Curious Minds | Environment Platform Wales

Di Clark is a consultant for Koru Ecology Associates, her own consultancy. She formerly worked as a project officer for Wales for CIEEM – the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management. Di has worked in ecological consultancy since 2003 and finally made the jump to starting her own freelance business in 2016. She also sits on the Board of Directors for the West Wales Biodiversity Information Centre. She is also a writer and speaker on subjects including parenthood and ecology and how to break into the world of consultancy.

Liam Olds is an entomologist and founder of the 'Colliery Spoil Biodiversity Initiative', a conservation initiative that aims to raise awareness of the ecological importance of colliery spoil tips in the south Wales Valleys. Liam has been actively surveying colliery spoil habitats for invertebrates, and campaigning for their protection, since founding his conservation initiative in 2015. Liam also works as Conservation Officer at Buglife - The Invertebrate Conservation Trust.

Josie works in the Integrated Evidence Group in Natural Resources Wales as the Specialist Advisor for Evidence Communication and Evidence Synthesis. Her role is focussed on improving how we bring evidence together to inform environmental decision making. Evidence is often complex and difficult to understand, so the other half of Josie’s role is to improve our communication of evidence to enable a more informed conversation about the natural environment between NRW and their customers. Prior to this role, Josie completed a PhD in evolutionary biology and conservation genetics, followed by a short post-doc on wolverine genomics to improve Scandinavian carnivore monitoring and management.

Holly is a Specialist Advisor for Futures and Innovation. She works in NRW’s evidence team and her role is to support long term thinking and innovation in the organisation. Holly joined NRW back in 2019 in a different role working on wellbeing plans, green infrastructure and partnership working. Prior to this, she worked in a wide range of roles in the environmental sector, including; a lab assistant at Kew Gardens, an ecologist at a consultancy, a environmental communications officer and several marine conservation internships. She’s got a BSc in Ecology from Cardiff Uni and a Foundation Diploma in Fine Art.

Donna is an Instrumentation, Automation and Control Technician working for Welsh Water. She specifically works on waste water treatment works in Cardiff and Port Talbot that specialise in advanced anaerobic digestion. Donna started a four year technical apprenticeship with Welsh Water in 2015, and qualified in 2019 with an offer to work on the advanced digestion sites where she spent the majority of her apprenticeship training. She works a a maintenance engineer looking after on site instrumentation as well as overseeing the process control for the sites.

For Episode 2, we catch up with Donna Udall. Donna is a researcher at Coventry University's Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience (CAWR). She was brought up on a hill farm in Mid-Wales producing lamb and beef. With undergraduate degrees in both business and finance and plant science, Donna now combines her pragmatic farming and business background with plant and soil science knowledge to investigate relationships between investing in renewable technologies, such as pyrolysis and anaerobic digesters, and use of the products on-farm. Books and papers include; Living Soils: A Call to Action, Mainstreaming Agroecology: Implications for Global Food and Farming Systems, Growing Strawberries and Cape Gooseberries in the Tropics. She has also secured funding, two years running for the Farmers, Growers and Gardeners Biochar Experiment conducted by citizen scientists throughout the UK.

In our first episode of Curious Minds, we hear from Dr Jennifer Geroni. With over 10 years’ experience in environmental research, research management and the provision of science advice to government, Jenny heads up our multi-partner platform consisting of all eight Welsh universities and the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. But how did she get here? We find out about Jenny's journey - and her tips for for a scenic and fulfilling career route in research and science.