About PEP

Nicolette has a portfolio of projects and roles variously embedding purpose, identifying high-leverage interventions, empowering collaboration and enabling finance to nurture thriving resilient place-rooted economies. She also brings a wealth of strategic consultancy and project delivery experience gained in diverse governmental, business and community contexts including co-delivering a £2.2million land and nature recovery investment programme, directing an economic development strategy for a new UK region and leading an innovative and influential study of the potential for the Euro.

In Nicolette’s view, embedding new economic thinking in practice as well as place, is vital as ecological, social and economic crises escalate. Hence, she delights in guiding, supporting and contributing to the delivery of Promoting Economic Pluralism’s mission.

Natasha is a social scientist working for ADAS (the UK’s largest independent agricultural research consultancy). She has a PhD in behavioural economics for sustainable food consumption. She is interested in behaviour and therefore believe economics is not always based on rational decisions. She is keen to be part of this organisation in order to spread awareness about alternative economics.

Tom leads community empowerment and partnership building at Common, bringing over 15 years of experience in environmental and land-based initiatives. His work has spanned rural and urban settings, supporting communities to access land, co-design governance models, and develop resilient business plans. With a background in stakeholder engagement and programme delivery, he’s passionate about projects that reconnect people with nature. Before joining Common, Tom held leadership roles at organisations including Shared Assets, Ethex, Plunkett, Sustain and Groundwork, where he worked on community investment, land access strategies, and green finance. He has a strong track record of building cross-sector collaborations that deliver social, environmental, and economic impact.

Dr Simon Platten is an Environmental anthropologist, specialising in the social dynamics and economics of food systems. He has 25 years experience within Higher Education and 14 years experience of social enterprises. He is also a Director of Tamar Grow Local CIC, CEO of Flete Field Lab CIC, and a freelance consultant.

Simon was previously senior lecturer and program lead for the BSc undergraduate degree in Regenerative Food and Farming at Schumacher College. This degree program combined practical skills of regenerative growing, livestock management, business planning, soil and plant monitoring and research skills, with a social science-based understanding of the problems we face within a global food system and the solutions we have at hand through regenerative practice.

He continues to be a Director of Tamar Grow Local CIC (TGL) and has project managed the development of the TGL ecosystem of food projects and businesses from 2011 – 2023. During this time he helped establish over 30 community food projects, businesses, and co-operative ventures designed to be self-supporting but to benefit from the mutual support provided under the TGL umbrella. The resulting network of projects have been shaped to grow resilience and respond to market failures around small-scale food production, and to revitalise local food consumption, production and employment opportunities.

Simon is a keen smallholder and craftsman and very much enjoys growing food, and making things out of metal, leather and wood.

Born in Sheffield and growing up on the edge of the city, Kat developed an interest in the natural environment at a very early age, and particularly in water wetlands and was in constant trouble for returning home from play soaking wet and covered in mud.

In the early 1980’s Kathryn moved, with her family, to the Southwest of Australia and built on this early curiosity and love by studying environmental sciences and aquatic ecology at Murdoch University.  After ten years as a government employed environmental scientist she discovered another passion.  Finding great purpose and pleasure in working with communities to support their action learning and collaborative decision making, Kathryn has dedicated 20 years of her life to learning and refining the skills to support deliberative dialogue and non-extractive community engagement.

Alongside the development of her career and professional life Kathryn maintained a curiosity and commitment to inner work.  Having explored several contemporary religions in her teen years as well as more esoteric and ‘new age’ philosophies she now describes herself as a contemplative.

Vicky is Chief Operating Officer at North Star Transition, a not-for-profit organisation focused on accelerating systems change to support a regenerative future. She works at the intersection of strategy and delivery, helping to design and scale initiatives that bring together public, private, and third-sector actors to tackle complex challenges. A litigation lawyer by training, Vicky began her career in private practice at a leading London law firm, specialising in environmental and product liability cases. She has a Master’s in Law and Sustainability and studied Classics at the Cambridge University.

Henry is an ecological economist and policy analyst with 30 years experience. He has particular expertise in agricultural and environmental policy and regulation as well as green finance, local currencies and environmental markets. He is a director of NEKS, the founder & CEO of PEP, editor of The Mint.

He has also been a Research Fellow at the Centre for Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus, is a Fellow of the RSA and a qualified chartered accountant.

Trevor has, for thirty years, reported and commented on regulation, markets and technology in a range of industries. Much of his career focus has been on the energy sector where he founded Utility Week, provided commentary through broadcast media and led communications at the energy regulator, Ofgem.

He has an extraordinary combination of experiences that inform his editorial approach. Since acquiring a doctorate in medical science and subsequent research positions including Guy and St Thomas’ Medical School, he has been a published professional musician and an exhibiting artist and illustrator before and while forging a reputation as a writer, editor and a communicator in the broadest sense.

He has written extensively on medicine (as editor of the Medical Research Council award-winning MRC News). As a freelance writer and consultant he advises global players in engineering, finance, IT and petrochemicals on communications and has edited the International Desalination Association’s quarterly publication and website.

He is managing editor and a founding director of The Water Report which has become the established leader in reporting and analysis on regulation and policy in the UK water sector.

Starting at local newspaper in print design (also completing the NCTJ journalism course) Steve is a freelance web designer and developer with ten years experience both in-house and agency side. Steve has designed and built web and digital projects for clients ranging from start-ups to internationally known brands like Dell, Regus and Pandora.

Steve has built everything from simple blogs to large ecommerce sites and specialises in interactive content and web apps.​

Outside of work Steve designs and sells t-shirts, reads anything connected with politics and economics and avoids driving whenever possible.

Alex started off graduating as a designer, and worked for a small company where he also gained experience in digital communications. During this time, he began to question whether the design industry could truly be sustainable, and from there whether our current economic system could ever be. Hoping to find out, he quit and did a postgraduate degree in Environment and Development. Now with an interest in the environment and economics, he enjoys using his mixed background as a comms assistant for The Mint, and works in the public sector as part of the UK’s (admittedly inconsistent) efforts to go net zero.