I'm a lawyer at an international law firm and am passionate about healthy rivers and access to clean water. The focus of my Fellowship is Rights of Nature. I want to learn from Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Australia and New Zealand where environmental activists and lawyers have successfully advocated for the granting of legal rights for nature, including rivers, forests and ecosystems.

The UK has much to learn as our existing laws and regulation have failed to protect our rivers. I was seconded by my law firm, Simmons & Simmons, to Oxfam International on a pro bono basis as Employment Counsel, Africa. I saw how droughts and extreme weather led to migration, civil unrest and humanitarian crisis. I took unpaid leave to study at the Cambridge Institute of Sustainability Leadership and took the legal services market as my case study, as I was a non-executive board member of the Legal Services Board, the oversight regulator for legal services in England and Wales, for seven years.

I hope my research will bring new ideas and inspire local environmental campaigns across the UK working hard to protect and celebrate the biodiversity and ecology of their local rivers.