Careers in Conservation: Chief Executive Officer
The Careers in Conservation: Below the Surface series takes a deep dive into the variety of job roles available within the conservation sector. In this article, Project Seagrass CEO Dr Leanne Cullen-Unsworth shares her experiences and the route she took to a career in conservation. What does it take to move from studying biology to leading a conservation charity? For Leanne Cullen-Unsworth, the route was neither quick nor linear. It included supermarket shifts, unpaid research, fieldwork in Indonesia, academic posts in Australia and Wales, and many years spent building Project Seagrass before her role became paid. In this career profile, Leanne reflects honestly on that journey and explains why experience, curiosity, and an understanding of people are every bit as important as formal qualifications. My current role What is your role at Project Seagrass? I am Chief Executive Officer and a charity co-founder of Project Seagrass. I became CEO in 2024, having previously served as a Director and original Trustee helping to build our organisation over many years. What does the role involve? My responsibility is to lead Project Seagrass in achieving its mission to save the World’s seagrass. That means setting and holding the strategic direction of the organisation, working with our executive team and Board, overseeing delivery and organisational development, and ensuring that we remain financially sustainable. At present, fundraising is a significant part of my work because securing income is fundamental to keeping our team together and sustaining the long-term programmes we have worked so hard to build. I also represent Project Seagrass externally. This includes advocating for seagrass with governments and decision-makers, building partnerships, speaking at events, working with funders, and contributing to media interviews. No two days are quite the same: I can move from budgets and people decisions to scientific strategy, policy discussions and public communications, within a few hours. What skills are most useful in your role? The most useful skill is being able to see how different parts of an organisation and a wider system connect. I need to understand the science, but also people, finance, policy, communications, partnerships, and delivery. Clear communication matters enormously, as does listening well and being able to make decisions when the information is incomplete. Resilience, adaptability, and persistence are also essential. Conservation rarely progresses in a straight line. Funding can be uncertain, policy change can be slow, and ecological recovery takes time. You have to keep sight of the long-term goal while responding sensibly to what is in front of you. Is fieldwork still part of your job? Much less than it once was. As CEO, most of my time is now spent leading the organisation, securing its future, and creating the conditions in which our specialists can do their best work. I still visit our restoration sites and Nursery, take part in field activities when I can, and value time spent with the people delivering the work. Staying connected to what happens on the ground is important, but my role in enabling that work is now usually more valuable than being the person doing it. What do you enjoy most? I enjoy seeing ideas turn into lasting action: research becoming practical restoration, a conversation developing into a partnership, or years of evidence beginning to influence policy. Most of all, I enjoy working with people who care deeply about the same mission. Watching our team grow in confidence and capability, and seeing communities become part of seagrass recovery, is hugely rewarding. What are the greatest challenges? The constant challenge is balancing ambition with capacity and financial reality. The need is enormous, but a charity cannot do everything at once. Leading well means making difficult choices, protecting the team from unsustainable pressure, and ensuring that growth does not come at the expense of quality or our values. There is also a deeper challenge in conservation: ecological problems cannot be solved through ecology alone. Effective recovery requires changes in policy, practice, finance and behaviour, and it must make sense to the people who live and work alongside these habitats. Leanne hosting the UK Seagrass Symposium 2025. Photo credit Bobbie Lee Leanne collects seagrass seeds in Porthdinllaen as part of a Philanthropy Day. Photo credit Charles Bagshaw The route to Project Seagrass What is your educational background? I completed a BSc in Biological Sciences with honours in Marine Biology at Newcastle University, followed by an MSc in Marine Environmental Protection at Bangor University. My PhD was completed through Essex University and my research focused on marine resource dependence and patterns of resource use within a small-island community on Kaledupa in Indonesia. That work taught me to look at marine ecosystems as social–ecological systems: people are not external to nature, but a critical part of the system we are trying to understand and support. We are nature! Which roles and experiences led you here? My first relevant experience was an unpaid work placement at Anglesey Sea Zoo in 1994. While studying for my undergraduate degree, I worked on a supermarket checkout during every holiday to help fund my time at university. That job may not look relevant on a conservation CV, but it taught me reliability, communication, and the value of turning up and doing the work. After my master’s degree, I took an unpaid graduate research position at Bangor University on a hydrothermal-vent mussel growth project in the Azores. I later worked as a graduate consultant evaluating a marine EU Erasmus exchange project, supported by a stipend, and later in a paid bathing-water assessment role with the Environment Agency. I also spent time working as a divemaster in Antigua. It was poorly paid and not a role I enjoyed, but it was useful: it made me absolutely certain that I wanted to return to science and conservation. I then joined the Operation Wallacea marine science team in Indonesia, supervising undergraduate dissertation projects and running Reef Check and whale-watch surveys. I continued to work with the team while completing my PhD. After my PhD, I became a Postdoctoral Research