Helen leads the National Farmers’ Union’s policy and advocacy work on agricultural and horticultural science and research, biotechnology, data, and food safety, on behalf of the NFU’s 55,000 members in England and Wales. Based at NFU HQ in Warwickshire, she leads a policy team covering plant health and crop protection, farm safety, skills and training, transport, labour and employment.
Helen is also chair of the Agrimetrics Advisory Board and is a member of many other boards and panels in the agrifood and research community including the UKRI Joint Programme Advisory Group; Food and Drink Sector Council Executive Management Committee; the Defra R&D Innovation Stakeholder Panel; the Crop Innovation Network; the Institute of Food Science and Technology External Advisory Group; and the Nuffield Council on Bioethics working group on livestock genome-editing.
Before joining the NFU in 2004, Helen was a research scientist at Imperial College London, working on probabilistic modelling of dietary exposure to pesticides. She has an academic background in environment and human health, epidemiology and environmental science.