Eric Bouchet
Chairman

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Eric has a background in electrical engineering and was involved in several hi-tech projects, including the design of Eurostar traction electronics. In 1995, he decided to dedicate his career to the family business, Botanic. As CEO of Botanic he has managed the company’s growth and the eco design of stores. With 70 shops located across France, Botanic is a major player in the garden centre industry and was the first company to have abandoned the sale of artificial pesticides, as well as being a major lobbyist to modify the French law towards a ban for non-professionals.

As a grower’s son and an engineer, Eric likes to think of himself as a nature-rooted dreamer – technology and nature are not to be opposed, but to be reconciled.

Saskia Ozinga
Member of the board

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Saskia Ozinga is the founder of Fern, an organisation with the aim of making the EU work for forests and people. Born in Beverwijk, the Netherlands, she studied biology and healthcare at the Hogeschool Utrecht. Since graduating in the 1980s, she worked briefly as a teacher in environmental science at the Hogeschool Utrecht and for nearly ten years as a forest campaigner at Friends of the Earth Netherlands.

She founded Fern in 1995. While at Fern, she has facilitated various NGO coalitions on different topics related to forests and community rights and written and published numerous books, articles and reports on themes like forest certification, trade and forests, effective advocacy, and improving forest governance and forests and climate. She now works part-time for Fern and on a consultancy basis for various organisations. Besides being a board member of Earthworm Foundation, she is also a board member of Corporate Europe Observatory and the American Hardwood Council's Standard Endorsement Body.

Julie Wynne
Member of the Board

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Julie is a Swiss lawyer, partner at FRORIEP and Head of its Charities and Social Enterprise practice. She is a highly-regarded lawyer in the field of non-profit organisations and mission-driven companies. She is a Board member of B Lab (Switzerland) and ESELA – the Legal Network for Social Impact.

Julie has a strong personal involvement in philanthropy and is active in various non-profit organisations supporting social entrepreneurship, the arts and the empowerment of women.

Pascal Gauthier
Member of the board

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In late 2011, Pascal Gauthier founded an advisory and private equity activity to help corporations and organisations develop strategies and projects to address environmental needs and protection, and to face the future impact of energy cost increases and raw material rarefactions, as well as to materialise the benefit of resource recovery and renewable energies. He is also a direct capital investor in businesses such as plastics recycling, biomass preparation, water treatment, solid waste management, development of new environmental technologies.

Pascal is an independent member of various Board of Directors, a senior advisor to many operators in the environmental industry and the founder of Waste Force, an NGO addressing toxic waste pollution in emerging countries, in partnership with UNO.

Luc Cardyn
Member of the Board

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Luc has a successful background as a senior banking executive, with over three decades with a world-renowned French financial institution, including more than ten years as the country manager and CEO in Vietnam and Indonesia.

Spending 14 years in Southeast Asia has raised his awareness of the numerous challenges facing agriculture in this region. Luc will support Earthworm Foundation in developing robust sustainability strategies and support small farmer communities in this challenging transition.

Krisztina Bende
Board Member

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Krisztina Bende, a Swiss citizen, is the Permanent Representative of Switzerland to the United Nations Organizations in Rome, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Food Programme (WFP) and International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). Before her current posting, Krisztina Bende was the Director of the Trade Relations Division at the European Free Trade Association in Geneva, overseeing trade negotiations with non-EU countries.

In 2005, Krisztina Bende joined the Federal Office for Agriculture to work on international trade issues related to agriculture. She was a Member of the Swiss delegation to the World Trade Organisation and chaired the Joint Committee on Agriculture between Switzerland and the European Union.

She started her career at the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, where she worked on environmental issues in the Policy Directorate. She then worked as a lawyer at the European Court of Human Rights. Ambassador Bende holds a Law degree from the University of Berne, CH and an MBA from IE Madrid and Brown School of professional studies in the USA. 

Julio J. Copo Terrés
Member of the Board

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Julio is an attorney with more than fifteen years of experience in Regulatory Law, Health and Life Sciences Law, Compliance and Anti-Corruption law, and Philanthropy. He graduated from Universidad Iberoamericana, holds a Master's in Administrative Law fromUniversidad Panamericana, and has a Master's in International Human Rights Law from the University of Notre Dame.

In the professional field, Julio works as Counsel at Arochi & Lindner. In the past he worked as Junior Counsel at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in San José, Costa Rica; and as Senior Associate at Basham, Ringe y Correa where he had a foreign professional exchange with the firm FRORIEP in Geneva, Switzerland. He is a full member of the International Bar Association, the International Association of Young Lawyers, the Ilustre y Nacional Colegio de Abogados, where he heads the Administrative Law Commission and an active member of the Mexican Bar Association, where he was founding Coordinator of the Health Commission.

Since 2021, Chambers & Partners has consistently ranked him as a leading lawyer for "Life Sciences" in LatinAmerica. In 2022, they also recognised him as a "Thought leader" in the field.

Bastien Sachet
CEO

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Bastien became CEO in January 2016, which marked his tenth year at Earthworm Foundation. He began working at Earthworm Foundation as a member manager before becoming a director in 2011. His background and experience in business and agriculture are well linked to Earthworm Foundation’s work between the two worlds of business and nature. He has helped to coordinate Earthworm Foundation’s palm oil strategy, heading up teams in France, Switzerland and Africa, and launching the Rurality programme, which works to empower smallholder farmers. In 2018 he launched the Living Soils initiative, dedicated to accelerating regenerative agriculture and soil health.

Prior to joining Earthworm Foundation in 2006, Bastien worked for several years in Brazil, Australia, England and Argentina, where he led product and sales teams in logistics and agro-business for Hamburg-Sud and the Roullier Group respectively.

In 2000, Bastien graduated in agricultural engineering from the Institut National Agronomique Paris-Grignon (Agro Paris Tech). He then completed his postgraduate degree in marketing and strategy at the University of Paris IX Dauphine.

Boris Saraber
Director, Operations

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Boris has worked for more than 20 years in the responsible commodity sector, having started his career managing operational plantations, natural forest and protected areas in Australia and across Asia. When he began working with Earthworm Foundation in 2008, he led the implementation of a community timber programme in Laos, and quickly went on to support responsible timber operations in China, Vietnam and Malaysia.

Now based in Switzerland, Boris provides both practical and strategic support to teams and the organisation’s engagement with agro-commodity producers, brands and retailers globally.

Catharina Plummer
Director, Finance

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Catharina has been with Earthworm Foundation since 2008 and has 25 years’ experience working in the financial sector. Cat has held various management positions at some of the world’s leading companies. Her experience includes 10 years at a Swedish bank in New York, and time in advertising agencies in Paris and Brussels where she focused on managing company budgets.

After receiving an athletic scholarship for Florida International University in Miami, she achieved a BA in Accounting. Cat is a keen runner, and finished within the top 100 women in the 1992 New York City Marathon. Very much multilingual, Cat speaks Swedish, English, French and Dutch.

Marianne Martinet
Director, Programmes

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Marianne is an engineer in international agro-development, specialising in tropical social forestry. She started out at Earthworm Foundation in 2008. She spent seven years working in Central Africa (Congo and Cameroon) where she set up the Centre of Social Excellence, and led social work and rural development projects with logging companies, palm oil plantations and sugar cane producers.

After working as our Cameroon Country Manager, she moved to Switzerland in 2015. She ran the Rurality programme for almost four years and led the relationship with cocoa members. As Director of Programmes, Marianne is focused on increasing impacts towards achieving the organisation’s vision in the countries where we work, by delivering high quality programmes and by forging links and increasing efficiency among them.

Rob McWilliam
Director, Technical Services

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A forester by background, Rob first worked with Earthworm Foundation back in 2001 when he helped forest companies improve management in East Kalimantan, Indonesia, whilst on placement from his degree in his native Australia. His passion for forests then took him to the Fiji Islands and Lao PDR, including time as a Senior Technical Advisor at WWF. Today Rob leads Earthworm Foundation’s global teams on all technical aspects of forest conservation, including standards for High Conservation Value and High Carbon Stock forest protection. He was also instrumental in developing the Starling satellite venture in partnership with Airbus.

Rob holds a Bachelor of Science with Forestry from the The Australian National University and a Master’s in Sustainability Leadership from Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership.

Jotica Sehgal
Director, Communications

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With a background in news broadcasting and video production, Jotica joined Earthworm Foundation as Director of Communications in 2016. She heads up the global communications team across all disciplines including brand, media relations, member and stakeholder relations and internal comms.

Before joining Earthworm Foundation, Jotica spent five years running her own video production company in New Delhi, India. Prior to that she worked for six years at CNN – India Broadcasting Network, where in roles ranging from Producer to Associate Features Editor she led teams of reporters and producers to create award-winning work. Jotica holds a Bachelor of Commerce from Delhi University and a MBA from Business School Lausanne.

Julien Troussier
Director, Human Resources

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Julien joined Earthworm in 2007 to lead the Finance & Human Resources (HR) department after several years working for Ernst & Young as an auditor and in the Commodity Trade Finance Department of BNP Paribas. Yet it is the human dimension of our work that most fascinated him from the very beginning.

Aside from his normal responsibilities as HR Director, Julien has a passion for group facilitation and creating spaces for dialogue and reflection within and outside Earthworm. He also likes to write about the essence of Earthworms' unique work and approach.

Julien holds a Master's in International Relations from the University of New South Wales in Australia, a Master's in Consulting and Coaching for Change from the University of Oxford and is a certified coach.

Charlotte Opal
Director, Memberships and Partnerships

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Charlotte is a firm believer in the power of companies and consumers to change the world through the products we buy. Throughout her career, she has worked with non-profit organisations helping companies implement responsible sourcing practices in a variety of sectors - from cocoa and bananas to biofuels to palm oil and seafood. Most recently she has been leading the Forest Conservation Fund, a Swiss non-profit founded by Earthworm Foundation which aims to make it easy for companies to protect forests in their supply chains and deliver truly “forest-positive” products. Charlotte earned her undergraduate degree in Economics at Wake Forest University, and her MBA and M.Phil in Development Studies while a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University.

Charlotte supports Earthworm’s relationship managers to deliver the transformation of supply chains through our work with Members and partners, to help businesses be a force for good for Nature and people.

Scott Poynton
Founder

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Scott founded Earthworm Foundation (then the Tropical Forest Trust) in 1999. His path was set 20 years earlier, when, as a 15-year-old in rural Australia, Scott heard a radio interview with forester and environmental activist Richard St Barbe Baker. From then on, Scott knew he wanted to become a forester.

In almost two decades as Chief Executive of Earthworm Foundation, Scott made the seemingly impossible possible, encouraging the leaders of some of the world’s most powerful plantation and agribusiness companies to make historic commitments to zero deforestation and exploitation, triggering meaningful, long-term change in their global supply chains. Today, Scott brings this experience to bear as Chief Inspiration Officer at his own consulting firm.

Scott holds a BSc in Forestry from The Australian National University and an MSc in Forestry from The University of Oxford, where he was awarded the Oxford Forestry Institute Jubilee Prize for Excellence.

www.scottpoynton.com