Meet the team.
The National Retrofit Hub is led by a small, experienced team with backgrounds across the built environment, policy, research, and community engagement. We are committed to improving how retrofit works in practice and motivated by the difference it can make to people’s everyday lives.
As a Community Interest Company, the NRH operates for public benefit. Governance and oversight are provided by an experienced Board of non-executive directors.
Day-to-day leadership sits with the Co-Directors, who guide strategy and delivery. They are supported by a wider team of specialists, collaborators, and volunteers who contribute to the development of research, working groups, and sector engagement.
Meet the National Retrofit HUB FOUNDING Board.
Lynne Sullivan OBE.
BOARD CHAIR - NATIONAL RETROFIT HUB
Lynne Sullivan is an architect, design consultant and visiting professor. She is a design advisor for RIBA competitions, the Design Council, and for local and national design commissions and review panels, including Design Commission for Wales.
Lynne authors and chairs research projects for policy advice on the sustainable built environment, including “A Low Carbon Building Standards Strategy for Scotland” and outputs for the Zero Carbon Hub 2009-2015.
She chaired RIBA’s Sustainable Futures Committee 2014-2017 and was RIBA Climate Change Ambassador for COP21 Paris. She chairs the Buildings Mission 2030 Taskgroup for CLC’s Green Construction Board, which she represented on the UKGBC 2021 Whole Life Carbon Roadmap Steering Group. Lynne is a board member of the Passivhaus Trust and chairs the Good Homes Alliance.
David Adams.
BOARD MEMBER - NATIONAL RETROFIT HUB
David Adams has a broad base of experience in retrofit, new home building, manufacturing and policy. He is strategic advisor to the Future Homes Hub, a director of the Good Homes Alliance, and advises the UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) and the Energy Efficiency Infrastructure Group (EEIG).
David shares his expertise in low energy building and manufacturing to help housebuilders, and the construction industry generally, to deliver net zero homes at scale.
Brian Berry.
BOARD MEMBER - NATIONAL RETROFIT HUB
Jon Bootland.
BOARD MEMBER - NATIONAL RETROFIT HUB
Jon Bootland is director of the Sustainable Development Foundation (SD Foundation), which aims to drive the UK property and construction industries towards exemplary sustainability practices. The SD Foundation was recently recognised as a United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) International Centre of Excellence for High Performance Buildings. He is also chief executive of the Passivhaus Trust, which is the official body for promoting and protecting the Passivhaus standard in the UK.
Through the SD Foundation, Jon was the founding director of the Good Homes Alliance (GHA) and has helped to develop the Alliance for Sustainable Building Products (ASBP), the Building Performance Network (BPN), the Sustainable Traditional Buildings Alliance (STBA) and the SuperHomes Network. He has also led other projects on sustainable schools and healthcare buildings.
Simon McWhirter.
BOARD MEMBER - NATIONAL RETROFIT HUB
David Pinder.
BOARD MEMBER - NATIONAL RETROFIT HUB
Russell Smith.
BOARD MEMBER - NATIONAL RETROFIT HUB
Russell Smith has been at the forefront of recognising the need for the building industry to transform all existing homes as part of the UK’s drive to meet it’s net zero carbon targets.
Russell is a Chartered Civil Engineer, founder and managing director of Parity Projects, and founder and managing director of RetrofitWorks. He brings a wealth of experience to the drive toward a National Retrofit Programme and is co-author of the National Retrofit Strategy proposal issued by the Construction Leadership Council in 2021.
Meet the National Retrofit Hub Co-Directors.
Rachael Owens.
Co-Director, National Retrofit Hub
Rachael is an architect and has experience designing and delivering commercial and residential retrofit projects. Her previous role was at Buckley Gray Yeoman, a practice that champions retrofit and adaptive reuse, where she led the response to sustainable and regenerative design, supporting projects to develop and implement strategies to reduce embodied carbon, material use, operational energy and to enhance biodiversity and user wellbeing.
Rachael sits on the New London Architecture Retrofit and Conservation expert panel and is a WELL accredited professional. She was named 2021 RIBA Journal Rising Star for her work in practice to communicate sustainable design and within the Architects Climate Action Network to campaign for the regulation of embodied carbon emissions.
In 2023 she joined the RIBA Stirling Prize jury as the sustainability expert and in 2024, she won the AJ100 Sustainability Leader of the Year award.
Sara Edmonds.
Co-Director, National Retrofit Hub
Sara Edmonds is an architect and activist. She co-founded Home Energy Action Lab (HEAL) a framework test bed for community based domestic retrofit services. She is a director of Studio seARCH, a consultancy that advocates for systemic change around low carbon domestic retrofit.
Previously she spent 3 years as head of Citizen Engagement at Built Environment – Smarter Transformation, the innovation centre for the built environment in Scotland, 3 years as a coordinator at the Architects Climate Action Network, and a year as social housing associate at the Passivhaus Trust.
Working in the face of a climate emergency, the focus of Sara’s work is to drive essential change in the built environment and wider communities through connecting bottom-up, grassroots projects and top-down strategies and initiatives. Collaboration is a fundamental part of this work.
Meet the National Retrofit Hub Internal Team.
Rachel Hayden.
Head of Marketing & Communications – National Retrofit Hub
Ben White.
Senior Marketing Executive – National Retrofit Hub
Talisa Denny.
Project Coordinator – National Retrofit Hub
Talisa is a geographic researcher and graduated with an MSc in Human Geography: Society and Space. Interested in the collective imagination and practice of alternative futures, she specialises in political ecology, spatial theory, environmental policy, and post-growth. Her thesis explored post-growth perspectives on Critical Raw Materials, through the role of Cornish lithium mining in the UKs low-carbon transition.
She has experience producing policy relevant research, often focusing on ethical material supply chains in low carbon transition. She also worked as a seminar leader at the University of Bristol, leading seminars on Sustainable Development.
More recently, she volunteered with Dorset Community Energy to research the role of natural materials in reducing embodied carbon emissions in retrofit and strengthening local economic resilience. She is inspired by community and place-based approaches which contribute to shared and just governance of energy systems.
MEET THE NATIONAL RETROFIT HUB CONTRIBUTORS.
NRH commissions and collaborates with experts across a range of disciplines to deliver our work.
Chris Gaskell.
Amy Isted.
Jo Taylor.
Kate Simpson.
Jason King.
In memory of Jess Sherlock.
Jess Sherlock was an integral part of the team during the early stages of the National Retrofit Hub. She played an important role in helping bring the organisation together and supporting the launch of the NRH’s work.
Jess sadly passed away in 2023. She is remembered with great respect and gratitude for the energy, care and commitment she brought to her work. Her contribution remains part of the foundations on which the NRH continues to build.