Board Development & Facilitation
Case Study
Environmental Sector
Black-Led Organisation
When a Board is Ready to Do the Real Work
How we designed and facilitated a transformational board development session for Wild in the City, creating psychological safety, shared vision, and collective accountability in a single afternoon.
5
Board Members
3.5
Hours
8
Activities
4
Strategic Priorities
THE CONTEXT
A Pioneering Organisation at a Defining Moment
Wild in the City is a Black-led environmental organisation with more than ten years of impact, creating a home for people of colour in nature and challenging the deep-rooted lack of diversity in the UK's environmental sector. Their Nature Guide programme trains practitioners of colour, opening pathways into a sector that has historically excluded them.
By June 2026, the organisation had reached an inflection point. A new Chair and a new Deputy Chair were in place. A new board member had just joined. The CEO was ready to push further. The ambition was clear. What the board needed was the space and the structure to align.
This wasn't a routine board meeting. It was a deliberate investment in how this particular group of leaders would work together to take Wild in the City to the next level.
THE CHALLENGE
The Right People. The Right Moment. The Right Kind of Session.
Wild in the City's board is composed entirely of Black women, which is a rare and significant leadership configuration in any sector, let alone the environment. With that comes both an extraordinary foundation of shared purpose, and the particular responsibility of getting the foundations right.
The key challenges coming into the session were:
New dynamics to integrate
A new Chair, Deputy Chair, and first-time board member, all joining an established team with its own history and culture
Strategic clarity needed
The board was operating reactively, without the shared language or agreed priorities to move into sustained strategic mode
Governance gaps to name
Risks around funding, legal expertise, and regulatory compliance needed to be surfaced honestly and owned collectively
Trust to build
For the board to function at its best, members needed to understand each other not just professionally, but as people
The goal was a session that could hold all of this honestly, warmly, and productively in a single afternoon.
OUR APPROACHWe designed a structured, half-day board development session under our Option 1 — Core Board Alignment package, delivered in person at Epping Forest, Woodland Trust.
The session was built around a deliberate arc:
Trust → Honest Reflection → Culture Alignment → Vision → Action
Every module was sequenced to build on the last, moving the board from interpersonal connection through to concrete priorities and personal commitment.
Designed for This Group. Built for What Came Next.
01 User Manual of Me
Anonymous survey completed by 107 employees across France, the UK, and the US. Measured belonging, psychological safety, equity, leadership accountability, allyship, and DEI-aware Board members completed and shared personal User Manual cards, exploring how they work best, what support looks like for them, and what they bring to the group. Pairs were deliberately mixed to bridge new and established members. The activity surfaced a powerful shared thread: a deep, collective passion for the Wild in the City mission and a genuine pride in being part of an all-Black women board.
02 Proud / Concerned / Curious
A structured reflection exercise using three categories of sticky notes gave every board member a voice in building a collective, honest picture of the organisation. Themes of resilience, reputation, and community pride sat alongside candid concerns about funding, capacity, and governance, all surfaced safely and owned by the whole group.
03 Culture & Values in Practice
The board moved from values on paper to agreed behaviours in the room, identifying what the board looks like at its best, what enables it, and what undermines it. Relationship, assertiveness, and clear communication emerged as the foundations. Being proud as a Black-led organisation (and not making itself small) was named explicitly and collectively.
04 Future Headlines
Board members were invited to imagine it was 2028 and Wild in the City had had a landmark year. The headlines that followed were bold: five regional hubs, a published book, and overseas trips to Africa led by Black nature guides.
05 Pre-Mortem
The group worked through a risk-first exercise to surface governance, capacity, and political risks before they became problems, from short-termism in funding strategy to the absence of a formal risk register.
06 Priorities & Alignment
Dot-voting distilled the session's insights into four clear, collectively owned priorities: Funding & Sustainable Revenue, Skills & Capacity, Brand Awareness & Communications, and Risk & Governance.
07 Commitment Wall
The session closed with each board member making a personal, spoken commitment to the board and to the mission. Commitments ranged from pro bono legal support to thought leadership, NED onboarding to operations. Every commitment was public, specific, and owned.
THE IMPACT
What the Session Made Possible
A board that had never formally convened as this group left the session with:
A shared understanding of how each member works and what they need
An honest, collectively owned picture of where the organisation is
Agreed cultural principles and expected behaviours
A bold, aligned vision for the next two to three years
A risk map with named governance priorities
Four dot-voted strategic priorities
Personal commitments from every board member, spoken aloud and written down
The session moved the board from a collection of talented individuals into a team with shared language, shared priorities, and shared accountability.
TESTIMONIAL
IN THEIR WORDS
"Despite some heavy content it left us inspired, nourished, and encouraged to scope the leadership opportunities for a Black female board in the environment sector. There is a lot of work to do in the remaining quarters of 2026 but we couldn't have a better team to guide our ambition to scale."
Beth Collier, CEO — Wild in the City
Does your board or leadership team need this kind of session?
Whether you're integrating new leaders, resetting after a period of change, or ready to move from reactive to strategic, we design and facilitate sessions that meet your group where they are and take them further than they expected.
If you‘re looking to:
Build genuine trust and psychological safety across a leadership team
Surface honest reflections and agree on shared priorities
Create accountability and commitment that lasts beyond the room