Craig Bennett

Craig is Chief Executive of The Wildlife Trusts, Honorary Professor of Sustainability and Innovation at Alliance Manchester Business School, and an Associate Fellow of Homerton College (Cambridge).

He is also a Commissioner on the UK Government’s Clean Power 2030 Advisory Commission. He was awarded an OBE for services to the environment in the King’s New Year 2026 Honour’s List.

He has been described as “one of the country’s top environmental campaigners”, by The Guardian as “the very model of a modern eco-general” and has also been listed in The Sunday Times Green Power List of the UK’s top 20 environmentalists.

Craig was formerly CEO of Friends of the Earth where he led the organisation to numerous campaign victories including on bees, fracking and against airport expansion.  

Earlier in his career, Craig was Deputy Director at The University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), and Director of The Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change (from 2007 to 2010).  

Craig has twenty-five years experience of designing and contributing to Executive Education and Leadership programmes at numerous universities and business schools around the world, and of providing advice and constructive challenge direct to CEOs and company boards.

He is currently Chair of the Independent Challenge Group for Anglian Water and regularly appears in the print and broadcast media.