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Director – Knepp Wildland Foundation

Location: Knepp, West Sussex
Salary: £55,000–£60,000
Contract: Full-time, permanent

Help shape the next chapter of one of Europe’s best-known charitable rewilding foundations.

Nature can recover. At Knepp, we have spent 25 years demonstrating what that can look like.

Over the past four years, Knepp Wildland Foundation (KWF) has grown into a charity with national and international recognition for its work in promoting the understanding of rewilding. We have an ambitious strategy through to 2030, a great multidisciplinary team, strong partnerships and a remarkable opportunity to share Knepp’s practical experience with a much wider world.

As two of our major initiatives become independent organisations, we are looking for a Director to lead the Foundation into its next phase. This is a chief executive role about consolidation, focus and growth: working with the Board and team to establish what we uniquely exist to do, strengthening our organisation, and bringing the entrepreneurial drive to take our core projects forward.

As Director, you will:

• Lead us through a significant period of organisational transition and development.
• Work with trustees and staff to establish KWF’s future size, shape, priorities and ways of working.
• Put excellent operational systems in place and create clarity.
• Develop and empower a talented team, giving people the confidence and framework to lead their own areas of work.
• Strengthen financial resilience, fundraising and strategic partnerships.
• Drive the growth of our core programmes in species recovery, education, and knowledge-sharing, and promote the Foundation’s work to funders, partners, policymakers and landowners.

We are looking for someone who:

• Has significant senior leadership experience and is comfortable combining strategy with hands-on management.
• Is operationally strong, financially literate and experienced in working with a Board.
• Is an excellent people leader who can empower an already capable team through change.
• Has an entrepreneurial spirit, strong fundraising and partnership skills, and the judgement to know when to pursue an opportunity and when to say no.
• Is an engaging communicator and a constructive collaborator, comfortable working alongside a prominent founder-led estate.
• Is genuinely curious about rewilding and nature recovery and respects evidence and specialist expertise.

You do not need to be an ecologist or conservation specialist. We are looking first and foremost for an exceptional organisational leader who is excited by what Knepp has demonstrated and by the opportunity to translate that experience into wider change.

Why Knepp Wildland Foundation?

KWF offers an unusually open opportunity for a senior leader. We are a young, agile organisation, free of decades of accumulated bureaucracy, with strong goodwill, an exceptional network, an engaged Board, a talented team and the freedom to shape what comes next.

Our message is ultimately about hope: demonstrating that nature can recover, sharing what has been learned and inspiring people to act. If you are an ambitious, grounded and collaborative leader who would relish helping to shape the next chapter of a pioneering charity born out of one of Europe’s best-known rewilding projects, we would be delighted to hear from you.

For full details of the role and how to apply, please download the appointment brief.

For an informal and confidential conversation about this position, please contact Jenny Hills at Harris Hill via the apply button with times to speak and (optional but appreciated) a CV or professional profile, which will be treated with the strictest confidence.

As leading charity recruitment specialists and a certified B Corp, Harris Hill is committed to high and ever-improving standards of equitable and inclusive recruitment. We actively welcome applications from all sections of the community regardless of age, disability, gender, race, religion, sexuality and other protected characteristics.

Closing date for applications: 9am, Monday 2nd November 2026