Heather Peacocke

I'm a Kiwi and connector at heart, someone who delights in finding the thread between people and ideas that haven't yet joined up. A generalist by design: my career has spanned journalism, business, health, conservation and government across New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

My contribution is turning ambition into delivery, building the structures, evidence and operating models that make change real, and the stakeholder trust that helps it endure. The human experience of change is always my primary consideration, because that's where most system change succeeds or fails. I'm drawn to complexity and to the hard, unglamorous work of getting people and systems moving in the same direction.

I grew up on a deer farm and kiwifruit orchard, in a large, connected family, and that's shaped how I show up in life: people and place matter wherever I am. I've carried that instinct into co-founding two community initiatives, Women of Pōneke in Wellington NZ, and Porters' Progress UK, supporting mountain porters in Nepal and Kenya.

Home for now is London, with my husband and our ice hockey mad teenagers, after more than a decade in New Zealand. Nature is my happy place, preferably on a multi-day tramp (aka hike) in the mountains, carrying everything I need on my back. A recipe for a clear head and a load of ideas.