Meet the Board
Francesca Battersby, Programme Lead Corporate
Victoria Harvey, Corporate Engagement
Richard Heap, Programme Lead Civil Society
Tom Mansfield, Programme Coordinator
Mark Turner, Strategic Communications
Management Board
Mark Workman
Board Chair
Mark Workman is a cofounder and director of the Carbon Removal Centre and an Affiliate Researcher at Imperial College London where he undertakes research on resource systems, energy transitions, environmental and climate change, violent conflict and the processes of decision making under uncertainty. He is a Work Package lead on the NERC funded Directorate Hub Greenhouse Gas Removal (GGR) CO2RE Project. He also works with a team which provides strategy and decision support services across energy, environmental and technology sectors including GGR. He has been working in the carbon removal space for over a decade and seeks an open, participatory and inclusive approach to exploring carbon removal establishment and scale up to realise the net zero transition.
He is a Coastal Engineer, Military and Business Leader, Environmental Economist and Strategist by training. He has undertaken military tours, led extreme and high-risk expeditions all over the world and run multi-million dollar business units. He has two military awards for leadership.
Robert Ganpatsingh
Co-Founder, Non-Executive Director and General Counsel
Robert Ganpatsingh is cofounder, non-executive director and general counsel of the CRC. A geography graduate and, formerly, an Army officer in the Gurkhas, Robert is a partner at law firm DMH Stallard with specialist knowledge of legal matters concerning technology and intellectual property. In addition to many years of experience resolving complex legal disputes, Robert provides more strategic legal support, assisting commercial clients which do not have in-house legal teams. In this role he assists management in making informed strategic decisions with full understanding of the legal risk profile. As well as providing legal expertise to the Carbon Removal Centre, Robert is actively involved with delivery of its events program.
Stephen Hall
Co-Founder and Non-Executive Director
Stephen Hall is a University Academic Fellow at the School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds. His specialisms include low carbon transitions business models and finance. He is interested in the links between low carbon innovation, economics, energy, climate change and society.
Steve has undertaken international work on urban emissions modelling, infrastructure finance and energy decarbonisation. He has recently published research on innovative business models for energy transitions, how finance and ownership models have both technical and social effects on energy systems.
“Developing the right policy, economics, and public dialogue around carbon removal is vital for the expansion of the sector, it is just as important as advancing tech. I hope the Carbon removal centre can play its part in speeding up that development.”
Carbon Removal Centre Team
Francesca Battersby
Programme Lead Corporate
Francesca Battersby leads the Centre’s work with the corporate sector. She has spent 18 months engaging with corporates of all types and sizes to understand how they are approaching carbon removal, the key drivers behind their decisions, the challenges they are facing, and the support needed to overcome these. These findings were detailed in the Carbon Removal Corporate Engagement Guide, published in June 2021. She is currently working with Victoria Harvey to research sector-level carbon removal needs and strategies, and build roadmaps for a selection of sectors to engage with carbon removal.
Francesca is a Visiting Researcher at Imperial College London. She has conducted extensive research into greenhouse gas removal (GGR), applying both a natural and social science discipline. As part of her MSc, she examined the UK’s policy and regulatory landscape to see if it was fit for purpose for governing greenhouse gas removal. She has published work on procedural justice and social legitimacy in GGR, as well as on the role of corporates.
Victoria Harvey
Corporate Engagement
Victoria Harvey is on the corporate engagement team, currently researching sector-level carbon removal gaps, challenges, needs and opportunities, leading to the development of sector-specific roadmaps for engagement with carbon removal. This work creates dialogues with corporate sustainability leaders and facilitates discussions across supply chains and sectors in order to co-define collaborative opportunities for high-integrity carbon removal engagement.
A Visiting Researcher at Imperial College London and a graduate of the MSc in Sustainable Energy Futures, Victoria has substantial research experience in GGR with her MSc thesis exploring the fragmented state of GGR within UK and US governance. This work incorporated both applied and social science research methods to explore the thematic regional priorities for GGR development and what this means for collaboration versus national specialisation in GGR.
Richard Heap
Programme Lead Civil Society
Richard Heap, Project Leader, is an experienced analyst managing projects across a range of technical and cross-cutting aspects. His current focus is on the application of futures techniques combined with the use of public and stakeholder engagement to help inform decision-making and policy and regulatory development both at a system level and bottom-up from a local and regional level. His report Putting People and Communities into Greenhouse Gas Removal was funded by the ClimateWorks Foundation and published in 2020. It highlights how and why publics and communities must be brought into the Greenhouse Gas Removal agenda as early as possible.
He did his degrees at Imperial College. After selling the recycling business he set up, he led projects at the Royal Society, producing influential reports on Biofuels, Ocean Acidification, Radioactive Waste Management and initiated the work on Geoengineering in 2008. At the Energy Research Partnership he produced a highly regarded report on Hydrogen, CO2-EOR, the Heat Transition and Public Engagement.
Tom Mansfield
Programme Coordinator
Tom Mansfield, programme coordinator, is working across the Carbon Removal Centres engagements with both commercial and civil society organisations to cultivate participatory processes in service design and curate diverse stakeholder engagement. He has developed the participatory mapping approach to examining and developing CDR value chains with Stephen Hall, a programme of workshops called ‘Positively Negative’. He is exploring the utility of these visual maps as an attractor for the CRC’s network and as a practical tool for extracting key questions and opportunities for organisations engaging with the emerging CDR economy.
Tom is a programme designer and manager for cultural change initiatives encompassing creative, co-design and public engagement processes. He has worked widely across sectors from construction and technology to psychology and the arts convening fora, curating participatory programmes and synthesising new concepts to envision and generate healthy socio-ecological futures.
Anisha Solanki
Communications & Public Affairs
Anisha Solanki is a bilingual communications and public affairs practitioner, specialising in sustainability and climate communications. She has an MSc Sustainable Cities from the University of Leeds and 3+ years’ experience in corporate communications and lobbying across tech, FMCG, financial services and the charity sector. She is a skilled media handler and content writer, proficient in working in both English and German.
Mark Turner
Strategic Communications
Mark Turner is a creative strategic communicator on complex global challenges, who has shaped messages and information products on issues from climate change and sustainability to conflict and humanitarian aid. He has worked as a communications director, speechwriter and strategic advisor for many international organisations and initiatives (Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative, International Renewable Energy Agency, UN Refugee Agency, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid, and more). He also served as a foreign correspondent for the Financial Times, as an NGO advocate (Avaaz), and led humanitarian outreach after the Haiti earthquake.
Join our network
Joining the Carbon Removal Network is the best way to access our growing community of learning, debate and events on carbon removal. As a network member you will receive priority access to:
- live events and webinars
- a chance to share problems and ask questions of the wider membership
- and as we build, the latest findings and synthesis from carbon removal research and sector development