Sarah’s experience in business, organisations, charities, social enterprises as an entrepreneur spans decades. The common thread is the purpose-led nature of her work, for people and planet.
Sarah started her career working as a legal representative for refugees and asylum-seekers. From 1994 to 2010 she worked for the UK’s largest refugee charity, representing clients in appeals and managing a team of Caseworkers. The high-stakes work was incredibly rewarding and her clients taught her much about resilience.
After the charity folded in 2010, Sarah turned to her passion for nature, studied permaculture (she holds a Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design) and discovered a whole new world about how nature solves problems and approaches change and adaptability.
She is a founder member of Melbourne Area Transition, seeking community-led solutions to the problems we face, initiating project such as school food gardens, food festivals and a solar buying group.
She is a founder member, former chair and lead permaculture designer of Whistlewood Common, a community woodland social enterprise in south Derbyshire. As director and chair, Sarah guided the community-owned Community Benefit Society through startup, two share offers, business planning and new legal and regulatory processes.
She is a trained Forest School Leader and Mental Health First Aider.
Sarah is a perennial student – devouring hundreds of books and courses on nature-inspired and regenerative solutions, constantly looking for the common strands and solutions to problems that are faced by individuals, businesses, societies and the planet.
If there’s one thing that keeps her busy it’s finding solutions to problems, big or small, and then sharing them.
Living with a lifelong chronic illness, she turned her passion for nature into a career when she founded Think like a Tree in 2017. The illness has given her a unique perspective on how to balance work and life, and ideally how to ensure you adore your work so it doesn’t seem like work and you still want to carry on doing it even on the difficult days.
If you ask her why she does what she does she’ll say “There are so many problems in the world, and I know the solutions are out there, so I couldn’t not do what I do, sharing them with others”.
She is the author of Think like a Tree: the natural principles guide to life. She lives in south Derbyshire with her family on their smallholding where they have planted woodlands, forest gardens, veg gardens, orchards, dug ponds and rewilded areas. Wildlife has rocketed in their 20 year guardianship of the land.
Sarah’s latest passion is her campervan, Woody (named after Woody Guthrie) which she has renovated in quirky style from recycled materials and takes to festivals, sharing Think like a Tree.
