Meet the team

Sarah became our Director in May 2022, and works alongside the CCT Board of Trustees to drive the vision and mission of the Trust, creating and executing the 2023-2028 strategy, as well as overseeing and implementing all aspects of the organisation’s operations. Not only is she overseeing CCT’s key rewilding programme Healthy Islands, Healthy Reefs which has been granted £1million in Darwin funding from the UK Government, she also launched the CCT annual Speaker Event, turned our Chagos News newsletter into an annual publication held at the British Library, and started online members’ talks. An avid birdwatcher, hiker and sailor (she recently raced across the Atlantic Ocean as part of the winning Clipper Race team), read more about her and her previous roles here.

Chris served in the Royal Navy for 24 years, spending two years as the British Representative in Diego Garcia (2004-2006), visiting all the outlying islands during his tenure. On the island he was heavily engaged with numerous environmental initiatives and island conservation, including the post-tsunami action plan and beach clean-up community programmes.

John is a newly-retired Professor in Marine Biology and Head of the Ocean Sciences at Bangor University in Wales, UK, with particular expertise in temperate and tropical marine environments. With over 20 years of experience, he has worked in the Indian Ocean, Arabian Gulf, Central America and Asia. His current research advances techniques for coral reef monitoring. He has filmed reef transects in the Chagos Archipelago on a number of expeditions to document changes in the coral cover.

Ken is a researcher and head of the invertebrates and plants palaeobiology division at the Natural History Museum. He studies the history of coral reef ecosystems over time scales ranging from decades to tens of millions of years. Coral reefs are currently experiencing rapid change, resulting from a variety of natural and anthropogenic impacts. Documenting how reefs have responded to past environmental changes will help to constrain the potential trajectory of future changes and allow us to plan accordingly. This work requires assembling large-scale biodiversity and ecological databases to compare ecosystem structure and function in multiple regions, such as my projects in the Coral Triangle and the Caribbean. Ken takes advantage of new advances in informatics and enjoy developing and applying the quantitative methods required to address these issues.

An accountant with over 30 years’ experience, James was a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales, and a graduate of the London School of Economics. He is currently the Chief Financial Officer of a small international project and engineering company, and has previously worked in a number of finance roles – from small companies to working within listed environments – covering statutory reporting, team management, tax reporting, company secretarial, and managing government grant claims. His experience covers work in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. James has a keen interest in conservation, training and education.

Steve is a lawyer with over 20 years of experience in the environment sector. He formerly worked for the Pew Charitable Trusts, focusing on establishing marine reserves in the South Atlantic, and is a member of the World Commission on Environmental Law.

Jean-Francois is a Senior Finance Analyst at Rolls-Royce Plc where he has developed an understanding of business finance. As a Chagossian descendant and an active member of various Chagossian projects and groups, he is in touch with a wide range of community members here in the UK, Mauritius, and worldwide. “I am joining the board member as a community member of Chagossian descent, and hope that by doing so this will allow the community to have a voice over the future and the conservation of their homeland and the surrounding environment.”

Bryan’s area of expertise is the resilience and recovery of tropical coral reefs under continuing anthropogenic climate change. He specialises in the endangered brain coral, Ctenella chagius, endemic to the Chagos Archipelago, and is currently preparing an ‘Emergency Species Recovery Plan’ to ensure its survival. He has been a friend to the Trust for many years, collaborating on research work and expeditions, contributed to Chagos News, our annual Speaker Event (watch his address here), and is now charged with leading the upgrade of the Chagos Information Portal known as ChIP.

A marine ecologist with expertise on sea turtles, Nicole is an Associate Professor in the Bioscience department at Swansea University, a member of the IUCN Marine Turtle Specialist Group and UK representative on the UNEP-IOSEA Marine Turtle Taskforce for the Western Indian Ocean. Nicole first visited the Chagos Archipelago in 2012 to conduct the first satellite tracking study of nesting green turtles, and has since visited the islands on >10 research expeditions to address conservation priorities for hawksbill and green turtles breeding and foraging across the Archipelago. In former roles as a conservation biologist, protected area manager and policy maker, Nicole gained a wealth of conservation experience with diverse stakeholders, producing management plans, biodiversity action plans and environmental impact assessments. Conservation charity appointments have included five years as the Chair of the Dutch Caribbean Nature Alliance.

A marine ecologist with expertise on top predator ecology and conservation, particularly marine mammals, Clare is an Associate Professor in Marine Ecology at the University of Plymouth. Clare has been working in the Chagos Archipelago since 2019, initially to understand the role of oceanography in driving predator-prey aggregations including pelagic fish and reef manta rays. Since then she has been leading the first study of cetaceans (whales and dolphins) in the Chagos Archipelago and wider Indian Ocean, which she presented at the 2025 CCT AGM which you can watch here.

Colin is formerly the Head of the UK Overseas Territories and Conservation Training at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, and now a Senior Research Leader. He is a conservation biologist with wide-ranging interests in biodiversity conservation, especially on Islands and UK Overseas Territories in particular. His research focuses on the study of plant diversity, threats, particularly the impact of invasive species, and developing strategies for conservation management of plant diversity. Watch his members’ talk ‘Plants of the Chagos’ here.

Pete Haverson is an invasive species expert and contracted as the Chagos Conservation Trust’s ‘Healthy Islands, Healthy Reefs‘ Programme Lead. Watch his latest update (the first presentation) during CCT’s 2026 Speaker Event on our YouTube page here.

Alistair formerly worked for RSPB as their International Director, and then for the Pew Charitable Trusts, working on the campaign to get the Chagos Marine Reserve declared, and more recently on the campaign to get a marine reserve declared in Pitcairn. He has advocated for many years on the needs and opportunities for conservation in the UK Overseas Territories, and received an OBE in 2006 for services to conservation. He is now retired and has stepped down as a Trustee, but still advises our Director when needed.

Read about Martina and her appointment as the Chagos Conservation Trust’s first Youth Ambassador here.

Jenny was the Chagos Conservation Trust’s PT intern during her 2025-2026 ‘year in industry’, and will continue assisting with social media during her final year as a marine biology student at Swansea University.