiversity at ShareAction. At UNEP‑WCMC she led a programme of work focused on integrating nature into corporate and financial decision‑making.
Katie played a key role in developing the ENCORE tool and has been at the forefront of advancing corporate biodiversity measurement. She brings specialist expertise in geospatial data and modelling, applying these skills to support nature‑related risk assessment and translate complex spatial information into insights that are accessible and actionable for business audiences.
She was a Coordinating Lead Author of the IPBES Business and Biodiversity Assessment published in 2026.
She holds a PhD in Biological Sciences from Queen’s University Belfast and an MSci in Zoology from the University of Nottingham.
Together, these appointments strengthen the NBN Trust’s leadership in the collection and access to biodiversity data at a time of growing focus on addressing and investing in nature recovery.
Read more about the Board of Trustees on the NBN Trust website.