Meet our Leadership and Trustees

Ben is CEO of Borneo Orangutan Survival UK (BOS-UK), and oversees all segments of the charity’s operation.

Prior to this role Ben served as President of the Humane Society Wildlife Land Trust in the US, permanently protecting wild lands for the benefit of all. His career also included time as director of the Cleveland Amory Black Beauty Ranch, a large-scale animal sanctuary in the US with close to 1,000 animals and over 40 species, spread over 1,500 acres.

Long active in the environmental community and civic circles, Ben is driven to solving the root causes of our ecological sustainability issues, both in our natural and built environments. Prior to moving into the charity world he practised architecture for 13 years, co-founding and serving as president of his own firm, which had an emphasis on sustainable design practices.

Prior to this role Ben served as President of the Humane Society Wildlife Land Trust in the US, permanently protecting wild lands for the benefit of all. His career also included time as director of the Cleveland Amory Black Beauty Ranch, a large-scale animal sanctuary in the US with close to 1,000 animals and over 40 species, spread over 1,500 acres.

Long active in the environmental community and civic circles, Ben is driven to solving the root causes of our ecological sustainability issues, both in our natural and built environments. Prior to moving into the charity world he practised architecture for 13 years, co-founding and serving as president of his own firm, which had an emphasis on sustainable design practices.

Chris worked at Channel 4 in the Picture Publicity team for 20 years and as Chief Picture Publicity Manager for the last 15 before finally leaving in 2015. He joined IJPR as Director in 2016.

Chris set up IJPR Cymru in 2017 based at Wolf Studios Wales in Cardiff to work across productions there as well as the rest of Wales.

Odile Slynn, Lady Slynn of Hadley is a French-born British humanitarian, philanthropist and peeress, involved in several organisations advocating children’s rights and wildlife preservation. She is the founder and chairman of the British branch of Child In Need India (CINI) and former chairman of the Society for the Protection of Animals Abroad (SPANA). She is the widow of Gordon Slynn, Baron Slynn of Hadley.

Born in Paris, she moved to London in 1959, where she trained as a nurse at Hammersmith Hospital. She taught French at the University of Buckingham from 1980 until 2000.

She has been a member of the Board of Visitors for HMP Grendon / Springhill; a member of the Parole Board (1988–1992) and chairman of its Awarding Committee from 1999. She has been Honorary Secretary to the British Moroccan Society since 1985.

Based in Amsterdam, Mariella is a Customer Success Director at Salesforce.org, focused on the innovative ways that CRM technology can be used to drive social impact. Believing that business is a platform for change, she supports a community of nonprofit and education institutions in navigating the application of powerful tools and solutions that they rely on to achieve their missions.

She has a Master’s of Science in Organisation Development, with a passion for helping organisations achieve digital transformation through strategies for adoption, change management, communication and training. Prior to Salesforce, she was based in San Francisco working in the higher education and advertising industries.

Michaela is best known as a wildlife presenter of shows including Springwatch, Countryfile and the former children’s series The Really Wild Show.

During Michaela’s career she has travelled all around the world filming animals and conservation projects, and has a longstanding relationship with BOS UK’s parent organisation, the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation in Indonesian Borneo. Michaela reported from the organisation’s rescue and rehabilitation centre in East Kalimantan on the aftermath of the large forest fires in 1997/98 and their impact on the critically endangered Bornean orangutan.

In the awarded documentary ‘Orangutan Rescue’, she joins BOS founder Willie Smits and his rescue team for three weeks while helping to save twenty orphaned orangutans. Michaela was also part of the dramatic rescue of three wild orangutans who were trapped and starving in an isolated forest area.

In 2006 and 2008, she went back to Borneo to visit and report from BOS Foundation’s Nyaru Menteng centre in Central Kalimantan for the BBC series ‘Orangutan Diaries’. This time Michaela Strachan featured the organisation’s sanctuary work, joining its staff in their daily fight against the extinction of one of our closest living relatives.

Having worked for the BOS Foundation since 2010, Jacqui serves as a Board Member to BOS-USA, an Advisor to the BOS Foundation and a Research Scientist at the University of British Columbia in Canada. Working with great apes for almost 30 years, much of Jacqui’s early work focused on the Critically Endangered Cross River gorilla in Cameroon, West-Central Africa. Moving to Indonesia, her attention turned to orangutan conservation where she worked with the BOS Foundation as Deputy CEO, and supported the re-establishment of their orangutan reintroduction program.

Jacqui continues to work with the BOS Foundation through their collaborative project together with UBC and IPB University in Indonesia to investigate new cost effective, non-invasive ways of monitoring the reintroduced orangutan populations using remote camera traps.

Martha is General Counsel at TechSoup, where she also manages the NGOsource program. Prior to joining TechSoup, Martha worked at the law firm of Adler & Colvin, where she counseled nonprofit and tax-exempt organizations and donors, with an emphasis on international grantmaking, advocacy, corporate governance, and charitable solicitation. Prior to this, Martha clerked for the Honorable Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson, interned for Nina Totenberg at NPR in Washington, D.C., lived in Vietnam under a Fulbright grant, and worked as a freelance journalist.

She has authored numerous articles and blog posts on federal tax law regulations, nonprofit compliance, and international law. She is also a regular speaker at conferences on topics such as U.S. tax law rules around global giving, due diligence and humanitarian aid, data privacy, and international philanthropy generally. Martha holds a bachelor’s degree from Brown University and a J.D. from UC Berkeley Law School: she is a member of both the Texas and California state bars. Martha was named 2019 Outstanding Young Nonprofit Attorney by the American Bar Association. In 2020 she was named a Coro Women in Leadership Fellow.