Prof Peter Head CBE FREng FRSA

Peter is a champion of sustainable development. He established the Ecological Sequestration Trust in 2011. He advocates that changing the way we invest public and private money in the built environment could be made very much more effective if the public and private sectors adopt sustainable development principles.

Peter is a civil and structural engineer who has become a recognised world leader in major bridges (he received an OBE for successfully delivering the Second Severn Crossing as Government Agent), advanced composite technology and now in sustainable development in cities and regions. He has won many awards for his work including the Award of Merit of IABSE, the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Silver Medal and the Prince Philip Award for Polymers in the Service of Mankind.

He joined Arup in 2004 to create and lead their planning and integrated urbanism team which by 2011 had doubled in size. He directed work on the Dongtan Eco City Planning project which was voted by Chinese developers in 2005 as the most influential development project in China.

In July 2008 he was awarded an honorary doctorate in engineering at Bristol University, where he is a visiting Professor in Sustainable Systems Engineering.

In May 2011 he was appointed as a visiting professor in eco-cities at Westminster University. In 2009 he was awarded the Sir Frank Whittle medal of the Royal Academy of Engineering for a lifetime contribution to the well-being of the nation through environmental innovation.

In 2008 he was named by the Guardian Newspaper as one of 50 people that could ‘save the planet’.

He was cited by Time magazine in 2008 as one of 30 global eco-heroes and has been one of CNN’s Principle Voices.

In 2011 he was awarded the CBE in the New Year’s Honours List for services to Civil Engineering and the Environment.

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Dr Mike Cherrett CEng MRAeS

Mike Cherrett is the Trust’s Chief Executive and holds overall responsibility for the organisation’s strategic direction and operation. He joined the Trust with a background in engineering and a career in the British Diplomatic Service.

Mike started work at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in 1986. He spent the next 11 years in the aerospace sector specialising in gas turbine technology. His roles included R&D, managing technology design & development teams, leading international collaboration programmes and developing international business. He gained an industry-based PhD from Imperial College in 1994 and was awarded the Royal Aeronautical Society’s Sir Roy Feddon award for propulsion research that year. He is a Member of the Society and a Chartered Engineer.

Mike was seconded to the British Embassy in Seoul in 1997 to establish a high-tech trade and investment unit. He joined the British Diplomatic Service whilst in Korea and returned to UK in 2001. Subsequent roles encompassed conflict resolution and bilateral relations in Africa Directorate and, as Deputy Programme Director for a £100m Oracle ERP & business change programme, he was responsible for the global rollout to 180 posts globally.

In 2006, Mike was posted to New Zealand. After a brief secondment to the NZ Ministry for Foreign Affairs & Trade’s Pacific Division, he became Britain’s Deputy High Commissioner. In this role he was responsible for a wide range of operational and policy issues, though with a specific personal interest in climate change, sustainable business and social enterprise. He returned to UK in Jan 2011 to work on climate change and resource scarcity issues at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, before taking up his role a Chief Executive of the Trust in October.

Dr Graham Hillier CEng, FIMMM, FRSA

Graham has a wide-ranging business background including recycling operations, new product development, business development and low carbon energy.

He was Director of Strategy and Planning for ICI’s Petrochemicals, Plastics and Fertilizers Business before working for Corus as Construction Director, where he was responsible for a global programme in sustainable urban design and construction.

Graham is also a Director at the Centre for Process Innovation, where he is responsible for Strategy and Futures. His role is to develop strategy on developing technologies to support the efficient use and reuse of increasingly scare natural resources.

Graham is a Visiting Professor in the Department of the Built Environment at the University of Salford and is Chair of Redcar & Cleveland Further Education College.

Prof Ziona Strelitz, MRTPI

With her triple vantage point as Social Anthropologist, Town Planner and Interior Architect, Ziona’s distinctive focus is at the interface of people and the built environment. Her work is multi-scalar, focusing at the building and urban scales, and virtual operations.

In 1990 Ziona founded ZZA Responsive User Environments, a research and advisory practice that links social, cultural, design and management perspectives to inform sustainable strategies and effective use of built resources. ZZA works with leading clients, providing systematic empirical research and strategic advice that harnesses ZZA’s extensive data on users’ experience of locations, buildings, work modes and lifestyles, to steer new value propositions: www.zza.co.uk.

Ziona is Visiting Professor in University of Reading’s Department of Construction Management & Engineering, serves on the Home Office Design Panel, and the English Heritage Urban Panel. She has extensive experience as a judge of workplace and town planning awards, and is a frequent presenter at international events.

Her book, ‘Buildings that Feel Good’ (RIBA 2008), provides lessons from exemplars that meet user aspirations across varied building typologies. Her career-long interest in work-life integration is expressed in serial publications, most recently: ‘Liveable Lives: Addressing Dysfunction in 21st Century Work’ (2010), and ‘Why Place Still Matters in the Digital Age’ (October 2011). Her newest book: ‘Energy, People, Place: Sustainable Urban Paradigm’ (2012), provides a case-study based framework for resource efficiency and humanistic quality of life, with a manifesto for holistic sustainable development.

Alastair Kennedy, MEng, FCA

Following a Masters Degree in Engineering at Nottingham University, Alastair joined Ernst and Young in London, qualifying as a Chartered Accountant in 1990. In 1991 he moved to Australia, working initially for a diversified industrial company, Howard Smith Ltd, later becoming Group Accountant at Pioneer International Ltd in Sydney.

On returning to the UK in 2007, Alastair first worked as Pioneer’s ERP Project Team Leader, and then as European Finance Manager in London, with particular responsibility for strategy, business development and analysis of European reporting and forecasting.

In 2000 Alastair became Finance Director for the UK Studio of Electronic Arts, the world’s leading developer and publisher of interactive entertainment software. During these four years, he managed a successful acquisition and integration exercise, established effective operational and financial processes in a rapidly growing business, implementing data warehousing, redesigning joint venture appraisal processes and improving cash flow forecasting.

Since 2004 Alastair has worked on a portfolio basis as a Finance Director and advisor to SMEs.