The Impact Files

Ned Wells
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Each episode of The Impact Files podcast explores the personal stories and leadership challenges behind meeting a business’s near-term financial needs, while creating lasting wellbeing for people and planet. We examine the roles that marketing, media and communications play in shaping trust, demand and impact. Our objective is to provide insight and encouragement for business leaders on a purpose-led journey, showing how financial performance can be aligned with long-term sustainability. Hosted by Ned Wells alongside a sustainability expert co-host, each episode features one guest: an experienced decision-maker in either a ‘green brand’ – founded as purpose-led – or an ‘amber brand’ – not founded as purposeful but now on the journey.

  1. 6d ago

    S3 E9, 'Best at being human': building trust in environmental consultancy, Jon Berry, Tyler Grange

    Our guest Jon Berry’s personal story shines through everything he does as Managing Director of environmental consultancy Tyler Grange, which he co-founded 15 years ago.  The phrase ‘origin story’ is overused, but Jon’s reflection on his experience of being born prematurely with low survival odds, has instilled in him a deep sense of purpose and giving back. Inspired by a passionate geography teacher, Jon determined to pursue landscape architecture, kickstarting his career with a creative, self-made CV road trip that landed multiple job offers. A later period of burnout and isolation, after working for a large PLC where culture and purpose had eroded, became a turning point, motivating him to build a workplace centred on wellbeing, trust and community. What began as a desire to ‘enjoy work again’ has grown into a 130-person business focused on ecology, arboriculture, landscape planning and green infrastructure,  helping clients navigate planning while restoring nature. Tyler Grange operates a triple balance sheet for people, planet and profit. A certified B Corp, it uses the framework to improve accountability and reshape its supply chain towards ethical providers (e.g., Honest Mobile; refugee-led soap makers in Orkney), while introduction of a four-day work week has increased productivity and reduced sick leave significantly, demonstrating how purpose-led initiatives can drive commercial performance. Culture is key: a ‘loud leadership’ model encourages all voices, while recruitment focuses on storytelling (‘ditch the CV, recruit a human’). The business invests heavily in wellbeing support and transparent communication, including open financial discussions and visible strategy. Jon also leads The Kindness Forecast, a social experiment linking small acts of kindness to wider behavioural change. Jon cites among his influences The Second Mountain by David Brooks, and the work done by ‘nature on the board’ pioneers Faith in Nature. Visit Tyler Grange  at: https://tylergrange.co.uk/ Connect with Jon at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-berry-65816510/

    S3 E9, 'Best at being human': building trust in environmental consultancy, Jon Berry, Tyler Grange

  2. Jul 13

    S3 E8, Peppermint and purpose: blending craft, nature and regeneration, with Jo Colman, Summerdown

    Our guest this episode is Jo Colman, Chief Mint Officer at Summerdown, and fourth-generation member of the family to steward their farm near Basingstoke, Hampshire. Jo’s career is rooted in heritage and reinvention: his grandfather, the last family member involved in Colman’s Mustard, revived the long‑lost Black Mitcham peppermint variety in the UK after sourcing cuttings from US growers. What began as a half‑tennis‑court‑sized experiment has grown into around 100 acres of single‑estate peppermint, the foundation of Summerdown’s award‑winning chocolates, teas, bodycare and home fragrance. Jo describes Summerdown as ‘the peppermint people’, but the business is far more than a brand. It is a vertically integrated farm‑to‑product operation: the team grows, harvests and distils peppermint on site, alongside chamomile, lavender and cereals. Their oats are produced through a nature‑positive partnership with Jordans, requiring wildflower margins and land set aside for biodiversity. Manufacturing is carried out by long‑term UK partners before products return to the farm for fulfilment and distribution. A defining theme of Jo’s leadership is the idea of ‘right‑sized growth’. He likens it to an oak tree: expansive in its early years, then regenerative rather than extractive once mature. Summerdown’s strategy focuses on cutting carbon, connecting people with place, and cultivating natural stewardship - an approach reflected in its 75 km of hedgerows, rare wildflowers, and the return of species such as stone curlew. When a long‑standing manufacturing partner collapsed, Summerdown faced a choice between cheaper commodity chocolate and a higher‑quality single‑origin chocolate from a fellow B Corp. The latter reduced margins but strengthened ethics, flavour and carbon performance—an easy decision once viewed through their value lens. Two themes stand out: Jo’s belief that place is the heart of the brand, and his conviction that regenerative business requires taking the harder, longer‑term path to create shared value for land, people and partners. Visit Summerdown at: https://summerdown.com/ Connect with Jo at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jo-c0/

    S3 E8, Peppermint and purpose: blending craft, nature and regeneration, with Jo Colman, Summerdown

  3. Jul 1

    S3 E7, Changing your pants and changing the world, with Sarah Jordan, Y.O.U. Underwear

    Sarah Jordan, our guest this week, is the founder and CEO of Y.O.U Underwear, an ethical underwear brand created in 2016. Her mission? ‘Changing the world, one pair of pants at a time’! While volunteering with the Uganda International Marathon, Sarah discovered that girls were missing up to 25% of their education because they didn’t own a pair of underwear. The realisation that something many of us take for granted  ‘has such an impact if you don’t have it’ became the catalyst for her work. Sarah’s background is in the charity sector, including at Oxfam and the MS Society. Once she began researching how underwear is made, she was confronted with fashion’s toxic supply chains — pesticides, pollution, and widespread exploitation. She refused to ‘solve one problem and create another’, and built Y.O.U Underwear on a different foundation: Fairtrade‑certified organic cotton, SEDEX‑audited factories, and a commitment to paying everyone in the supply chain properly. Y.O.U. operates a clear buy‑one‑give‑one model, donating each purchased pair through Smalls for All, to vulnerable women and girls in the UK and across Africa. Some collections also support communities in Kenya and Tanzania, and a pink range raises funds for breast cancer charities. A defining theme in Sarah’s story is her personal and financial commitment. She has bootstrapped the business entirely, working freelance for years and returning to paid work recently. Stock purchase requires up-front spend, with Fairtrade cotton minimums and long lead times. Growth has been slow by design, but steady: Y.O.U Underwear now has a shop in Oxford, a second opening in Brighton in summer 2026, and annual turnover of around £350–370k, with over 10,000 pairs of underwear sold last year. Sarah’s experience shows that slow fashion is structurally hard — but for her, doing things fairly is ‘the only way she can sleep at night’, and the only way business should be done. Visit Y.O.U. at: https://www.youunderwear.com/ Connect with Sarah at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahbjordan/

    S3 E7, Changing your pants and changing the world, with Sarah Jordan, Y.O.U. Underwear

  4. Jun 30

    S3 E6, Balancing AI and humanity, with Sophie Howe, Comtec Translations

    Our guest this episode is Sophie Howe, CEO of Comtec Translations. Comtec was established in 1981 by Sophie’s mother, Dr Isabella Moore. The company was sold at one point, but Sophie and her husband later bought it back, and have led it together since 2007. Today, Comtec operates with an internal team of 16 project managers and a global network of around 4,000 linguists, reflecting both the breadth of languages they cover and the depth of subject‑matter expertise required. Sophie’s route into leadership has been shaped by a long‑standing belief in the value of cultural understanding and human expertise. Comtec provides localisation and translation services across more than 200 languages, working with clients in B2B and B2C sectors, as well as creative, marketing and learning agencies. Sophie believes localisation is about creating an experience that “really resonates and connects with the audience,” going far beyond direct translation to consider cultural nuance and context. A major theme in our conversation is how Comtec balances purpose and profit in an industry transformed by AI. The company was the first translation business to become B Corp certified, a framework Sophie says aligned naturally with their long‑held values. Even as AI opens opportunities to localise at scale, Sophie is clear that human linguistic and cultural expertise remains central to quality and fairness. We explore Comtec’s tools such as Pronto (a self‑service machine translation platform) and Clara (a content‑generation tool), and how transparency with clients — showing the difference between AI‑led and human‑led outputs — has become a defining part of their approach. Two things to take away: AI has reshaped the translation sector at extraordinary speed, and Comtec’s human‑centred approach has been essential to navigating that shift.Not all languages respond equally well to AI — and guiding clients through those nuances is now a critical part of Comtec’s value. Visit Comtec at: https://www.comtectranslations.co.uk/ Connect with Sophie at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiehowecomtectranslations/

    S3 E6, Balancing AI and humanity, with Sophie Howe, Comtec Translations

  5. Jun 2

    S3 E5, Capital impact: tackling global challenges, with Douglas Hansen-Luke, Future Planet Capital

    Our guest this episode is Douglas Hansen‑Luke. Douglas is the  founder and Executive Chair of Future Planet Capital, an impact‑led, profit‑first venture capital firm. Douglas has spent over 20 years working across emerging markets, sovereign wealth funds and new asset classes, always with a belief in the ‘efficient deployment of capital’. It was reading Peter Singer’s The Life You Can Save which crystallised his desire to focus on the world’s biggest challenges. Future Planet Capital now manages just under £500m, investing across three interconnected strategies: Global Growth — backing later‑stage companies emerging from the world’s top centres of innovationNational Deep Tech — including management of the UK government’s deep tech fund, commercialising research from 50,000+ UK researchers Regional Impact — currently focused on the West Midlands, supporting local innovation ecosystems Douglas describes the model as combining profit discipline with purpose, anchored in the three principles of global benchmarking, impact clarity and data-driven objectivity.  Two themes stand out: Impact and returns are mutually reinforcing — without profitability, institutional capital won’t flow to solutions that matter.Bias is a structural risk in venture investing, and Future Planet uses both data and competing innovation hubs to counter it. Visit Future Planet Capital at: https://futureplanetcapital.com/ Connect with Douglas at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dhansenluke/

    S3 E5, Capital impact: tackling global challenges, with Douglas Hansen-Luke, Future Planet Capital

  6. May 26

    S3 E4, Impact consulting: shaping sustainability’s next chapter, Adam Garfunkel, Junxion Strategy

    Our guest this episode is Adam Garfunkel, Partner and Chief Impact Officer at Junxion Strategy, whose career spans more than three decades of campaigning, communications and impact consulting.  Adam’s route into sustainability began unexpectedly. After moving to Canada in his early twenties, he took a job as a door‑to‑door canvasser for Greenpeace, expanding the canvassing operations over time. Returning to the UK, he joined Friends of the Earth as a campaigner, leading lobbying on what became the Environment Act 1995. That early focus on accountability and transparency became, as he puts it, a “red thread” running through his entire career. Adam moved into sustainability communications and then consulting, working with pioneering organisations long before sustainability became mainstream. His client roster includes the UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative, Brompton, The Guardian, Seasalt Cornwall, and notably Adidas, where he served as their lead outsourced sustainability consultant for 15 years. He joined Junxion Strategy in 2013, and was an early mover in the B Corp movement in the UK, with Junxion becoming one of the first consulting firms to offer B Corp certification support. A decade on, he and his team have deep experience helping companies navigate both the original and the newly updated B Lab standards. We explore how Junxion positions itself as an exemplar of purpose‑driven business — a company that sees profit as fuel for purpose, not the purpose itself. Two themes stand out: the importance of relationships over transactions, and the need for courage rather than box‑ticking in a sector that must “meet the moment” if businesses are to play their part in addressing global challenges. Connect with Adam at https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamgarfunkel/ Visit Junxion Strategy at https://junxion.com/

    S3 E4, Impact consulting: shaping sustainability’s next chapter, Adam Garfunkel, Junxion Strategy

  7. May 19

    S3 E3, Sustainability that pays: building commercial advantage, with Will Silverwood

    Our guest this episode is Will Silverwood, whose career has taken him from commercial strategy through leading sustainability at Whitbread PLC, one of the UK’s most recognisable hospitality groups. Today he brings together decades of experience in transformation, operations and organisational change to help large businesses navigate the realities of decarbonisation. Will shares the story behind his shift into sustainability. After early roles with major brands including Trainline, Gala Coral and Siemens Communications, he spent a decade at consultancy Iris Concise, helping complex organisations build new commercial capabilities. A mid‑career pivot came through a role at QA, where a digital transformation project unexpectedly “almost completely decarbonized the business.” That experience gave him the credibility — and the conviction — to move fully into sustainability. We explore how Whitbread, owner of Premier Inn and several branded restaurants, with 850+ hotels in the UK and rapid expansion in Germany, positions itself within the wider sustainability landscape. Will talks us through work done at Whitbread to balance purpose with scale: electrifying kitchens, replacing gas boilers with air‑source heat pumps, reducing water and energy use, designing out food waste, and embedding renewable energy across the estate. He also explains how platforms like HRS and Booking.com increasingly reward operators who provide emissions data — turning sustainability into a driver of revenue as well as resilience. A central theme is the practical reality of delivering sustainability inside a large, operationally intense business. Will reflects on the governance required to unlock long‑term capital investment, the psychology of customer nudges, and the importance of cross‑functional ownership — from procurement and property to finance and operations. His metaphor is memorable: the sustainability team as “fire starters,” convening the right people, lighting the flame, and then stepping back as the organisation takes ownership. Finally, Will shares where he sees the sector heading. With rising expectations around reporting, supply‑chain ethics and energy transition, he believes the next decade will reward organisations that prioritise the biggest levers, act transparently and focus on solutions that deliver both impact and commercial value. Connect with Will at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/will-silverwood/

    S3 E3, Sustainability that pays: building commercial advantage, with Will Silverwood

  8. May 13

    S3 E2, Creating better apparel: pursuing sustainability with scale, with Tom Cotter, OCEANR

    Join us in getting to know Tom Cotter, founder and CEO of OCEANR – a fast‑growing sustainable apparel company expanding its product portfolio and working with some of the world’s most recognisable hospitality destinations, private islands and adventure brands. Tom shares the story behind OCEANR’s evolution. What began as three friends in West Cork spotting an overlooked product category – the humble rash vest – has grown into a 90‑person international business with design and production in Latvia and commercial teams in Ireland. After an early attempt at building a consumer brand, demand from organisations looking for credible sustainability partners reshaped the company’s direction. Today OCEANR delivers bespoke uniforms and merchandise for clients such as Necker Island, blending performance apparel with measurable environmental impact. We explore how OCEANR positions itself within the wider sustainability landscape. Tom breaks down their People, Product, Planet framework, from ethical manufacturing and innovative materials to lifecycle analysis, take‑back schemes and partnerships that remove river‑bound plastic and plant mangroves. OCEANR’s B Corp certification reinforces this approach, offering clients external validation in a space where transparency matters. A central theme is the practical reality of building a purpose‑led business while scaling. Tom talks candidly about the challenges of growing through COVID, the long road to profitability, and the constant balancing act between commercial pressures and sustainability commitments. He also reflects on how organisations are increasingly seeking real solutions rather than surface‑level “green” claims — and how OCEANR aims to meet that need. Finally, Tom tells us where he sees the sector heading. With rising expectations around reporting, supply‑chain ethics and environmental accountability, he believes the next decade will reward brands that combine transparency, innovation and genuine impact. Connect with Tom on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-cotter/ Visit OCEANR at https://oceanr.co/

    S3 E2, Creating better apparel: pursuing sustainability with scale, with Tom Cotter, OCEANR
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About

Each episode of The Impact Files podcast explores the personal stories and leadership challenges behind meeting a business’s near-term financial needs, while creating lasting wellbeing for people and planet. We examine the roles that marketing, media and communications play in shaping trust, demand and impact. Our objective is to provide insight and encouragement for business leaders on a purpose-led journey, showing how financial performance can be aligned with long-term sustainability. Hosted by Ned Wells alongside a sustainability expert co-host, each episode features one guest: an experienced decision-maker in either a ‘green brand’ – founded as purpose-led – or an ‘amber brand’ – not founded as purposeful but now on the journey.

Information

  • Creator
    Ned Wells
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    24
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Ned Wells
  • Show Website
    The Impact Files