The Green Impact Team
Charlotte Bonner
Charlotte joined NUS in February 2010 since when she’s had many hats – expanding the model in universities and colleges, developing Green Impact to provide students greater opportunities in their local communities, helping new sectors get on board with our programmes, overseeing our software development and making partnerships with other like-minded organisations both in the UK and abroad.
Prior to working for the NUS group, Charlotte worked as an environmental consultant in the private sector; travel planning, conducting waste and energy audits and running awareness campaigns. She previously was the Environment and Ethics Officer for York University Students’ Union whilst studying for her Linguistics degree. She’s recently graduated from City University after having taken the phrase ‘part time’ far too seriously whilst completing a masters in Energy and Environmental Technology.
In both her personal and professional lives, Charlotte is known for her love of cakes, trains, pub quizzes and her many bicycles.
Jo Kemp
Jo manages Green Impact nationally, working with staff and students to constantly evolve the programme across our existing and potential educational and community organisations. Jo heads up the team to help deliver Green Impact in line with NUS’s wider strategy and aims for students unions to become hubs for sustainability within their institutions and communities.
Jo has a BA in Geography form the University of Sheffield, and an MA in International Development and Education from the University of East Anglia. Before joining NUS in 2011, Jo spent 3 years heading up the education sector work at Change Agents UK. She led their involvement with the Defra Funded Degrees Cooler programme, and was responsible for placing and developing training for over 40 graduates across UK Universities to be agents of change within the sector.
She has also previously taught English as a foreign language, and spent time working with rural sustainable farmers’ cooperatives in Uganda. From her base in Lincolnshire, Jo also keeps her hand in volunteering with the Royal Geographical Society, Eco Schools and local Fair Trade groups, whilst trying to find time to bake for the team and attempt to grow her own crop of veggies!
Charlotte Taylor
Charlotte’s principal role is to support the communities programme manager in utilising the expertise NUS has developed running Green Impact and Student Switch Off on campus, to expand and develop opportunities for students and organisations off-campus.
Within the E&E team Charlotte also supports NUS’ work in education for sustainable development, helping to develop our strategy in this area. She chairs the Greener Jobs Alliance, and has developed schemes for increasing student involvement in NUS programmes.
Before NUS, Charlotte worked in the sustainability department of the University of Worcester running engagement programmes and collecting and analysing the university’s environmental data. Another keen baker, she also spends her spare time cycling, making music and volunteering for education charities.
Sophia Perkins
Sophia is a sustainability project officer, delivering Green Impact and Student Switch Off, and leading on Green Impact Excellence Students’ Unions.
She joined the NUS from her role at MERCi, a Northwest sustainability charity. There Sophia worked with Third Sector organisations to help promote sustainable behaviour best practise, through audits, reports and training. Sophia also worked on a variety of projects such as flax growing on brown field sites in central Manchester and designing and implementing a campaign encouraging recycling in council owned tower blocks.
Sophia has an MSc in Architecture: Advanced Environmental and Energy Studies from the Centre for Alternative Technology and a BA [Hons] in History from Leeds University.
When not planning a green revolution (?!) Sophia likes to get into the fresh air as much as possible, climbing big hills with pub lunch rewards. She also loves to travel, go climbing and do trapeze, although not always elegantly!
Jen Strong
Jen is a sustainability project officer delivering Green Impact and Student Switch Off, and is based at the NUS Macclesfield office. She can be found visiting universities, hospitals and local authorities across the country supporting them to make their Green Impact involvement bigger and better than before or helping them through the first steps of implementing an environmental behaviour change initiative.
Jen first got involved in Green Impact as the Sustainable Behaviour Assistant at Manchester Metropolitan University. Following this she moved to Nottingham where she number crunched her way through carbon accounting reports for NHS clients, as well as coordinating sustainable procurement training and support during her time at the Nottingham Energy Partnership, a charity and social enterprise based in the East Midlands.
Jen also has experience in teaching English as a foreign language as well as providing environmental support within the civil engineering sector.
Jen is a graduate of LSE where she studied Environmental Policy with Economics, is an associate member of IEMA and enjoys spending her spare time being crafty sewing and knitting homemade things for friends and family.
Laura Williams
Laura is one of our Macclesfield based sustainability project officers. In this role she does everything possible to support our participating students’ unions, universities, colleges, local authorities and NHS Trusts in their quests to make a Green Impact in their organisations, as well as leading on the Green Impact Students’ Unions programme.
Before joining the team, she had been involved with Green Impact through a number of her previous roles. As campaigns officer at the University of Manchester Students Union she successfully campaigned to encourage the University to sign up to the initiative and went on to run Green Impact on the ground at Manchester Metropolitan University. She also spent time working for Manchester based charity Action for Sustainable Living researching and developing behaviour change programmes and in Nigeria working on HIV/AIDs awareness campaigns for VSO.
Laura holds a BA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from the University of Manchester. She finds reading, singing with her choir and sweet treats are the perfect way to distract herself from these bamboozling subjects when it all gets too much!
Kim Croasdale
Kim supports various universities, colleges, NHS Trusts and dentist offices delivering Green Impact and Student Switch Off. She also works on Snap It Off and is developing a pilot programme to run in 2014/15 called Dissertations for Good, connecting research students and external organisations to complete research together.
Kim has a BSc in Zoology & Psychology from Bristol University, and loves working on sustainability and evolutionary genetics. In her spare time, Kim enjoys shooting (targets – nothing alive!), cycling and skiing, but when she’s feeling lazy she can be found in a mess of wool and thread attempting to be crafty.
