Who Are We?

John-Paul Frazer

Founder

JP brings a wealth of experience from a diverse career in environmental advocacy. He has launched impactful social environmental enterprises such as The Natural Trust and Stanmer Organics, lectured on environmental architecture, and taught ecological engineering at Schumacher College. With a background in Production Design for theatre and film, combined with a wide array of practical arts skills, John-Paul is driven by a profound passion for Nature’s Web of Life.

Nathalie Seddon

Founder

Nathaile is a Professor of Biodiversity at the University of Oxford. With her training as an ecologist and evolutionary biologist, Nathalie offers decades of research experience spanning species and ecosystems worldwide. Guided by a deep, lifelong love for nature, she has founded and run successful nature research programmes including the Nature-based Solutions Initiative, co-directs the social enterprise Nature-based Insights, teaches, and advises governments and businesses on nature-based solutions.

Jane Frere

Founder

Jane is an international artist with extensive experience in theatre as a designer and producer, as entrepreneur who founded her own promotions company, as a champion of human rights and now most importantly in the vanguard fighting for gaia’s rights – the obligation we all have to serve and save our unique planet. From her Druimarts Studios in the Scottish Highlands, Jane is dedicating her art to the call of the wild, demanding action on climate and biodiversity in peril. 

Alun Hughes

Trustee

Alun Hughes is a poet, non-fiction writer, wilderness guide, land worker, storyteller and teacher. His thirty-year journey has taken him from protest and activism to a path focused on practical solutions, including co-founding The Natural Trust, yurt making and building Earthship Brighton. This led him on to years of land work, where teaching woodland management and ancillary crafts ultimately culminated in wilderness work, facilitating people’s journeys of reconnection and healing with their home through nature-based and ecotherapeutic practices.

His writing is published in various forms and focuses on indigenous perspectives and an emergent animism as pathways to a regenerative civilisation.

Fran Sanderson

Trustee

Prior to launching Figurative in 2024 – a new, independent not-for-profit supporting impact, investment and innovation in the cultural and creative sector – Fran spent nine years at Nesta developing Arts & Culture Finance, and led on various innovation projects in the sector. Fran started her career at JPMorgan, before spending time living off grid in Portugal with her young family.

She has worked in impact investment since 2012, and has a lifelong passion for the arts.

Elvina Crowe

Research Assistant

Elvina is a researcher exploring the cultural, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of human–nature relationships. At I Stand Beside, she is co-developing and evaluating participatory tools, including a species-matching platform and Interspecies Assemblies, to understand how such engagements shape our sense of ecological self and motivation for advocacy. Her work is rooted in critical theory, creative practice, and a commitment to joyful, local, and embodied reconnection with the living world.

She holds an MPhil in Nature, Society and Environmental Governance from the University of Oxford and has worked across biodiversity outreach, ecotherapy, and bioethics.

Tom Oliver

Trustee

Tom Oliver is a Professor of Applied Ecology and is Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor for the University of Reading’s environment research theme. He regularly advises the UK government and EU Commission on environmental issues and currently sits on the science council for the Food Standards Agency and the expert college for the Office for Environmental Protection. He is an enthusiastic science communicator, writing regularly for magazines and newspapers and is author of the book The Self Delusion: The Surprising Science of Our Connection to Each Other and the Natural World. Tom has two children, lives in a village in rural Oxfordshire and has a passion for plants and insects and one day aspires to share a home with geese and a pygmy goat.

Marzia Briel

Trustee

Marzia is a qualified South African Attorney specialised in Commercial Law, bringing over 15 years of global regulatory and governance experience to Academia. With career experience in Legal, Compliance, Regulation and Governance roles, first in financial services but more recently in the Public Science and Engineering sector. The key themes of her academic research include nature-centric Governance ecosystems, AI Regulation, Intellectual Property and Research Policy,

Marzia is member of the project ‘Catalyst for nature-centric awareness and governance’ and on the Stewardship Council of the Rights of Nature Network. She is a producer, speaker, and meditation guide who uses the power of nature to help explore the connect humans with the collective consciousness. She is curating an nature based art exhibition, showcasing how different sectors of society and disciplines are being transformed by alternative human relationships with nature.