VARDA - Key Persons
Elaine Lawrence joined the Varda Group in 2004 as a director following a successful and varied career in Greenpeace. In her 26 years with Greenpeace Elaine worked as a campaigner, international campaign co-ordinator, campaign director of both Greenpeace UK and Greenpeace International, Chair of the Board of Greenpeace Sweden and Greenpeace UK, Deputy Executive Director and acting Communications Director of Greenpeace International.
Elaine brings to the Varda Group and its clients outstanding skills in meeting facilitation, crisis management, strategy development, evaluation and governance oversight. Her experience in organisational change and management processes include the rebuilding of basic departmental systems at Greenpeace International during her time as Campaign Director; oversight of approximately half of Greenpeace International's operations as Deputy Executive Director and a central role during a major re-organisation of Greenpeace International in 2003.
Since joining the Varda Group she has worked with numerous Varda Group clients, providing a range of services:
Preparation and facilitation of international meetings including annual general assemblies, executive and campaign strategy planning meetings, focussed groups, etc.
Project and campaign evaluations
Workshops applying tools for campaign strategy development
Advice and coordination of organisational change initiatives, both design and implementation
Job Titles:
- Founding Director
- Senior Advisor
Kelly Rigg is a founding director of The Varda Group. She has been leading high-profile international campaigns for more than 30 years including on climate, energy, ocean, Antarctica and many other issues. Kelly specializes in project management, coordination and communications in relation to large international projects.
As a senior advisor to, and later Executive Director (2009-2014) of the Global Call for Climate Action, she led a major international alliance campaigning for a fair, ambitious and binding global climate agreement. She also coordinated (2004 - 2009) the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, made up of more than 60 NGOs worldwide, campaigning to achieve a UN General Assembly moratorium on high seas bottom trawling.
She worked for Greenpeace off and on for 20 years. She led Greenpeace International's campaign on the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002, with a focus on climate change and renewable energy. She also led Greenpeace's successful international campaign to save Antarctica (1986-1990), combining a political campaign with field expeditions and the establishment of a scientific base on the ice. During this time she represented Greenpeace at the UN.
Kelly began campaigning for the environment in 1982, working for Greenpeace USA against offshore oil drilling when the Reagan Administration planned to open virtually the entire US continental shelf to oil development. In 1984 she became the organisation's wildlife campaign director.
As a Varda Director, Kelly is frequently asked to provide services in the following areas:
Campaign strategy development and training
Communications strategy development and training
Meeting facilitation
Campaign and programme evaluation
Campaign, project and event management
Rémi is a veteran of the international environmental movement which he joined at a young age in 1974 when he began working with Friends of the Earth in France. Since that time he has been both an actor and a witness of the evolution of environmental advocacy and policy.
Early on, Rémi was a founding member of Greenpeace International, a crew member and campaign leader during the first legendary voyages of the Rainbow Warrior in the 1970s and early 80s (watch French TV documentary here). He established in the 70s and 80s the Greenpeace offices in France, Spain and Latin America, and played a leading role in many of Greenpeace's campaigns, and in setting up Greenpeace International's Strategic and Political Unit which he led as Greenpeace International's Political Director, until he left that position at the end of 2002 to form the Varda Group with Kelly Rigg.
Over his four decades as an environmental advocate, Rémi has worked with leaders, government ministers, scientists, activists, and policy experts, developing a deep knowledge in the areas of sustainable development, environmental policy, public health, marine policy, toxic pollution prevention, nuclear proliferation, among others. Rémi was the main architect of the worldwide prohibition on the dumping at sea of nuclear and industrial wastes, a landmark campaign he ran over fifteen years.
With the Varda Group, Rémi develops projects and campaigns on behalf of a variety of clients and partners, covering areas as diverse as ocean governance and marine policy, climate action, tobacco control, bees and pollinators conservation, whale conservation, anti-corruption, human dignity, etc. He has also served on the delegations of several governments and organizations at numerous international policy fora, within and outside the United Nations system. In 2005, he proposed to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) to organize the first World Assembly on Labour and the Environment held in Nairobi in January 2006, and which gave rise to the creation of UNEP's Green Jobs initiative.
Rémi was one of the initial thinkers who helped conceptualize and establish the Global Ocean Commission and, as its Deputy Executive Secretary has advised the Commissioners, coordinated the policy development and evolution of their roadmap to ocean recovery and helped to deliver on its outcomes.