It’s difficult to express just how honoured I am that Paul Herbertson has joined JbD’s sister Wild Philanthropy as the charity’s Conservation Enterprise Director.
Honoured and extremely grateful to both Paul and his present employer Fauna and Flora International (FFI), who have kindly agreed a one year part-time secondment, allowing him to work with Wild Philanthropy for 3 days a week, while continuing to fulfil duties as FFI’s Director of Conservation Finance and Enterprise.
Paul and I met when I was still grappling with how exactly to structure a charity that champions impact investment in at-risk ecosystems. Paul’s name was mentioned as one of the few in the business who has a proper hold on enterprise development as a means of introducing stability, and in particular on how to structure investment in such a way as to ensure social, environmental and financial returns on profitable businesses.
If this is beginning to boggle minds, then welcome to my brain. Fortunately, I had met in Paul just the person to help structure the Wild Philanthropy offer. I have long been a fan of everything FFI do. It’s at the forefront of natural asset investment, and while Paul would never say, I know that he has been key to FFI’s success in this area. Fascinated, I think, by the special relationship between JbD and WP, and by the intellectual and network capital accrued via the former over the past two decades, Paul saw in WP an opportunity to work with what, in effect, is a start-up with enormous, scalable potential.
A couple of phone calls later, a face-to-face, several follow ups, and here we are: WP has its first Conservation Enterprise Director, and an incredibly experienced, able and visionary one at that. Plus, as anyone who has met Paul will attest, he’s a bloody good guy, extremely gentle, great fun, and a pleasure to be around. Paul, welcome: I, for one, consider ourselves unbelievably lucky.
