The Communities Prepared staff team is based at Groundwork South and has extensive experience in delivering community engagement projects.

Programme Manager, Hannah Baker, has over sixteen 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 2009. In this time she has successfully managed and delivered a range of high profile European, national, regional 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.

Programme Delivery Manager, Mike Anthony, has a combined 14-years’ experience working in the social and environmental sectors, in both the UK and New Zealand. Before joining Communities Prepared in 2023, Mike worked on some of the largest conservation projects in New Zealand, which focussed on securing authentic partnerships with Māori – the indigenous population of New Zealand, to achieve gains for nature and people. Mike manages the Communities Prepared delivery team and oversees our regional projects in Kent, Wales, London and the Northwest. A core focus of his work is to secure investment, so we can continue to scale up the programme by collaborating across the Federation of Groundwork Trusts and other key stakeholders.

Senior Project Officer, Alice Moorcroft-Hughes, joined Communities Prepared delivery team in 2023 with a background in relationship building and communication, following eight years working in client and project management in brand experience design. Alice has a MSc in Disaster Management and Resilience, with a focus on heatwave risk perception, and a Level 3 Award in Education and Training (AET). Alice’s areas of interest include heatwave preparedness, turning risk perception into behaviour change and taking impacts focus approach to building community resilience. She is an experienced and confident facilitator, both online and in person and enjoys engaging community groups on community resilience. During her time with Communities Prepared Alice has worked on the Building Resilience Together Programme, in partnership with the British Red Cross, developed the London Community Resilience Toolkit, in partnership with Groundwork London, as well as developing and delivering a wide range of Communities Prepared multi hazard content. 

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.

Olivia is a Senior Project Officer at Communities Prepared, leading the ‘Strengthening Preparedness Together in Swale’ project. Her experience ranges from facilitation to management of open and tailored training courses as well as other capacity building initiatives, and she has worked with a variety of organisations globally. She has worked in Indonesia, Thailand, Bangladesh, Fiji Islands, Philippines, Norway, Portugal and Scotland. She has a Bachelors of Science in Geography from the University of Durham, and her individual research has focused on reducing carbon emissions in the UK through the use of energy efficient buildings. Her current research focuses on interests from her MSc in Sustainability and Adaptation at the Centre for Alternative Technology, including climate change, climate policies, contested environments, oceanography, sustainable building, and ecosystem/human relationships. She is particularly interested in working towards achieving global goals to reduce the impacts of climate change, promoting the health of our environment, encouraging continuous learning, and strengthening the sense of community and togetherness. In her spare time Olivia sings in 2 choirs, and enjoys swimming and walking in her local area around Brighton. 

Jesse joined Communities Prepared in October 2025. Jesse studied Environmental Sciences, Environmental Impact Assessment, and Ecological Recording, and has been teaching Environmental Sciences and Management at various Universities for over a decade. They have substantial experience working in the voluntary sector on social and environmental justice projects. Their most recent role in the voluntary sector has been with a local infrastructure organisation working on their civil contingencies programme. 

Bella started working at Groundwork London in Spring 2024 after completing her master’s degree in Postcolonial and World Literature at the University of St. Andrews that winter. Throughout her secondary and higher education Bella volunteered at Age UK, helping with social media, short film production and delivering ICT lessons to senior citizens in her community. She began working on Communities Prepared in Winter 2024 and since then has worked on The London Community Resilience Toolkit and London Resilient Communities. Her work with Communities Prepared includes content creation, branding and design work and promotional materials for the project.

Emma delivers community resilience and flood preparedness work for the DRIP project across Devon. She enjoys being part of the wider Communities Prepared national programme and learning from colleagues working across different regions, communities, hazards and projects. She brings experience in education and engagement across landscape-scale conservation, ESG in business, and energy and transport. Since gaining her MSc in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability in 2012, she has worked to help people make sense of complex topics such as energy and sustainability.