Introducing RDI's Staff..

For office addresses and phone numbers please click here.

 

 

Pam Baker, Assistant Project Officer, North East Office
Pam joined RDI in 2007 to work as an Administration Assistant on the NEWHeat project and to provide administrative support for the Northwoods office.  Prior to working at Northwoods she worked in a variety of administrative posts across both the private and public sector.  As Assistant Project Officer Pam is responsible for arranging training courses through the Landskills North East project, and also provides support to other projects which are managed from the Northwoods office.  Contact Pam.

 Pam Photo
   
   

Lynne Dunleavy, Project Manager, North East Office
Lynne graduated with a BSc in Geography and Landscape Studies (collegiate) from Southampton University. Lynne joined RDI in 2009 to manage the Northumberland Flood Partnership Project. She has a wide range of experience working in the rural sector including 11 years working for the Countryside Commission/Countryside Agency where she worked on a variety of land based initiatives such as the Norfolk Arable Land Management Initiative, Countryside Character, AONB's and Community Forests. Contact Lynne

 

John Farquhar, Project Officer, North East Office
John has a BSc in Botany. Having worked in rainforest resources throughout the tropics for 5 years and on research on SRC for a year, he joined RDI in 2006 and has been involved in our woodfuel projects such as NEWFuels and NEWHeat. He is the lead instructor on the Ignite Woodfuel Supply Chain portfolio of training courses. Contact John.

 John Photo

Claire Glaister MICFor, Director,  Scotland Office
Claire is a Chartered Forester and honours degree forest management graduate from the University of Aberdeen and has worked in both the public and private sectors of the forest industry, predominantly in Scotland, for 20 years.  She is currently involved in a number of key industry work areas including European funded training and business support programmes, woodland strategy development, timber transport initiatives, workforce development and forestry apprenticeship schemes.
Claire manages RDI’s Scottish project portfolio and has specific responsibility for the company’s education and learning activities.  She also sits on a number of key educational committees and working groups which cover FE, HE, vocational and professional qualification levels, is an associate assessor for Forestry Commission Learning & Development and is a member of the Grampian Regional Forestry Forum. Contact Claire.

 Claire Photo

Martin Glynn, Director, Yorkshire Office
Martin is a Chartered Forester and Surveyor. After 11 years working in Land reclamation in the East Midlands he moved to North Yorkshire in 1998 as Project Director of Yorwoods, since then he has been involved in a number of rural development assignments across the UK. He now looks after the Business Development and Marketing activities of RDI and also has oversight of our wildfire and Ignite portfolios. Martin is also a non-executive Director of The National Forest Company and lives and works in North Yorkshire. Contact Martin. 

 Martin Photo
   

Andrew Kitching, Project Manager, Yorkshire Office
Andrew is a trained forester with a BSc in Sustainable Forest Management from the Scottish School of Forestry in Inverness. Andrew worked on the ELWOOD (East Lancashire Woodlands) programme as Project Officer and then Project Manager before joining RDI in Jan 2007. Andrew works out of RDI’s Yorwoods office, and is involved in our woodfuel projects such as Yorkshire Woodfuels Ltd and the Woodfuel Infrastructure Programme.  Contact Andrew.

 Andy K Photo
   
   

Ian McCall, Finance Director/Company Secretary, Head Office
Ian is a Fellow Chartered Management Accountant having studied Accountancy at the Manchester Metropolitan University. He started his career as a trainee accountant with the listed Manchester based men’s clothes wholesaler; Casket Group PLC, moving on to become Financial Controller at Chemquip Ltd., a chemical engineering company in Derbyshire. After a 10 year spell running his own accountancy practice, he sold this in 2000 and moved to Scotland to take up a post as Company Accountant with the Forestry Contracting Association Ltd. before becoming involved at the inception of RDI, in 2005, in his current role.
He is responsible for the company’s finances, IT systems and legal matters.  Contact Ian.

 Ian Photo

Jill Platten, Project Officer, North East Office
Jill graduated with a MSc in Environmental Protection and Management from the University of Edinburgh. She spent time volunteering as a Conservation Officer with Northumberland Wildlife Trust before joining the Northwoods team early in 2010 as a Project Officer. Jill works primarily on delivering the bioeNErgy programme which aims to strengthen the biomass sector in the north east. 
Contact Jill

Jill Platten

Will Richardson, Director, Yorkshire Office
Will is a trained forester to MSc degree level and has been working on rural development projects across the UK since 2002. Before this Will worked as forestry contractor in Yorkshire and as a forest manager on a private estate in East Anglia. He has since specialised in the development of woody biomass supply chains and is a registered instructor for the Ignite training courses. Will takes the lead on the management of the woodland initiatives Yorwoods and Northwoods and is director responsible for health and safety matters across the company.  Contact Will.

 Will Photo

Kirsty Robb, Project Manager, Scotland
Kirsty joined RDI’s Scottish Team as a Project Manager for the Scottish Forest Industries Cluster Support Unit. She has a background in forestry contracting and has worked in the industry for 19 years. Previously employed by a forestry trade association to manage a range of training and business development projects, Kirsty’s role within RDI is as part of a team providing co-ordination and support services to the Scottish Forest Industries Cluster, a Scottish Enterprise and forest industries-supported initiative established in 2000 to promote the sector’s overall competitiveness and provide Scotland-wide networking opportunities.  Kirsty and her family live near Inveraray, Argyll.  Contact Kirsty.

 Kirsty Robb

Ben Scotting, Projects Manager, Yorkshire Office
Joining Yorwoods as a Sustainable Woodland Advisor in 2004 Ben ran a pilot project encouraging owners and managers in North Yorkshire to bring woodlands into management and certification.  He has since worked as a Projects Manager responsible for the creation of a management handbook for ravine woodlands; he organised the Yorkshire Woodfair from 2005 to 2007; developed and delivered a module for an Environmental Conservation HND and ran a biomass development service in the North York Moors area.  His current principal project activity is the development and promotion of management and certification in West Yorkshire, with a particular focus upon creating a woodfuel supply from local authority woodlands.  This involves raising awareness, providing training opportunities, advising woodland owners and managers and prospective users of woodfuel about its potential to provide renewable heat or power.  Contact Ben.

 Ben Photo

Ben Tansey, Project Director, North East Office
Originally a trained Forester, Ben has returned to Northwoods having previously worked as a Project Officer for the Northwoods team delivering a variety of projects from the Forestry Forward Northumberland training programme through to ignite and wood fuel supply chain development projects. Over the last few years, Ben has spent time working on a variety of renewable energy projects and then focussed specifically on the installation of wood fuel equipment, having worked on high profile wood fuel projects across the UK from new schools and public buildings through to industrial and process applications for wood fuel boilers. Contact Ben

 Ben Tansey
   

Ela Shaw - Assistant Project Officer, North East Office
Ela recently graduated with an MSc in Environmental Consultancy at Newcastle University.  She completed her masters project with the Tyne Rivers Trust on monitoring the ecological health of the Tyne catchment. She also has a BSc in Physical Geography and a background in geosciences. She worked as an assistant ecologist before joining Northwoods in late 2010 as an Assistant Project Officer. Ela works on the Northumberland Community Flooding Partnership which supports and improves community resilience to flooding. Contact Ela