Meet the Team

PACT is made up of enthusiastic volunteers from across Penrith & Eden. We're from all walks of life, united by our shared passion for our environment.

Christine Sutherland

Role: Chair
Home turf: Penrith

Christine Sutherland

Christine is a life-long Quaker with a concern about what people are doing to the planet. She has lived in Penrith for nearly 40 years and has been a member of PACT since it started.

Christine was PACT's Secretary for many years and became Chair in 2023. Over the years she has been involved in projects focusing on buildings and energy, tree-planting, solar PV, electric vehicles and many more.

Christine teaches exercise classes and Scottish Country Dancing.

MORE ABOUT ME

Geoff Rockliffe-King

Role: Director
Home turf: Penrith

Geoff Rockliffe-King

Geoff is a long-standing member of the PACT Board. He has served as the lead director in
PACT’s role as one of seven delivery partners in the Zero Carbon
Cumbria project (2021-25), funded by the National Lottery.

He is keen on promoting and supporting any volunteer community initiatives to translate wishes into action.

Geoff brings to PACT experience of rural and community development policy and project design in the Global South. His work has focused on agricultural and rural livelihoods, poverty reduction, food and nutrition security as the basis of good health, sustainable natural resource management and related institutional development.

The life of PACT has mirrored the mounting international crises of the climate and environmental emergencies with emphasis on the need for renewable energy sources, the ending of reliance on fossil fuels and plastics, waste reduction and local food production.

MORE ABOUT ME

Ali Ross

Role: Director
Home turf: Matterdale

Ali Ross

Ali has a background in conservation and environmental campaigning, focusing for many years on the impacts of marine aquaculture and fisheries on wildlife and the environment.

Ali has lived in Eden since 1997. She and her husband set up the renewable energy company, Sundog Energy, which they ran for 20 years until the then government pulled the plug on funding for solar PV.

Since then, Ali helped to set up and continues to work with Penrith and Eden Refugee Network and has become increasingly active in PACT.

Her passions are practical nature restoration and campaigning on the climate crisis.

MORE ABOUT ME

Richard Waller

Role: Director
Home turf: Penrith

Dr Richard Waller

Richard is a geographer by background with a particular interest in glaciers and permafrost as the two key components of the Earth's cold environments. With over 30 years of field work experience in the Arctic, he's witnessed the accelerating impacts of climate change on these fragile environments first hand.

Richard works part-time as a senior lecturer at Keele University, where his teaching and research is increasingly focusing on climate solutions and the ways in which we can live and travel more sustainably. He is actively involved with Futureproof Cumbria (formerly Cumbria Action for Sustainability), with a focus on home retrofit and the promotion of electric vehicles and heat pumps.

MORE ABOUT ME

Anne-Marie Williams

Role: Director
Home turf: Stainton

Anne-Marie Williams

Anne-Marie became passionately interested in tackling climate change after watching Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth film in 2008, while she was working as a librarian in a school. She then went to work for ShareAction, the responsible investment charity, where her role was engaging large investors to take action on responsible investment issues, such as climate change and biodiversity loss. Anne-Marie had previous experience working in the finance industry.

She moved up to Cumbria in 2021 and since then has been actively involved in a number of local projects including Cumbria Divest, a campaign to persuade Cumbria Pension Scheme to divest their fossil fuel holdings. She helped set up Sustainable Stainton and sits on the Strategic Oversight Board of Zero Carbon Cumbria. She is also a trustee of the Penrith Swift Group and helped with a recent project to install Swift boxes on houses in Stainton. Any spare time is spent on gardening and nature restoration wherever possible!

MORE ABOUT ME

Taryn Lumley-Curtis

Role: Community Action Officer
Home turf: Great Salkeld

Taryn

Taryn has recently graduated from a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Ethics and has gone straight into the role of Community Action Officer for PACT, following many years volunteering with Penrith Repair Café and North Lakes Extinction Rebellion. She has always been passionate about helping other people to understand the environment, and the importance of protecting our natural world.

Taryn grew up in and around Eden and is determined to make a change in the place she cares about most.

MORE ABOUT ME

Virginia Taylor

Role: Director
Home turf: Penrith

Virginia Taylor

Virginia was involved in the initial setting up of PACT (Senior Lectureship in university took her elsewhere for a few years) then again as Director until 2019. Then the ambitious Climate Emergency Declaration planned to launch the new administration at Eden District Council became reality. The 4 party alliance made a meaningful contribution to carbon reduction in through those 4 years, not least Voreda House which is ‘the first council office retrofit to the EnerPHit standard in the UK and offers valuable lessons for similar typologies’. https://ggbec.co.uk/portfolio/voreda-house-the-uks-first-council-office-enerphit/ . Virginia hopes her local government experience will enable PACT to press buttons to make significant carbon reduction changes locally. Her PhD thesis is ‘Ballerinas in the Church Hall’, she teaches Tai Chi, Feldenkrais, and does some dancing still.

MORE ABOUT ME

A woman wearing a cycling helmet and glasses smiles.

Bethany Redmayne

Role: Secretary
Home turf: Penrith

Bethany Redmayne

With a professional background focused on nature recovery and nature-based solutions, Beth began her career as a grower on regenerative farms in Cambridge and South Cumbria. Here she learnt about alternative approaches to farming and was instrumental in the redesign of these sites toward improved practices, sparking an interest in the power of designing alongside natural systems.

This experience led Beth to pursue a career as a Landscape Architect, involving the design and planning of diverse environmental, residential, and public realm projects across the UK—from quarry restorations and large-scale green infrastructure to active travel networks and community growing spaces. She is passionate about the vital role landscape plays in climate adaptation.

Beth relocated to Penrith in 2023 and is keen to have a positive impact on the local landscape for people, planet, and nature. Having nearly completed the renovation of her home, including full energy-efficiency retrofit, she is now most often found volunteering on local conservation projects.

MORE ABOUT ME

Contributors

Here are just a few of the folk who support our work in various ways – from giving talks at our events to contributing articles for our website.