The People Building Nature's Financial System

Cain Blythe is a Chartered Environmentalist and an award-winning leader in ecosystem restoration and nature recovery. He is the founder and CEO of two pioneering organisations leading the drive to help accelerate global rewilding. His expertise merges applied ecosystem practice, technology, finance and the recognition that the best outcomes are achieved through partnership and collaboration.

With a career spanning over three decades, Cain has integrated his expertise in biodiversity and habitat management to unlock the full potential of rewilding, as one of the most viable nature-based solutions available today. His journey began working in zoological parks in the UK and Australia and he studied at Southampton and Surrey Universities, leading to key roles in organisations such as Jacobs Engineering Ltd, Ecosulis, and now, CreditNature. Cain is instrumental in leading initiatives that merge technology and finance with nature recovery efforts, pushing boundaries within the sector.

Cain's accomplishments have placed him at the forefront of environmental thought leadership, demonstrated by his co-authorship of Rewilding alongside Dr Paul Jepson. His practical expertise in the planning and delivery of many impactful habitat creation projects, species reintroductions and ecosystem-scale management strategies underscores his contribution to the field. As well as being a full member of the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management, his contributions have led to him being recognised as one of the UK's 100 most influential environmentalists in 2022, a LinkedIn Top Voice in the UK and finalist for Environmental Professional of the Year in 2023.

Dedicated to accelerating global rewilding, Cain's mission is nothing short of ambitious: to rewild half the planet by 2050. His commitment to this vision is evident in his pragmatic and transformative approaches to ecosystem conservation and recovery. He actively bridges the gap between the practical and theoretical aspects of rewilding, using technology and finance as catalysts for achieving ecological balance and resilience.

Cain Blythe's clear commitment to the sector, experience, innovative thinking, and profound commitment to ecological recovery have established him as a leader in his field. His transformative approach to blending finance and technology in conservation, along with his commitment to global rewilding, make him a highly influential figure in the sphere of nature-positive finance. His relentless pursuit of his mission, to restore biodiversity and resilience on a global scale, continues to inspire thousands of people and make a significant impact on our world.

Ed Pragnell is a dynamic professional with a proven track record in both the corporate and entrepreneurial realms. He joined CreditNature in order to help mobilise private capital into nature-based assets and initiatives. Ed leverages his network and experience to build relationships with corporates, banks, and asset managers in order to secure investment for the purchase of Nature Credits (NCs) and Nature Investment Certificates (NICs).

Ed spent his early career in bond origination at Mizuho International, where he contributed to the successful Debt Capital Markets build out in both the EUR and USD investment-grade corporate bond markets. Ed later joined Santander Corporate and Investment Bank, where for two years he was a relationship manager for UK banks and non-banking financial institutions. During this time, he gained valuable experience pitching and marketing Santander's capabilities across the wholesale banking product suite.

Ed left his career in banking in 2018 to serve as a company director at Friendship Adventure Brewery, where he successfully transitioned the business from a contract brewing operation to a fully-fledged brewery and taproom in Brixton, South London. Ed was pivotal in securing the seed capital to launch the business, as well as leading the day-to-day brewing operations and overseeing the growth of the brewery's wholesale client base.

Ed left the brewery in 2022 to pursue an MBA with a concentration in Sustainability at the Rotterdam School of Management. It was during the MBA, in particular a study trip to Costa Rica, that Ed discovered a passion for Nature-Based Solutions. Ed's academic journey was marked by his exceptional achievements, including being a finalist in the IFC Impact Investing Challenge and winning simulations in Circular Economy and Marketing Strategy.

Ed speaks four languages, having studied and completed internships in France, Spain, and Brazil, and is Chairman of the Kerbascol Trust, a charitable trust with a mandate for supporting young people in London and South-East England.

James brings experience spanning EY's energy and renewables practice, commercial finance in large multinational businesses, and private markets with a focus on impact.

At EY, he worked with energy and renewables businesses generating revenues in the tens of billions of pounds, building the technical depth he later carried into senior finance roles at multinational companies.

A deliberate move into private markets followed, with finance leadership roles at 60 Decibels, a social impact company, and Piclo, an energy grid flexibility business, prior to joining CreditNature to help scale its mission of mobilising high-integrity investment into nature recovery.

Nicole is an experienced communications professional with a rich background in content creation, strategy development, and technical writing. Her career spans international markets, where she has honed her ability to craft compelling stories and deliver meaningful communications that connect audiences and businesses. Nicole brings a thoughtful and strategic approach to every project, creating impactful narratives.

Nicole holds a BA (Hons) in Languages and has always been fascinated with languages, linguistics, storytelling, and the art of communication. Her early career teaching English in Taiwan and South Africa laid the foundation for her transition into publishing and corporate communications in London. There, she worked with FTSE 100 companies, refining her skills in corporate publications and communication strategy.

Nicole's commitment to learning and connection drives her work, enabling her to navigate complex topics and translate them into accessible, engaging content. She values staying up to date with constantly evolving technology, recognising how it enhances accessibility and fosters greater engagement. Constantly curious, Nicole embraces opportunities to expand her knowledge and apply it in her day-to-day work.

Nicole's experience of living in several different countries has deepened her understanding of how connected we are globally and the critical need for sustainability as we move forward. This is why she loves to create content for CreditNature, where she works to raise awareness about the vital role of biodiversity in ecosystems and the importance of directing resources and finance into nature-positive initiatives that uplift ecosystems and communities alike.

Robyn is an experienced and highly skilled coordinator with a diverse background in education, training, and programme management. She has worked across the voluntary, public, and private sectors to gain a holistic understanding of the systems and practices of each. She brings an open-minded approach for creating efficient synergy to CreditNature.

Robyn has a BSc (Hons) in Animal Behaviour and an MSc in Biodiversity Conservation. After education officer roles in UK zoos, and a research assistant role in the Kalahari desert, Robyn moved into the management of university degree, and school and community liaison programmes. Her latest position required national coordination of a learning and training portfolio involving complex application and cloud elements. Through these leadership and management roles, Robyn has become an expert in initiating and implementing effective systems, policies, and procedures to optimise efficiency and compliance.

Robyn has designed, piloted, and published a series of resources designed to support wetland conservation via community engagement. She also co-published a storybook to engage local communities in primate conservation. Robyn continues to volunteer with local community wildlife groups and brings experience from other voluntary roles to promote and support hedgehog conservation and urban rewilding.

She has delivered a complex overseas research trip and been instrumental in a huge array of conferences and events designed to better connect people with nature. Robyn prides herself on her ability to engage with any audience and, in so doing, foster a positive relationship to achieve what she sets herself up for. She has a strong connection to the natural world and a deep respect for all living things that she encourages everyone to find.

Simon is a conservation ecologist with over two decades of expertise in biodiversity monitoring, conservation technologies, and innovative financing mechanisms for nature. At CreditNature, Simon helps to drive the company's international project developments, bringing the momentum and success of ValueNature—where he served as Founder and CEO—into the organisation following its merger with CreditNature.

Simon's focus remains on scaling high-integrity biodiversity credit markets and advancing innovative solutions that align financial investments with measurable conservation outcomes. Simon has been a key driver in the development of the nature credit market, co-founding the Biodiversity Credit Alliance (BCA) and serving as a Taskforce member to establish global principles and standards for biodiversity credits. He also serves as a Panel Member on the International Advisory Panel on Biodiversity Credits (IAPB), an independent initiative launched by France and the UK in 2023 to facilitate the creation and growth of credible biodiversity credit markets and support enabling policy and regulatory mechanisms at the international level.

Over his career, Simon has led transformative initiatives, including co-founding Wildlife ACT, an award-winning endangered species monitoring organisation, and advancing groundbreaking projects in conservation genomics at Stanford University. His field expertise spans species reintroductions, biodiversity monitoring, camera trapping, bioacoustics, and conservation genomics, combined with deep engagement with local communities to deliver impactful and sustainable outcomes.

Simon holds a PhD in Conservation Ecology and is committed to driving innovative, scalable solutions to nature recovery while ensuring biodiversity markets deliver both environmental and social returns.

John Hartshorn is a Chartered Geographer and Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and has over 30 years of experience solving problems using applied geography, geospatial information, and GIS technologies. He has spent his career working in global software companies and at every stage of the project and product development lifecycles, as well as having spent several years in commercial, sales, and consulting roles.

With original training at the University of Leicester in physical geography and biogeography, and an MSc in Geographical Information Systems (GIS), he also recently gained a Postgraduate Certificate With Distinction in Green Economy from Bournemouth University, specialising in biodiversity and ecosystem services, earth system and sustainability science, and environmental law and social justice. Always one to try new things, John was also one of the very early beneficiaries of the European Commission's Erasmus Programme for student exchanges and spent the middle year of his bachelor's degree at Trinity College, University of Dublin, where he was able to choose a wide range of modules to study from across the Natural Sciences programme, including Holocene biogeography, forestry, glaciology, sedimentology, and hydrology.

A lifelong nature lover from a rural heritage in Northumberland and now living rurally in North Yorkshire, John has avidly followed the development of rewilding from its early days, and he is a co-founder and trustee of the Yorkshire Rewilding Network. He also undertakes biodiversity surveys for a National Landscape and has a particular focus on and fondness for adders.

He strongly advocates for the interdisciplinary approach of geographers and specifically how geography helps integrate information from a wide range of natural, social, and economic sciences around the context of place and time, allowing geographers to be particularly well placed when it comes to understanding and communicating the 'big picture' and the complex interactions between Earth systems, nature, and society.

John's role at CreditNature is to oversee the development and delivery of our products, making sure we prioritise and deliver great capabilities for those designing and managing nature restoration projects and those investing in these projects, all of whom require evidence of ecological improvements.

Tom Hodgson is a mathematician working to develop robust, scalable ecosystem analytics and the infrastructure to support them.

His background lies in mathematical biology, where he has published research articles on mathematical models of collective navigation in marine environments and numerical methods for non-mean-field equations. He has written software for applications including denoising MRI scans using machine learning, parallel optimisation, Monte Carlo methods for random graphs, and modelling marine mammal migrations. He was a co-investigator on a NERC-funded project titled "Tokenising Biodiversity," collaborating with the Sustainable Finance Group at the University of Oxford.

Tom believes mathematical modelling will play a key role in making the world wilder. Through his work, he aims to develop insights that help reduce negative anthropogenic effects on the natural world and increase biodiversity.

Sophy Jones is a quantitative ecologist with the ability to interface traditional ecological training with advances in technology and developments in nature finance. She is instrumental in the design and development of CreditNature's ecosystem integrity metrics and the platform that delivers them.

Sophy holds a BSc in Zoology and an MSc in Ecology, Evolution and Conservation from Imperial College London. During her studies, Sophy conducted a five-month research project with the Natural History Museum for which she received a Distinction. Her experience of contributing to and analysing large biodiversity databases catalysed a deep interest in the potential of data and computational models to reveal novel insights into biodiversity patterns and processes.

She complemented this data science experience with fieldwork, leading ecological field surveys in the UK and Seychelles. Since joining CreditNature, Sophy has extended and developed her nature tech skills and knowledge through practical innovation and, supported by Microsoft engineers, through research collaboration with university centres such as the Oxford University Smith School of Enterprise and Environment.

In her role, Sophy is building, testing, and researching CreditNature's ecosystem integrity metrics as part of an international community developing standards for nature recovery. She is a key member of the CreditNature platform development team with responsibility for ensuring the integrity of the data pipeline from site data inputs to dashboard outputs in a cloud-based computing environment.

Sophy is driven by her belief that technology has the power to transform the scale and effectiveness of rewilding and nature recovery. Her vision is a nature fintech sector that can mobilise the finance to turn the tide on nature's decline and create a hopeful and resilient future for all.

Barney Bedford is an experienced environmentalist helping to deliver reliable and robust ecosystem analytics to inform nature recovery and nascent nature markets. His experience spans spatial ecology, fluvial hydraulics, hydrology, geomorphology and geophysical survey, where harnessing the power of geospatial analysis has always been the key to delivering the insight needed.

Barney spent his early career developing catchment models for rivers in the UK and Australia, where highly parallelised compute capabilities were required for modelling to account for the massive scale of catchments. In a consultancy environment, he translated model outputs into strategic flood management plans and reports suitable for a range of audiences.

His work at CreditNature has seen him lead the testing and documentation of Ecosystem Condition Index metrics, working to establish NARIA as a globally recognised framework. He has a strong focus on assurance and data quality, seeking to ensure confidence in the outputs of ecosystem analysis and the effective management of that data in a cloud environment. Along with the team, he continues to research and develop additional metrics to give insight into terrestrial and riverine ecosystems, all the while looking to leverage advances in remote sensor technology and analytical capabilities with a strong focus on spatial technologies.

Barney is driven by a passion for daylighting evidence of past, present and future environmental conditions to help give confidence in decision making around nature recovery.

Dan Bass is a geographer with the ability to understand different worldviews and cultural contexts. He aligns the realities of land economies with rewilding principles, pragmatic realities, and land business. Dan is applying these skills to the design and delivery of a portfolio of investment-ready nature restoration projects.

With experience in the social science of rewilding, financial services, natural history filmmaking, and as a former Public Rights of Way ranger, Dan adopts an interdisciplinary outlook to find common ground with stakeholders and to design investment-grade land use transition plans and new tools such as an Ecosystem Management Rating. Dan has been instrumental in creating the protocol to apply the NARIA metric framework across a range of sites. In his role, Dan builds relationships with landowner groups, land agents and civil society groups to ensure the CreditNature platform serves the needs of landholders, as well as investors and other key players in nature markets.

Dan works closely with progressives to integrate rewilding principles with their commercial realities and to plan, price, and finance ecosystem restoration commitments that represent high-integrity, high-impact nature-positive investment opportunities. Dan's dissertation research on landscape values in Dartmoor National Park received a 'highest grade in year' commendation from Exeter University. He was instrumental in the creation of Ecosulis' rewilding advisory service and CreditNature's landholder journey. Dan has presented and featured on panels at prestigious landowner and natural capital events and has designed and delivered workshops with farm clusters and rewilding partnerships.

Dan's mission is to empower landholders to transition to nature-positive business models. His vision is for full and functioning ecosystems that enrich communities and reconnect people with nature. The rise of natural capital models, their technological complexity, and the lack of clarity on public subsidies leave many landholders feeling paralysed. In response, Dan is committed to developing onboarding processes, transition finance, and payment structures to create confidence in the nature economy. With these in place, Dan hopes to help release rewilding's potential to bring about transformational change for nature, people, and the economy.

Neepun Kumar Bangaru is a backend engineer with a deep interest in building scalable, resilient, and cost-effective systems on the Google Cloud Platform. With a background that bridges academic research and hands-on DevOps engineering, he brings a thoughtful and systems-oriented approach to cloud infrastructure.

His experience includes automating GCP environments with Terraform, orchestrating containerised workloads with Kubernetes, and optimising CI/CD pipelines for faster, more reliable software delivery. He has also worked extensively with Firestore and Cloud Storage, enabling efficient backend integrations and streamlined data access.

During his Masters at the University of Leeds, Neepun developed a transformer-based autoscaler for Kubernetes—an innovative solution that improved workload prediction accuracy and resource efficiency in distributed systems. This project exemplifies his commitment to solving complex problems through data-driven and cloud-native approaches.

At CreditNature, Neepun is excited to apply these skills in support of ecological restoration, helping to build the infrastructure that powers nature intelligence tools. His focus on automation, observability, and platform reliability aligns with the mission of delivering actionable, high-integrity environmental insights at scale.