WBI - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Director of Community Engagement

Anita David is a community educator, with over 25 years of teaching experience and many years of experience of working and volunteering within the charity sector. She received Portsmouth's Inspiring Volunteer Award in 2018, for her wide range of volunteer work in the community. These include volunteering as an ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) teacher for refugees and asylum seekers, as well as coordinator and interpreter for the British Red Cross, Portsmouth. Anita has worked collaboratively with various local organisations and community groups to facilitate volunteering events and opportunities for refugees and asylum seekers, for social integration. This Action Asylum project was launched as a national initiative in the House of Lords in October 2022. She is known in the community for her long-standing support of vulnerable women from the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) community. During the COVID lockdowns in the UK, Anita organised free remote ESOL classes and conversation clubs for refugees and other vulnerable migrants to facilitate support for the migrant population, including one conversation club with Bonny (see our origin story for WBI). These forums were important for local charities to understand the needs of the local migrant community, which went through much hardship out of sight during the pandemic. Currently, Anita is also the development and outreach coordinator for the WEA (Workers Educational Association). Anita works with stakeholders to develop education provision in new areas of Portsmouth. Anita has an MA in Education from University of Roehampton London and an MA in International Relations from the University of Karachi. She is passionate about community service, volunteering and community learning. Anita draws on her vast experience of living and working with people of all backgrounds.

Job Titles:

• Executive Director
• Researcher
• ESG Analyst and Consultant for International Businesses
• Research Fellow

Dr. Bonny Ling is a researcher and practitioner with a background in human rights and development. She has worked as an environmental, social and governance (ESG) analyst and consultant for international businesses keen to make a positive social and environmental impact. Her professional background includes international public service with the UN in various field assignments (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cyprus and Liberia) and with international civil society. She also served as an international election observer in East Timor and later also for the OSCE in Kosovo and the Republic of Georgia. Bonny has studied and worked on combatting human trafficking since it was first defined in international law in 2000. Bonny holds a Ph.D in Law from the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland Galway, an M.Phil in Criminology from the University of Cambridge and an MA in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School, Tufts University. She also has a BSc in Ecology from the University of Georgia, reflecting her longstanding interest in environmental ethics. She worked at the Centre for Human Rights Studies at the University of Zurich in Switzerland from 2014-2019, including serving as the Programme Director of the Summer School "Business and Human Rights: Interdisciplinary Challenges and Opportunities" for postgraduate students. Bonny is a Research Fellow with the international think tank Institute for Human Rights and Business. Her academic affiliations include Research Fellow at the International Center for Cultural Studies, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University in Taiwan; and Senior Non-Resident Fellow with the University of Nottingham Taiwan Research Hub. She is based in south England and works with local charities, businesses and academic institutes to advance the vision of SDG 8 of inclusive and sustainable economic growth and decent work. Bonny writes regularly on human rights, migrants, business responsibilities and international law and is a contributing writer for Ketagalan Media, New Bloom Magazine, Taipei Times, Taiwan Insight and The News Lens. She enjoys having broad and deep conversations, where ideas flow and one never stops learning! Research professional with a background in human rights and development. Bonny has worked as an ESG analyst and consultant for international businesses keen to make a positive social and environmental impact. Her background includes working with the UN and international civil society.

Job Titles:

• Professor of Food, Climate and Society
• Researcher at York University

Professor Sarah Bridle is a transdisciplinary researcher at York University driven by the need to tackle climate change, focusing on a quantitative approach to helping transform food systems to steward change to new kinds of futures. Sarah's current research focuses on synthesising, exploring and effectively communicating environmental and nutrition impacts of different dietary options, with the aim of driving changes in food production methods and portfolios to be healthy for people and planet. Sarah founded the Take a Bite out of Climate Change project, including leading a stand at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition 2019. Sarah has a unique combination of expertise including interpreting large data sets using statistical methods, with a degree in Natural Sciences and a PhD in astrophysics from the University of Cambridge (2000), and statistical cosmology research in France (2000-2001), Cambridge (2001-2004), UCL London (2004-2012), Manchester (2013-2021) and York (2021-). She is the author of more than a hundred peer-refereed publications with over 10,000 citations, and holds many prestigious awards, including a Royal Society University Research Fellowship, the Royal Astronomical Society's Fowler Award and ERC Starting and Consolidator Grants. She is also the author of the book, Food and Climate Change - Without the Hot Air, published in September 2020 by UIT Cambridge.

Job Titles:

• Community Development Officer in Portsmouth
• HEALTH INEQUALITIES LEAD at PORTSMOUTH HOSPITALS UNIVERSITY NHS

Shipa is a community development officer in Portsmouth, with over 20 years of experience in community work. Working with the local authority she helps professionals, volunteers and community groups to foster social inclusion. Her work has focused on empowerment, creating resources for the mental health and wellbeing of the local Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) community. Shipa brings together various groups - vulnerable or otherwise - through organised events, workshops, and big projects. She is especially focused on the importance of building partnership and long-term trust with the community, especially with hard-to-reach and marginalised groups. Shipa has worked in education, mental health and community development, managing teams and setting up new projects. Having worked with vulnerable youth in the fostering system and people with complex mental health needs. She routinely delivers training in intercultural communication and mental health and wellbeing. She is the current Vice Chair of Portsmouth Bangladesh Business Association, supporting trade, investment, and education to Bangladesh, with future focus on start-ups and female entrepreneurship. She has research experience in working with the University of Portsmouth, School of Health Sciences and Social Work as well as the University of Lancashire. As well as mental health research projects she has contributed to a study examining dementia patients and their family carers amongst the Bangladeshi community in England. In addition to her professional community work, Shipa's personal volunteer activities have included regularly feeding the local homeless communities by working with local businesses and others to co-ordinate donations of hot food and services and sending charitable donations to communities abroad facing natural disasters and escalations of violence.

Job Titles:

• Legal Researcher
• Project Researcher

Wen-Chi Chang is a legal researcher and a recent graduate of law from the top-ranked School of Law at the National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University in Hsinchu, Taiwan. Wen-Chi's master thesis, "A Study on Legislation of Mandatory Human Rights Due Diligence Prohibiting Forced Labor: Focusing on EU Proposal for a Directive on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence," was jointly supervised by Professor Yu-fan Chiu and Dr. Bonny Ling of WBI. Her thesis won the prestigious Thesis Award in International Law from the Taiwanese Society of International law in December 2023. In addition to her law degree, Wen-Chi has a BA in Interdisciplinary Program of Humanities and Social Science from Taiwan's National Tsing Hua University in 2019. She worked in Mirror Fiction, a Taiwanese publishing platform, as an Administrative Editor from 2019-2020. While studying in law school, Wen-Chi worked as a research assistant in projects on topics as varied as: citizen magistrates, labour rights, citizenship and inequalities, forced labour, citizen judge system and the platform work. In 2023, Wen-Chi and Prof. Yu-fan Chiu jointly published an article, titled "Subordination Test Under Digital Managerial Control for Platform Couriers: With Reference to Recent Developments in the Legal System of the EU and Its Member States."