Clare Mike BSc (Hons), MSc

Director, Business Development, LEAF

Linking Environment And Farming

Clare’s role at LEAF is to plan and lead a business collaboration strategy to work with LEAF’s members and corporate companies to place sustainable food and farming high on their agenda.

Clare has worked in the food industry for almost 20 years, predominantly in fresh produce and manufacturing. She started off her career at Minor, Weir and Willis, one of the country’s leading handlers of fruit and vegetables, before moving on to Vitacress, one of Europe's principal growers and manufacturers of leafy salad products. For the last ten years, Clare has worked at Kanes Foods, one of the UK’s foremost processors of value-added, prepared fresh produce, where she specialised in Account Management, building mutually rewarding relationships with clients and developing new business opportunities.

Ed Hodson

Product Specialist Potato, Grimme UK

Ed Hodson has spent the past nine years working for GRIMME UK Ltd, during that time he has held roles as technical sales for vegetable and irrigation equipment; sale operations manager and the past two years as product specialist for all GRIMME potato equipment. His role encompasses supporting the sales team with product knowledge and technical detail but also working with growers, processors and packers on strategic projects such as refining processes or cost reduction. He has been involved in implementing the first potato production system in the UK on a 6.0m controlled traffic farming system and is currently looking at how Regenerative Agriculture can be implemented into root crop production.

Ed was born in Norfolk and while studying he worked on a potato and vegetable farm specialising in early season organic carrots and salad potatoes which gave him a grounding in root crop production. He graduated from Harper Adams University in 2008 with a degree in Agricultural Engineering with Marketing and Management and took up a role with Briggs Irrigation for 4 years as a service engineer before joining Grimme in 2012. Ed is the Vice Chairman of the Agricultural Engineers Association Technical Committee and is also on the LE-TEC working group which advises on industries requirements for the Land Based Engineering apprenticeship. 

Ed and his wife Gemma have two young children which takes up most of their time, but he enjoys the outdoors and shooting when time allows.

Professor Euan Nisbet

Royal Holloway University of London

Euan Nisbet’s research is broadly in two areas of Earth Science.

Early Earth work is based on fieldwork in the Archaean (2.5 to 4 billion year old) rocks of Canada, Zimbabwe/South Africa and Australia. Work on the Early Earth is summarised by a Treatise on Geochemistry chapter with CMR Fowler (2nd ed 2013), and by NT Arndt and EG Nisbet in Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences (2012).

Research into Modern and Glacial Atmospheres has mainly focussed on Methane in the modern air, including the role of methane in Arctic climate change, methane hydrates and their role in global warming, and the task of assessing present day atmospheric methane burden. The atmospheric laboratory at Royal Holloway is a key centre for measurement of carbon isotopes in methane.  Current work includes major projects on Arctic and Tropical Atmospheric Methane budgets.

Nisbet leads MOYA: the global methane budget. This is a UK NERC 'Highlight' consortium with 14 partner institutions that studies methane across the planet, with aircraft and ground field campaigns in African and South America, as well as monitoring greenhouse gases at a number of stations from the Arctic to the Antarctic and on a ship travelling from north to south in the Atlantic.

Deputy Kirsten Morel

Assistant Minister for Economic Development, Tourism, Sport and Culturee

Elected as Deputy of St Lawrence and sworn into office on 1st June 2018.

Nicholas Morland

Chairman of the Cannabis Services Advisory Board in Jersey.

Nick Morland is CEO of Tenacious Labs, a CBD group based in Mayfair, London, with offices in Miami and Denver. He is also a founding partner of Delarki Investments and Chairman of the Cannabis Services Advisory Board in Jersey.

Nick initially qualified as a Chartered Accountant working at Coopers & Lybrand Deloitte and Cork Gully (insolvency and investigations). He then moved into the international insurance market, initially as Senior Analyst at Sedgwick, followed by Group Operations Director at Hiscox, General Manager Europe for QBE and then Deputy Group Underwriter at Alea. 

He then moved into private equity, setting up and becoming managing partner of Somercourt - a private investment office for the principal of a large hedge fund. This concentrated on early stage and transitional businesses in EMEA with most of the role being to coordinate with and manage businesses on behalf of multiple UHNWs wanting to invest actively but not have to deal with day to day operational issues. 

This has meant multiple directorships including a wide range of geographies including the US, UK, Eastern Europe and Africa; and industries including telecoms, commodities and finance.

Peter Le Maistre

President, Jersey Farmers’ Union

Peter Le Maistre was born on the family farm in 1954. He was educated at Landsdowne Private School and then Victoria College.  Further education took place at Queen Elizabeth College in London studying Maths and Management. After completing the first year he realised that his passion for farming would always come before any career in other industries. He joined the family farm in September 1974 when its main production was outdoor tomatoes. The eldest of four boys, he was joined by his brothers over the next ten years.

At one time all the brothers had separate businesses but realised that consolidation to produce efficiencies was the way forward and so Master Farms was created. Today the company is owned by Peter and his brother Philip with extra management provided by their sons, Matthew and Philip jnr.

The farm is still a mixed farm with 200 milking cattle being rotated on land that grows potatoes, courgettes and cauliflowers. The holding also farms the Island’s largest area of organic land growing a wide range of vegetables for the local and export market. Peter is a past member of the Jersey Young Farmers’ Club and was chairman of the Jersey Countrymans’ Club. He joined the Jersey Farmers’ Union in 1975 and served on the Outdoor Tomato and Lettuce Committee, and later the Estate and Finance Committee. In 2011 he was elected Treasurer and in 2017 was elected as President.

Stuart Murphy

Head of Customer Experience & Communications, Jersey Electricity

Stuart Murphy was appointed as Head of Customer Experience and Communications in September 2019. He acts as JE’s ‘customer champion’ ensuring customer needs are understood and reflected in the utility’s service offerings and customer experience across the whole business. He also support JE’s brand positioning and growth plans as well as oversees internal communications to drive employee engagement.

Originally a Marketing and Brand Manager in the food industry based the North of England, Stuart, 42, joined JE 12 years ago as Marketing Manager of its former online retail business Day2dayshop.com. Latterly, he has been Business Head of Jendev, JE’s in-house specialist software developer and utility billing provider.

He has successfully developed the business, implemented cultural and technological change and played a lead part in JE’s successful Smart Meter rollout programme. The father of two, also recently graduated as a MBA with distinction from the Alliance Manchester Business School at the University of Manchester.