New chair for major Scottish grantmaker

“Over the course of my career, it has become clear that we cannot solve social, economic and environmental problems separately.”

Foundation Scotland has welcomed a new chairman following the departure of Barry Sillers after eight years.

Mamta Patel has been a Grantmaker Trustee for three years and has extensive professional and personal experience that she will bring to her new role.

As a first-generation immigrant to the UK from Kenya, part of an Indian Gujarati family, her life choices were shaped by issues of poverty, race, class, culture, equality and inclusion.

She said: “My family’s journey has given me a global perspective, while our culture and everything I have learned through my work has given me a great respect for the natural environment for its spiritual significance and as the ultimate provider of essential resources.

“The thread of my life experience has been the vital importance of information, communication and connections in determining people’s destinies. Consequently, my career is in social and environmental journalism.”

Mamta has spent 14 years writing for The ENDS Report, a respected British environmental magazine specializing in global issues and corporate social responsibility responses to environmental issues.

In 2007, she co-founded Chemical Watch, a global B2B digital publication that provided informative journalism challenging and supporting businesses and regulators to improve the safety of products for human health and the environment. By the time of the sale, the staff had grown from two to more than 75.

In 2021 she moved to Scotland, near Ullapool in the north-west Highlands, an area she was introduced to by her husband and his father, a geologist who knew and loved the area and inspired three generations of the family to visit it annually and now live here .

That same year, she not only became a trustee of the Scotland Foundation, but also joined the Lochbroom and Ullapool Community Trust, which she now also chairs. At the same time, she works shifts at Ullapool Youth Space and provides mentoring and personal development coaching. She founded a social enterprise to run the community festival ‘Ulluminate’ to showcase skills and talent in the field and provide work experience for young people.

She and her husband support local families and restore a small area of ​​intensively grazed land to achieve a combination of carbon sequestration and optimizing biodiversity.

Reflecting on her experience, Mamta said, “Through my career and personal challenges, it has become abundantly clear that the growth we need lies in deepening our understanding that we cannot solve social, economic and environmental problems in isolation.

“The inconstancy and politics of hatred we see around us is a consequence of a lack of understanding of this. I’m proud of Foundation Scotland’s commitment to finding and tackling the root causes of the problems we see in communities.

“This will require communities, charities, the private sector and government to work together in new ways to rethink how we achieve sustainability and protect what we value. I believe Foundation Scotland is well positioned to forge such a partnership.”

Serving trustees Sharon Fairweather and Lesley Rance became vice-chairs of the board to support Mamta, along with Toby Anstruther, who was vice-chair for five years.

Foundation Scotland has also welcomed five new trustees to its board. They are Deborah Paton, Susan Murray, Carlos Miranda, Mairi Mikel and Kim Atkinson.