Trustees
Jan Stannard
Acting CEO & Chair of Trustees
Jan knows the exact moment she became a wildlife campaigner, one morning in June 2014 when she intervened to stop dozens of swifts being killed during the demolition of their nesting site. She can trace a love of them back to childhood, along with countless other species, particularly frogs, newts, skylarks and woodlice. A tawny owl made out of an old sock was one of her finest achievements as a Brownie.
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Her first degree was in Geography and she joined a corporate communications firm straight out of university and has spent most of her business career in technology marketing communications. In 2012 she graduated with a first in Psychology and trained as a specialist in resilience. She still serves on the boards of two businesses she helped to found.
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Her work with wildlife has been local and very practical. She founded a swift group which has the world record for the most swift boxes installed in under a year; she was a co-founder of Wild Maidenhead and leads the group's Wild About Gardens scheme; and she project managed the largest installation of amphibian rescue ladders in England. Nature is what makes her heart sing, she says.
Cindy Gale
Trustee
Once upon a time, Cindy held a number of senior corporate roles including global head of department for a £13 billion revenue company. She invented products, created proprietary methodologies, won many awards and wrote best-selling business books. She has also been an entrepreneur.
Over some years, she was drawn towards the importance of relationships. A long way from those business days, her focus now is on facilitating people to deepen their relationship with themselves, with others, and with the natural world.
She does this in her role as a psychotherapist, counsellor and mentor, where she supports highly sensitive people (HSPs) to flourish through discovering and living their authentic selves. Also as a member of the Climate Psychology Alliance, she provides therapeutic support around the anxiety and grief of the ecological and climate crisis. Cindy is also a facilitator of The Work that Reconnects.
Bringing a broad spectrum of skills and experience to play, she has studied in many disciplines from engineering and physics to psychotherapy, shamanic practice and as an end-of-life doula. She holds a number of qualifications including an MBA.
Cindy co-founded her local Transition Town, set up a social enterprise providing solar power, and founded a local wildlife charity near to her home in the Chilterns.
Jonathan Simnett
Trustee
Jonathan’s love of the outdoors, wildlife and conservation developed after teenage years spent in the countryside of northern England.
After graduating with a degree in Geology, he went to develop an academic career in science and technology policy before leaving the dreaming spires for the world of building and exiting companies in the technology sector, delivering technology marketing communications and technology M&A advisory.
Gardening, walking and especially cycling keep him outside and in touch with the natural environment.
Donna Stimson
Trustee
Born in the Eastern Cape in South Africa, Donna has always loved the wild side. She discovered the wonder of nature early on in life and was never happier than when exploring a windswept sand dune or in a mokoro (canoe) in the silence of the Okavango,
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A BA (Psych/Soc.Anth) and an MBA led to a career in international management consulting. She specialised in corporate culture analysis and large scale mobilisation programmes. Since 1997, her livelihood has been renovating properties and restoring gardens.
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She is also a councillor and member of Cabinet in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead. Her role is to lead on biodiversity, environmental services, climate change, sustainability, and parks and countryside. The Borough has declared an Environmental and Climate emergency and she is responsible for delivering net carbon zero by 2050 at the latest.
Piers Watson
Trustee
From an early age, Piers has been passionate about nature and how it provides restoration and refuge for the soul away from the noise of a busy life. He is determined to play his part in the rewilding movement that recognises the urgent need to restore the balance to nature from over-exploitation through intensive land use.
Throughout his career in big business he has led projects that bring people together across multi functions and disciplines to transform business for long term sustainable success. As a management consultant for Capgemini, he led projects for private and public sector clients and at Legal & General and AXA he worked with senior business leaders as a strategist, new proposition and customer experience transformation lead to drive positive change. He aims to bring all this experience to bear in supporting and guiding Heal to achieve its ambitions and goals.
Jeremy Coulter
Trustee
After graduating from the University of London with a degree in Geography, Jeremy became a journalist and writer, joining Classic Cars magazine and becoming deputy editor, helping it to become a top-selling motoring title.
While a journalist, he began to race and rally classic cars, teaming up with Paul Howcroft, the founder of the pioneering outdoor clothing firm Rohan, and going on to win numerous events and trophies, including the FIA European Historic Rally Championship.
He left journalism to go into business. He has served on the boards of a PR and marketing agency, a software company and a digital firm. In 2017 he began driving an electric car and, realising the challenges of charging away from home, founded Bookmycharge, or 'Airbnb for electric cars' as the media have called it.
He has become increasingly engaged with environmental issues in the last decade and views the founding of Heal as a hands-on practical approach to creating a better natural future and offering some real optimism and hope for that future in the face of otherwise inexorable climate change and species extinction.