We are very pleased to share with you that Nigel Clarke has joined our Board of Trustees. Nigel recently retired as a designer having worked at Heathrow for 20 years as a manager of branding, wayfinding and signage. He helped build Terminal 5 and Terminal 2 which he now uses as a passenger but he says it’s a job you never retire from as you’re always looking at signage!

Before Heathrow, Nigel worked for design and advertising agencies where he first met charity Founder Philip Holmes over 30 years ago and worked on his charity branding at that time. He has a keen interest in walking, including in Nepal where has trekked to Annapurna base camp. At the end of last year he visited Pipal Tree’s work in Janakpur and Kathmandu. He has joined Philip on several of his annual charity walks in the UK, acting as a very willing Sherpa!

Nigel comes from a long line of distinguished British Army relatives including many who served in the Gurkhas. His youngest son, Sam, hopes to follow in forebears footsteps by joining the Army after graduation. Sam is one of Nigel’s five children, so, family and community are important to him and that side of Pipal Tree’s work particularly resonates with him.

Nigel can turn his hand to many things that will be useful to the growth of Pipal Tree at this juncture. These include branding, business development, corporate relations, events and challenges and our growing focus on encouraging transformative gifts in Wills. But, more specifically, few will be as well placed as Nigel to advise on how we present our environmental projects in Nepal from a signage and story-telling perspective. He is particularly interested in contributing towards showcasing our Gurkha Memorial Forest to the public.

Recently, Nigel discovered that one of his Gurkha forebears, Nick Neill MC, was company commander for an attack on Japanese positions in Burma in 1945, during which one of his men, Bhanbhagta Gurung, won the Victoria Cross. Bhanbhagta’s heroism will be commemorated at our twelfth Gurkha Memorial Forest cluster (GMF-12) and it’s appropriate that Nigel will be able to advise on the signage!