Helen leads the National Farmers’ Union’s policy and advocacy work on agricultural and horticultural science and research, biotechnology and data, and food safety on behalf of the NFU’s 46,000 farmer and grower member business in England and Wales.
Based at NFU HQ in Warwickshire, she leads a policy team covering farm safety, skills and training, transport and machinery, labour and employment.
As well as being a non-executive Director of the NIAB Board, Helen is chair of the Crop Science Centre Alliance Board; a member of Defra’s Precision Breeding Working Group and of many other groups in the agrifood and research community.
Helen has an academic background in environment and human health, epidemiology and environmental science. Before joining the NFU in 2004, she was a research scientist at Imperial College London, working on probabilistic modelling of dietary exposure to pesticides.