Leslie Morris-Iveson is a senior research fellow with the Environment and Society Centre at Chatham House. She also works as a consultant providing strategic advisory support in water resilience, with a specific interest in water stewardship and supply chains. Earlier in her career she worked at UNICEF, where she led large-scale water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) programmes; she also worked on national water sector coordination, including stints based in Haiti, Sri Lanka and Nepal and at the UN headquarters in New York. Leslie has held roles in international water policy, governance and knowledge with Oxfam GB and the World Bank. As a consultant, she has advised donor governments and international institutions on the design and strategy of water programme investments. At Chatham House she is supporting the Fair Water Footprints partnership, as well as contributing more broadly to the institute’s work on water and trade in the context of geopolitical and environmental trends.
Joe Ray is the head of water at CDP, where he leads the organization’s global work to place water-related issues at the core of corporate and financial decision-making. His role spans strategic direction, team leadership, programme delivery, and high-level engagement with business and investors. He previously served as a senior adviser on climate and water in the Dutch government, contributing to international development programmes and later leading the Valuing Water Initiative, which sought to strengthen public–private collaboration and embed recognition of water use within global financial sector frameworks. Drawing on his academic background in international affairs, economics and political science, his career has focused on building partnerships with companies, financial institutions, UN agencies, national governments and civil society to deliver practical solutions to global sustainability challenges.
Richard King is a senior research fellow in the Environment and Society Centre at Chatham House. His work focuses on the sustainability of – and systemic risks to/from – food systems, agriculture, land use and soft-commodity resource trade. His recent projects have included examining cascading climate risks in international food trade; policy design in support of climate-smart and nutrition-secure food systems in southern and eastern Africa; and emerging sustainability issues associated with land-based approaches to negative greenhouse gas emissions. He was a lead author on the United Nations Environment Programme’s flagship environmental assessment, Global Environment Outlook 6 (GEO-6, 2019).
Prior to joining Chatham House, Richard was deputy head of research at Oxfam GB, where he specialized in food and rural livelihoods, particularly in the contexts of climate change, resource constraints and market volatility.
Laura Kelly is the director of shaping sustainable markets at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). She oversees workstreams on responsible and inclusive business and finance, and on trade and climate change. Prior to joining IIED, she held senior positions in the UK government covering trade and sustainable development. This work included developing the Business Innovation Facility (BIF) and Responsible and Transparent Enterprise Programme (RATE) with business to integrate social and environmental issues into supply chains. Recently she has written on the need to integrate trade and climate policies in a fair and equitable way that recognizes both the challenges faced by low-income countries and the implications of the changing global landscape for the trade prospects for those countries. She has contributed to a special edition of The Progressive Post, the magazine of the Foundation for European Studies (FEPS), and to the Remaking Global Trade Project, coordinated by Yale University, Tufts University and the University of the West Indies.
