Staff and key contributors

Meet the team - here are Transition Network's staff and key contributors:

Ben Brangwyn: Transition Network co-founder

For many years he'd put his ecological aspirations on the back-burner, focusing on the world of business and hi-tech, with occasional forays into charity work. However, the inner eco-warrior was on the rise, especially with peak oil and climate change looming fast.

Realising he could no longer countenance being part of the problem, he backed irrevocably away from his bizarre day job of manipulating abstractions while feigning enthusiasm and started planting acorns with a vengeance. Once he ran out of acorns he moved down to Totnes and co-founded Transition Network with Rob Hopkins. Within Transition Town Totnes, Ben is DoctorBike and part of the local currency team.

Ben has two sons, Josh 23, Ollie 19, and hopes they'll inherit a human-scale world.

Jo Coish: Office manager and finance guru

 Jo blew into Totnes (well Dartington really) in Sept 1992 to attend Dartington College of Arts where she passed out in July 1995 with a ‘Desmond’ in Theatre and Arts Management! She met and married her hubby in 1999 and has been in Totnes ever since. In 2012 she will have lived in Totnes as long as she lived in Cheshire. Will she be a 'local' by then?

She has worked in a pub/restaurant, a call centre (which she hated and left after 2 weeks!), a shop, a solicitors, research in practice from 1998 – 2007 (which grew from 4 to 30 members of staff), and a prison. Employed as the Office Manager at Transition Network in 2008 with 3 members of staff, it is looking like Transition Network will be growing faster than Research in Practice at this rate! I am looking forward to the challenge and working with such a great team of people. 

Naresh Giangrande: Transition Training and Consulting

Pioneering co- founder of Transition Town Totnes (TTT) and Transition Training, Naresh has been involved in designing, running and evolving many of the events, groups, and trainings that have been at the heart of the enormously successful Transition Towns project.

He has delivered  the Training for Transition, Transition Talk Training, Train the Trainers, and Transition training for Local Authorities and organisations to hundreds of participants in 11 countries. As one of the Transition Town founders he has given dozens of lectures and interviews, and spoken at many conferences and other public events.  He set up and coordinated the energy group of TTT, and is currently a director of TTT ltd.

Prior to Transition Towns he has lived and worked in an eco community, was Managing Director of a small to medium sized enterprise, and a gaffer in the film industry. He has also taught meditation, has a chemistry degree from the University of Pennsylvania, was an Eagle Scout, and is father to two lovely daughters.

Nicola Hillary: Funding Manager

Nicola previously worked at BioRegional Development Group, which she joined as a local food researcher.  When the grant ran out, she stayed on as their first fundraiser. She quickly discovered the huge satisfaction of finding the financial resources to ensure that people can turn brilliant project ideas into reality.

Nicola was the Resources Manager (fundraiser and senior manager of central functions) at BioRegional Development Group from 1999 – 2005, helping them grow. Since then she worked as a freelance fundraiser for environmental charities, looked after her two young children and stood as a Green Party district council candidate, throwing herself into the deep end of canvassing her local community about environmental issues.

Ed Mitchell: Web: projects and strategy

Ed studied Development Studies way back in the early 90s and found it very stimulating but upsetting; what can we do in the face of such enormous crisis? Following that he tried all sorts of jobs ranging from the serious to the ridiculous to the extraordinary, but none quite hit the spot until he met the web. He has been working on the web since 1997 when he met a North London pirate radio station crew and agreed to be the studio manager for their early UK community webcasting startup, GaiaLive.

Since then he has worked as a web producer and online community facilitator for membership bodies, charities and government organisations. He also likes growing vegetables, bicycling, climbing, camping and generally being outdoors.

Amber Ponton: PA to Rob Hopkins

Amber joined us in April 2011 as PA to Rob Hopkins and Volunteers Manager. In a previous life, Amber spent ten years in London and worked for a media agency and then an oil company, the latter of which took her to Canada for four years.

Upon her return to the UK in the autumn of 2010 and with her large Canadian hound to consider, she decided to settle for the quiet life in Totnes, a town she fell in love with several years earlier when her parents moved there.

After over a year working for Dartington Hall Trust, involvement in her local Transition Streets initiative and a personal goal of finding fulfilling local employment within easy walking distance of her High Street home, she hit the jackpot with this role and is very much enjoying being part of the Transition team in Totnes!

Amber loves exploring the local coast and countryside on foot and on horseback, tending to her tiny container filled courtyard and rummaging in tips, skips, car boots and salvage yards for innovative ways to update her new home.

Fiona Ward: Transition Training and Consulting, Transition Streets leader

Fiona is the co-founder of Transition Training and Consulting (TTandC) - part of the Transition Network. She has worked with companies of all shapes and sizes over the last 20 years to define and deliver business transformation strategies.

After realising that these kinds of transformations weren't generally what our communities most need to help build our reslience, and best sustain our well-being, Fiona moved from London to South Devon in 2006 and quickly became involved with Transition Town Totnes (TTT) and then the Transition Network.

With the TTandC team of practitioners she is exploring how we might best bring transition-thinking to the businesses and organisations in our transition communities, and help ensure sustainable and equitable employment, products and services for all of us.

Like most people in the TN team, Fiona is also heavily involved with her local transition initiative where she co-manages TTT's Transition Streets and Transition Together  projects.

Laura Whitehead: Webmaster

Laura joined the team in October 2011 as part-time Webmaster, and her role is to support users and enhance the website. She is also one of the Transition Technologists team acting as the front end designer/developer for the site.

Her background has involved a mix of working within the non-profit sector, especially in the areas of knowledge and information management, and supporting them to connect and communicate; along with a healthy blend of working for and with environmental organisations not only with education and information but also in a hands on role, with practical habitat management and conservation.
Her interests include walking, photography, gardening, birds and bugs.
 

Sophy Banks: Transition Training

In 2006 as Transition Town Totnes was coming into being Sophy co-founded the “Heart and Soul” group, addressing the psychological, spiritual and consciousness aspects of Transition. As the Totnes project grew she was involved in many areas of developing and running the organisation. In 2007 she and Naresh set up Transition Training and started to offer the two day “Introduction to Transition”. A year later they took this workshop around the world travelling in 6 countries across 3 continents and visiting many Transition and other community projects along the way. Sophy’s current interest is in supporting, networking and resourcing Inner Transition groups around the movement.

Originally trained in science and engineering, Sophy worked in London for over 20 years as a computer trainer and systems consultant mainly in the voluntary sector. She retrained in inner work – psychotherapy, healing and family constellations – and set up a private practice as a therapist. In 2005 she realised she was too old to carry on slide tackling on the muddy football pitches of Hackney Marshes and moved to Devon, where she now roams the lanes, beaches and moors on foot or bike as often as Transition and the vegetable patch allow. 

Stephanie Bradley: Training Administrator, Transition Tales Storyteller

From walking everywhere she can, pretty much exclusively in flip flops, to cooking freshly picked local food, Steph tries to live now how she envisions the future. In 2010 she walked around England visiting Transition Initiatives, and gathering Transition Tales. Her Tales blog is here.

She has a background in language teaching - every age from 4-80. She lived in Brazil for 14 years where she developed a feel for working with teenagers, and trained many teachers to teach the person, not the subject, designing, developing and facilitating many courses for schools, always tailored to the individual.

Her big interest is in the stories we believe, and how they impact on our relationship with others, and our environment.