The Communities Prepared staff team is based at Groundwork South and has extensive experience in delivering community engagement projects.
Programme Manager, Hannah Baker, has fourteen years’ experience working in sustainability and environmental policy within the charity and university sectors following the completion of an MSc in Environmental Technology at Imperial College London. In this time she has successfully managed and delivered a range of high profile European, national and local programmes covering topics including energy, water, waste, transport, green spaces and community resilience. Hannah joined Groundwork in 2015 and has been managing Communities Prepared since October 2018. She is also Groundwork South’s Area Programme Manager for the West of England, providing strategic oversight and support for various projects and teams from our Bristol office.
Delivery Manager, Mike Anthony, has a combined 11-years’ experience working in the social and environmental sectors, in both the UK and New Zealand. Mike has a passion for creating an equitable society, in which communities are empowered to take actions on the things that matter to them, no matter their circumstances. Before joining Communities Prepared in 2023, Mike worked on some of the largest conservation projects in New Zealand, which focussed on securing protection for nature and societal gains for people. All this work was done in partnership with Māori – the indigenous population of New Zealand. Mike manages the delivery of Communities Prepared and Building Resilience Together – our partnership pilot with the British Red Cross.
Emily is the Delivery Manager for the DLUHC LRF Innovation Fund project that we are working on with County Durham and Darlington Local Resilience Forum. This is a digital project focusing on building on the existing Communities Prepared platform, through user testing, expansion and integration, to ultimately enhance the LRF’s approach to whole of society resilience, as well as volunteer group capabilities. Emily joined the team in March 2022, from a background in town planning consultancy, and initially worked on the Building Resilience Together project with project partners Aviva and The British Red Cross.
Strategic partnerships lead, Nick Drew, joined the team in 2021 and manages the programme’s longer-term development and funding. Nick has a strong background in project and programme management and has spent the last decade in a range of environmental roles focused on local responses to the climate crisis, including community roles with Transition Towns, coordinator of Liverpool City Region’s ‘Year of the Environment 2019’, and Chair of Wirral Environmental Network. Nick has recently become a Board member of the Climate Psychology Alliance.
Senior Project Officer, Alice Moorcroft-Hughes, is part of the programme’s delivery team, focusing on community development and training. She brings with her a background in relationship building and communication, following eight years working in client and project management in brand experience design. Following the Covid-19 pandemic Alice wanted a change and completed a MSc in Disaster Management and Resilience at Coventry University, with a particular interest in heatwaves and risk perception research.
Senior project officer, Violaine Drapeau started in June 2023 as a part-time employee. She is French and studied Biology. In 2007, she moved to Bristol to take a PhD on bat echolocation. After graduating, she turned towards public engagement in science. Working in We The Curious (Bristol) for 8 years, she gained experience in communicating with various audiences, developing educational content, coordinating volunteers and collaborating with local partners. More recently, Violaine worked as a learning assistant in schools, engaging particularly with children with special educational needs. Her interests include being in Nature, spending time with her family, crafting and baking.
Senior Project Officer, Richard Hood, is part of the programme’s delivery team, focusing on community development and training. He brings with him a background in flood resilience and management, water rescue operations, incident management and operational procedures. Over a number of years he has worked with American and UK emergency services, the Environment Agency, volunteer responder groups and communities to prevent, manage and recover from flooding.
Emily is our Project Support Officer and has been with us since July 2022. They come to us with a background in project support and creative practice and support the project across departments with communications, and project management, employing skills cultivated studying an English Literature BA, a Fine Art MA and work as an interdisciplinary performance artist.
