A professional snowboarder and entrepreneur with passion for culture of going up and down the hill. At the heart of my lifestyle is movement, through which I find a connection to nature. With my own work, I want to highlight he different possibilities of moving around in nature and encouraging people to believe their own stories.
Main Summit
Simon Futcher
Having started life and his early career as a professional footballer, his move off the pitch saw Simon delve into the world of sustainable solutions.
Simon joined Veolia 14 years ago, where he has worked in a variety of commercial roles before beginning his current expanded position as Commercial Business Development Director in April 2023. As well as the commercial sales and account management teams, he also has responsibility for customer experience and innovation, supporting the delivery of sustainable solutions to Veolia’s commercial portfolio. Simon’s teams support Veolia’s 60,000+ UK customer base.
Simon is committed to driving sustainable innovation and partnering with customers to reduce their carbon footprint, alongside developing circular projects and their journey towards ecological transformation. He is a passionate supporter of creating a more sustainable sporting landscape for the future.
Helen Falkus
Helen has worked in Sports broadcasting for over 20 years. She started at Sunset and Vine covering the Channel4 Cricket and Channel 5 football output.
A couple of years at Sky New Zealand followed before she joined Sky Sports in 2006. Helen is now Sky Sports Director of Multi Sports, was shortlisted for a WST ‘Ambassador for Women’s Sport’ award in 2018 and is a member of the Sky Sports Content Sustainability group, championing environmental issues within Sky Sports coverage.
She is a keen netball and tennis player and has 3 daughters.
Lauren MacCallum
Meegan Jones
Meegan is an event sustainability professional focussing her efforts on using the power of events for positive action while also ensuring that events themselves are produced sustainably.
Credits include Sustainability Manager for Festival Republic (Glastonbury, Reading, Latitude Festivals, UK), Live Earth Greening Guidelines, project consultant for the UNEP Music & Environment Initiative, sustainability strategy for Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup, and external assessment of ISO 20121 for Gold Coast Commonwealth Games. She was recently Sustainability Programme Manager for Volvo Ocean Race 17/18 and with their award winning Clean Seas programme.
The third edition of her book Sustainable Event Management: A Practical Guide was published in Dec 2017 by Taylor & Francis and is an adopted text for many university degrees in event management.
In 2018 Meegan authored the guide to avoiding single-use plastics at sporting events. She has also contributed the sustainability chapters to books Routledge Handbook of Festivals and Festival and Special Event Management.
She was a sector expert in the global working groups developing the GRI Event Organizer’s Sector Supplement and ISO 20121. She is founder and chair of the Sustainable Event Alliance and has trained more than 1000 events organisers in sustainable event management through 40 local governments.
Helen Taylor
As Ambassador and former CEO of Forest Green Rovers Football Club, Helen has played a key role in FGR becoming “the greenest football club in the world” (FIFA), the “world’s first UN certified carbon-neutral football club*”, and first and only vegan football club. She has extensive experience in running environmentally sustainable projects, partnerships, certification programmes (organic), campaigns and events – with a previous career in the food industry.
Her aim of the day is to share some valuable insights into the behavioural change impacts EFL Community Trusts are having (and can have) on their immediate and wider community as they fulfil their new role of championing environmental sustainability. Helen also runs the charity, Sustainability in Sport, putting Sustainability at the heart of Sport – a friend of the Summit.
*The Club is signed up to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) initiative called “Climate Neutral Now”
Oluseyi Smith
Oluseyi Smith BEng MSc OLY is a retired two-time summer (London-2012) and winter (Pyeongchang 2018) Olympian in Athletics and Bobsleigh. He remains involved in sport as a member of the IOC’s Sustainability & Legacy commission, as a member of the Canadian Olympic Committee, and is an IOC Young Leader. Oluseyi is passionate about renewable energy research and projects, one of which is Racing to Zero (https://www.racingtozero.ca) which he developed through his IOC Young Leader mandate.
This project combines sustainability best practices with expert knowledge in grassroots, local, volunteer-run athletics meets.
Amalia de Abreu
Amalia is a marine scientist and outdoor enthusiast. She is passionate about conservation and bringing people together to increase ocean access and to protect the ocean. She is the Community Manager at I AM WATER Ocean Conservation, which uses the sport of snorkeling to protect the ocean
Ahmed Al-Shahrani
Ahmed Al-Shahrani was involved in a motor vehicle accident when he was 17, which caused paraplegia. Living with a physical disability for the last 16 years has not stopped him from pursuing and living a meaningful and fulfilling life. Born and raised in USA, his formative years and western education has served to bridge the gap between the East and West.
Ahmed was Accessible Qatar’s Ambassador for mobility impairment from 2016 to 2018 and organised and curated various events for the initiative. He has taken part in numerous community road accident awareness campaigns and has spoken in schools and colleges on the importance of road safety. Ahmed’s faith and positivity are the source of his strength, empowering him to defiantly refuse to be defined by his disability. He believes himself to be ‘Disabled but Definitely Able’ – as summed up at the Definitely Able conference.
Ahmed is active and energetic, and plays a number of sports such as wheelchair basketball, tennis, fencing, swimming, skeet shooting; and in 2016 participated in his first marathon. He launched the first fencing classes for wheelchair users in Qatar under his role as an Accessible Qatar Ambassador.
Linh Do
Linh Do is passionate about climate justice and social inequality. She’s spent the last decade working across advocacy and engagement, media and social enterprise. Linh is currently the Director of the Wattle Fellowship at the University of Melbourne and a board member at Climate Action Network Australia.
In the lead up to the Paris negotiations, she served as the publisher and editor-in-chief of The Verb. There she worked with a global team to localise and humanise stories from the UN climate change negotiations. Linh was most recently Australia and Pacific lead for The Climate Reality Project, Al Gore’s climate change leadership program, and brought over 800 people together in Brisbane during Climate Week Queensland.
Linh has worked with a wide array of individuals from high school students to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and the Reuters Foundation. She is a co-founder of the technology start-up OurSay, formerly led the community organising program at the Australian Conservation Foundation and has worked with World Wildlife Fund (WWF) on communicating policy.
Linh is signed with Claxton Speakers and has previously sat on both non-profit and for-profit boards. Her work has been featured in Al Jazeera, Vogue, the Huffington Post and the Washington Post amongst others. She is a member of Global Shapers, an initiative of the World Economic Forum.
