Managing Director - Green Finance / Rothbury Conservation Trust

Location: Home Based, Office facilities available, some UK travel will be required.
Full time (35 hours per week)  

About Us 

The Wildlife Trusts are a grassroots movement of people from a wide range of backgrounds and all walks of life, who believe that we need nature and nature needs us. We have more than 944,000 members, over 38,000 volunteers, 3,600 staff and 600 trustees. There are 46 individual Wildlife Trusts, each of which is a place-based independent charity with its own legal identity, formed by groups of people getting together and working with others to make a positive difference to wildlife and future generations, starting where they live and work. 

Every Wildlife Trust is part of The Wildlife Trusts federation and a corporate member of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts, a registered charity in its own right founded in 1912 and one of the founding members of IUCN – the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Taken together this federation of 47 charities is known as The Wildlife Trusts. 

The next few years will be critical in determining what kind of world we all live in. We need to urgently reverse the loss of wildlife and put nature into recovery at scale if we are to prevent climate and ecological disaster. We recognise that this will require big, bold changes in the way The Wildlife Trusts work, not least in how we mobilise others and support them to organise within their own communities. 

The Wildlife Trusts are on a mission to bring about a people-powered nature and climate recovery by empowering people to take meaningful action for nature, and to create an inclusive society where nature matters to everyone, everywhere. We are ambitious in our desire not just to slow, but to reverse the declines in nature. Together we have developed a bold, new collective strategy which outlines our vision and the actions we will take to restore nature over the next eight years. 

Central to our strategy are our three goals which set out what we are striving to achieve by 2030 in pursuit of our vision of a thriving natural world. Goal 1 is to put nature into recovery with abundant, diverse wildlife and natural processes creating wilder land and seascapes where people and nature thrive. Goal 2 is to inspire people to take action for nature and climate, resulting in better decision-making for the environment at both local level and across the four UK nations. And Goal 3 is to enable nature to play a central and valued role in helping to address local and global problems, such as by helping tackle climate change and supporting wellbeing and education. 

Achieving these ambitious objectives means that we must develop new ways of working which increase the scale and impact of our work. Therefore, we have embarked on a programme of strategic transformations that are essential to achieving our goals, and which will result in a stronger and more effective Wildlife Trust movement for the long term. RSWT is leading the transformation programme across The Wildlife Trusts including in community organising, equality, diversity and inclusion, and funding nature’s recovery. The Wildlife Trusts have existed for over 100 years thanks to a strong membership base and traditional fundraising activities. 

Now, to achieve the level of funding needed to reverse nature’s decline, we need to diversify and increase our income by exploring new ways of funding such as innovative finance. 

About You

Do you want to lead the field in the development of private investment into nature’s recovery? 

Fundamentally, you will have worked at a senior level as a Managing Director/CEO and have financial investment and commercial leadership experience that translates into strong awareness and understanding of financial investment markets and how these financial mechanisms can be used to drive large-scale investment, in this case into a green finance vehicle(s) for the Wildlife Trusts. We need you to translate that experience into solutions that scale up nature’s recovery, by developing realisable business propositions that create revenues from corporate sales of nature-based services such as biodiversity net gain credits or voluntary carbon credits amongst many other possible services. 

An innovative problem-solver with an entrepreneurial spirit, you will need to develop compelling and practical commercial strategies which can be successfully delivered within the Wildlife Trust Federation. As such you will be a great communicator, with a personable style who can work with many different people across the wonderful variety of geography, size, scale, and activities of the 46 Wildlife Trusts. 

The Wildlife Trusts value passion, respect, trust, integrity, pragmatic activism and strength in diversity. Whilst we are passionate in promoting our aims, we are not judgmental and are inclusive. We particularly encourage applications from people who are underrepresented within our sector, including people from minority backgrounds and people with disabilities. We are committed to creating a movement that recognises and truly values individual differences and identities. 

RSWT take our Safeguarding responsibilities extremely seriously. The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and adults at risk. For applicable roles, applicants must be willing to undergo checks with past employers and Disclosure and Barring Service checks at the eligible level. 

As a Disability Confident employer, we are committed to offering an interview to anyone with a disability that meets all the essential criteria for the post. Please let us know if you require any adjustments to make our recruitment process more accessible. 

RSWT are committed to increasing the diversity of its staff through its Levelling the Field recruitment pledge and will put any ethnic minority applicants that meet all the essential criteria for the post through to the next stage of recruitment. 

Please be aware we may not accept applications if we have reason to believe they have been wholly produced using generative AI tools. 

Closing date for applications: 20th July 2025
First interview: 1st August 2025
Second interview: 8th August 2025