Graham French (BMC)
Graham is a senior lecturer in education and deputy head of the School of Education at Bangor University, where he also leads on sustainability for the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. His teaching and research centre on outdoor and adventure education, with a particular interest in how it supports learning and personal development.
He first began working in residential outdoor education centres while studying at Bangor, later instructing across a range of local authority and independent centres in the UK, alongside expedition work in Europe, North America and Africa. After completing a PGCE in Outdoor Activities and Science, Graham taught in secondary schools and colleges across North Wales, London, the Midlands and Chester, holding roles from head of faculty to senior leadership.
Since returning to Bangor in 2013, Graham has led postgraduate programmes in outdoor education and completed a PhD in the field focused on Adventure education pedagogy. He is a Leading practitioner and active member of the Institute for Outdoor Learning, chair of IOL Cymru and AHOEC in Wales, and Vice chair of the Wales Council for Outdoor Learning. He chairs the Outdoor Partnership stakeholder group for North Wales, is non-executive chair of Eryri Actif and vice chair of trustees of the Christian Mountain Centre.
Alongside governance, Graham continues to support the sector as a technical advisor, coach educator and first aid trainer, and sits on the editorial board of the Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Learning.
Nick Giles
Nick is Managing Director of Ordnance Survey’s consumer businesses, and the current Chair of the UK Outdoor Industries Association. He joined OS in 2012 to originally turn around the dwindling consumer business taking this from loss making to 7 figure profitability. During his time at OS, Nick founded both the OS Maps application (the UK’s premier outdoor exploration application with over 8m users and 500,000 subscribers) and the GetOutside initiative giving outdoor inspiration to millions of people. He has reinvigorated OS’s publishing business, expanding guidebooks (including the Uk’s first accessible guidebook), books and reinventing the iconic paper maps. Prior to OS Nick’s career has been through marketing agencies and within the financial services sector running business portfolios of over £300m per annum as well as several non-exec positions.
Nick has a passion for helping more people to get outside more often and is committed to enabling more people to enjoy more enjoyable, accessible, and safe outdoor experiences. He has been a frequent visitor and longtime supporter of Plas y Brenin over the years and is an avid hill walker and (a very!) amateur mountain biker, climber, and paddler. He has a love for watersports and can often be found open water swimming or messing about with boats and boards whenever given the opportunity.
In 2022 he was awarded an OBE for improving the health of the nation for his work in encouraging and inspiring millions of people to reap the benefits of activity in the great outdoors.
Stuart Morris
Stuart Morris is Global Operations & Product Director at World Challenge, a leading provider of youth expeditions. With over twenty years’ experience in the outdoor education sector, he has worked extensively with schools, youth groups, and international partners to deliver safe, high-quality, and impactful adventure experiences. He brings significant expertise in operational strategy, safety management, governance, and risk assessment.
A former Vice Chair of the Expedition Providers Association and current Technical Committee member, Stuart is passionate about the power of outdoor adventure to build resilience, confidence, and connection with nature. Based in North Wales, he is committed to supporting Plas y Brenin’s role as the UK’s National Outdoor Centre.
Lissie Smith
My association with Plas y Brenin spans over many years. It began in 2000 when I joined as a Centre Assistant. After a brief departure in 2001 to pursue a PGCE in Outdoor Education, I returned to the team in 2002 as their Youth Coordinator. Over time, I progressed within the organisation, eventually assuming the role of Client Bookings Manager in 2017. In early 2022, I left to join the NHS Covid Vaccination team. I rejoined the Plas y Brenin family in October of last year, taking on the position of Governance Officer.
In my role as Governance Officer at Plas y Brenin, my primary responsibility is to uphold the organisation’s compliance with legal and regulatory standards while fostering ethical practices and implementing robust governance procedures. Key areas of focus include policy development, compliance monitoring, risk management, board support, ethical oversight, stakeholder engagement, reporting and disclosure, and continuous improvement initiatives. By fulfilling these duties, I play a pivotal role in enhancing the effectiveness, transparency, and long-term sustainability of Plas y Brenin’s governance framework.
Emily Thompson (MTUKI)
Emily has 20 years experience working in the charitable sector and has a strong track record of working with a wide range of partners, creating and sustaining lasting partnerships in both the public and private sector in order to secure additional investment for programmes and build partnership funding opportunities. She has overseen the development and growth of new services into new markets and transformational change across teams.
Emily is also passionate about the outdoors and has worked in the outdoor sector since qualifying as a mountain leader in 2012. Now a Winter ML and working towards completing her International Mountain Leader, Emily also runs her own company which is a provider of Mountain Training Skills courses. Also in her local Mountain Rescue team she is keen to ensure that as more people access the outdoors that they gain the right skills to do so safely and with good decision making skills.
She has sat on the Mountain Training UK and Ireland Board 2017-2023 and the British Mountaineering Council’s Access and Conservation Trust Board 2015-2023 and so has a good understanding of the sector.
As someone who has experienced Plas y Brenin courses in the past Emily is keen to use her experience to help the MTT reach more people and continue to be the centre of excellence in course delivery.
Bill Whatley
Bill is an accountant that qualified in the profession but who quickly moved to industry. He has now accumulated over forty years of finance, IT and business transformation experience, gained in a number of household name businesses and at senior levels.
Bill’s passion for the outdoors dates back to his teens and flourished at university. He has experience of rock climbing to a high standard (for the 80’s) and of alpine mountaineering and remains a regular walker and scrambler across the mountains of the UK.
Soraya Abdel-Hadi
Soraya Abdel-Hadi is an award-winning writer, artist, sustainability professional and founder of All The Elements CIC – a non-profit network for those creating change on diversity in the UK outdoors. She has worked in the outdoor sector for most of her career in roles including equestrian journalism, climbing instruction and expedition planning. All The Elements is centered on the leaders creating positive change on representation and access across all diversity areas, from ethnicity and race, to limited financial means, age, gender identity and sexuality, and more.
Matt Tennant
Matt’s career to date has been in Education, working in both Higher and Professional Body organisations, alongside various non-executive roles within charities. Matt is currently Chair of the Trustee Board for OutdoorLads, a UK-wide charity running outdoor activities for the LGBTQ community.
Matt’s main interest is around developing, implementing and monitoring strategies to improve diversity and inclusion, while increasing engagement of under-represented groups in outdoor activities.
Matt has a lifelong passion for outdoor activity, and since a young age been involved in hill walking, mountaineering and more recently paddlesports.
Lisa Dickinson
Lisa has nearly 15 years of experience working in the private sector, leading a wide range of people, cultural and IT change and transformation projects and programmes including a focus on strategy definition as well as Diversity and Inclusion.
With a background in Scouting and Guiding, Lisa has always had an interest in spending time in the outdoors. Most recently, she focused her efforts on her whitewater kayaking. She went from hating water and not being able to swim to becoming a qualified whitewater leader in 2021 and has spent the last year helping support other women who want to build their confidence in whitewater as a #ShePaddles Ambassador for British Canoeing. She’s now working towards her whitewater coach award. Outside of paddling, Lisa is also a keen climber and walker and has recently completed her Mountain Leader training.
Lisa has first-hand experience of courses at Plas y Brenin and is excited about the opportunity to use her corporate and outdoor experience to help the MTT further grow their mission of helping people get active in the outdoors.
Mike Rosser
Mike is a qualified teacher, Mountain Instructor and International Mountain Leader with 45 years of personal experience of trekking, climbing and mountaineering worldwide, and has built a career around managing risk in the outdoors and teaching others those skills.
Having spent 25 years as a teacher and lecturer of PE, Sports Science and Outdoor Education, Mike then began working for Mountain Training England, managing the providers of Mountain Training schemes.
For the next 15 years, Mike was Manager and Director of Jagged Globe/Adventureworks and Outlook Expeditions – companies that organised mountaineering and trekking expeditions for adults and school groups worldwide – from Everest to the jungles of Borneo.
Currently, Mike works as an Education Visits Advisor to schools across Denbighshire, Flintshire and Wrexham, an Inspector for various accreditation schemes and consultant providing advice, training and guidance for bodies working in the outdoors. Mike is Chair of Mountain Training Cymru and the Adventure Activities Industry Advisory Committee, and a member of the UK Adventure Industry Group that is currently working with the Health and Safety Executive to develop an industry-led accreditation to replace the Adventurous Activity Licensing Scheme.