The Board of Trustees is the team of people who oversee all the work that the People & Planet does and tries to keep the organisation working in the best interests of the network.
Elected student representatives make up over half our board and elections take place every year.
Find out more about the 2025 student trustee elections
Here are our current trusees, listed in random order.
Damon has held various roles within the non-profit sector, including Oxfam and the Aga Khan Development Network, as well as an Associate Lecturer at several universities in the UK. He has campaigned locally on environmental issues and previously ran for Parliament for the Green Party. He holds an MA in International Relations from the University of Warwick, and studied Climate Change at UEA.
As a trustee, Damon is dedicated to ensuring that People and Planet continues to thrive as a leading student network fighting for social and environmental justice and supporting the next generation of activists in building a more sustainable and equitable future.
Hi, I’m Lavanya Rajendran – wellbeing and community officer in the East London Students’ Union. I graduated with MSc in Information security and digital forensics at the University of East London in 2021.
I have been working to make sure that the university is a safe space to take care of students’ wellbeing. I’ve been elected by the students to represent them for two years. I have been campaigning on issues that affect students nationally including the cost-of-living crisis, sexual violence awareness, environmental sustainability, etc.
I have been working together with People and Planet constantly for two years working on the Fossil free campaign. I’m super excited to be on their board!
Sam (he/him) is a science student and campaigner. Having campaigned through his teens with Friends of the Earth and the school strike movement, he now organises with Cambridge Climate Justice, and sits on the Finance and Operations Committee of the Campus Climate Network. With the Fossil Free Careers and Fossil Free Research campaigns, Cambridge Climate Justice is working towards an end to the University of Cambridge's relationship with the science-ignoring fossil fuel industry, which is harming people around the world. He is a firm believer in the power of student and community organising to help build a world where everyone can live a happy, fulfilling life
Adam is a writer and campaigner. He is currently the lead campaigner for Market Forces UK, an organization tackling British banks funding the climate crisis. He led the three-year coalition campaign that forced the British Government to end its financing of fossil fuel projects overseas, and previously worked as a campaign director electing climate-friendly politicians. His writing has been published in The Guardian, The Independent, The New Statesman and elsewhere.
My name is Floyd Codlin and I am a mature student doing an MA in Art History in London, and I've been the SU Environmental and Ethics officer here at Birkbeck for the last two years. I am also a member of the Climate Action Network (CAN) at Birkbeck and have worked with trade unions and community groups on making climate action a social/political issue.
Diana is a student trustee and a migrant justice campaigner. She is a DPhil Candidate in International Development at the University of Oxford, where she focuses on the ethics and politics of migration control in Italy and its cooperation with Libya. She has been involved in campaigns and activist communities around migrant and asylum rights, reproductive justice, and LGBT rights for eight years. She has campaigned with People and Planet and in 2020 founded the Oxford chapter of the Divest Borders campaign.
Kate has been volunteering or working for charities for almost two decades, and picked up a few skills along the way. Her roles have given her experience in campaigning and advocacy, communications and marketing, HR, operations, policy, and governance. She currently works as Operations Manager for The National Appropriate Adult Network. She thinks a lot about how workplaces can balance the effectiveness of their work with enabling a diverse staff team to work in a way that best supports their health and wellbeing. Kate organised with People & Planet as a student at York University, later was part of the staff team, and now is proud to contribute to the work of the organisation as a member of the board.
Hi I’m Pete and I’m a final year International Politics student at the University of Surrey. I’ve been involved in People and Planet for several years as well as housing and climate activism.
The Board of Trustees has a lot of responsibility for making sure People & Planet is fulfilling its aims: it approves our accounts and annual budgets, and comments on and approves staff plans, ensuring that the office is working on the best projects to support your campaigning.
It’s also involved democratically with the network: student members are elected every year to represent the student network on the Board of Trustees, and it works to be open with the network about the work it’s doing — both keeping the network informed about the decisions being made and providing spaces for the network to be involved in decision-making.
The Board of Trustees is made up of democratically elected student members and also non-student members drawn from other organisations such as Oxfam, Friends of the Earth or ActionAid, who are chosen for their areas of expertise. The elected student members always make up more than half of the Board of Trustees, and meetings are chaired by the student members in rotation.
The Board of Trustees currently meets four times a year, and all members try to attend. Office staff are also invited along to meetings in an advisory capacity when needed. You can find summaries of our meetings and important information about what we’re discussing below.