The Reef-World Foundation is overseen by a board of Trustees who govern the overall strategic direction of the charity. They ensure it fulfils the charitable objectives and all legal obligations of a UK registered charity under the Charity Commission. A face-to-face Annual General Meeting takes place once a year between the Trustees and Senior Management and further intermediate meetings over Skype, in order to reduce the carbon footprint of our international team. All annual activity and financial reports are prepared and circulated in the electronic form to minimise printing and paper use.

The Reef-World trustees are:

Victoria Hancock Fell
Chair

Vic has worked in the smaller charity sector for 15 years as a Co-Founder, Volunteer, Trustee, Senior Leader, Consultant and Trainer.

Vic has significant experience working in senior leadership within smaller INGOs and is particularly interested in working with INGOs to shift power to their country partners. Having worked exclusively within smaller charities both as a senior leader and Trustee, Vic has been responsible for all areas of charity management from fundraising and governance to programme management, but she specialises in crisis and interim leadership, organisational strategy development grant writing, Theory of Change change management and organisational development.

Vic is the Founder of the Small International Development Charities Network (SIDCN) online peer support community with over 2,000 members. She is a Consultant Grant Assessor at The Fore Associate Consultant at The FSI, and Trustee for two small charities. She is the Founder of Fair Development, where she does her own consultancy work with clients but also has a team of 50 associates offering affordable consultancy for smaller charities.

Flo Stephenson
Treasurer

Flo is a qualified chartered accountant who joined Reef-World as a Trustee & Treasurer in October 2022.  She has recently taken a career break to travel around Central & South America, where she enjoyed snorkelling and reconnecting with her love of the ocean. 

Flo has a passion for biology and graduated with a degree in Natural Sciences from Durham University in 2015. After this, she trained at an accountancy practice, gaining experience working with charities, families and small businesses, and completing her ACA qualification in 2018. 

Flo's current role is working at a private family office in London, which she joined in August 2022. Prior to her travels, Flo worked in the yachting industry for three years. She hopes she can use her experience and connections there to help widen the outreach of sustainable marine tourism practises.

Alongside her full-time job, Flo brings experience from her position as Treasurer & Finance Director of a charitable company, which she has held since 2020. The organisation aims to raise money by hosting large-scale events, the first of which was held at Versailles Palace in May 2022. The committee successfully generated profit from ticket sales, auction items, sponsorship and donations for distribution to 3 chosen charities. Flo has worked closely alongside these charities, gaining exposure to their projects in various fields, including conservation.

Tim Good

Tim is the Founder and Chairman of the Matthew Good Foundation, which has been a supporter of Reef-World for many years, making small but meaningful contributions when needed. He has been diving since 2001 and holds a PADI Rescue Diver qualification. His family maritime business was established in 1833, which now invests much of its profits into conservation and transforming the marine industry for the better.

James Greenhalgh CITP MBCS

James joined the board in June 2023 after 3.5 years on Reef-World’s staff team shaping the charity’s digital strategy, leading digital product development, and supporting delivery of the Green Fins initiative.

James has been fortunate to dive all around the world and loves macro (nudis!), British wrecks, and diving against debris. He trained to BSAC Dive Leader with the Army Reserve while reading B.Sc. Information Technology Management for Business (ITMB) at UWE in Bristol before beginning his technical journey with TDI in 2017 (ANDP & Helitrox) and, subsequently, certifying as a PADI Divemaster. During the pandemic, he learned to freedive with SSI.

James occasionally documents his adventures and writes about digital strategy for nature at James Greenhalgh.

Kate Woode

Kate Woode is a charity expert, having worked in the charity and not-for-profit sector for 20 years, mostly for small charities. She now works as a freelance charity consultant, providing specialist fundraising, communications and marketing expertise, as well as helping charities develop their strategic vision and services.

Kate is also a qualified scuba diver and has dived and snorkelled in many locations around the world.

Matt Reed

Matt is a seasoned technical and rebreather diver, instructor trainer and deep-wreck explorer with over two decades of global experience. Since 1998, he has worked in premier dive locations, including the Red Sea, Belize, and Palau, and has called Malapascua Island in the Philippines home since 2003. Matt teaches courses up to Advanced Mix Gas Rebreather and Advanced Trimix Instructor, drawing on real-world expertise. Passionate about deep rebreather exploration, Matt has explored deep wrecks like the WW2 Japanese ship, Mogami Maru. When he is not underwater, Matt is also an Ironman 70.3 finisher, CrossFit trainer and local gym owner on Malapascua Island.

Nic Emery

Nic is a marine conservation advocate with extensive experience in eco-diving, citizen science, and environmental education. As a PADI Course Director, Nic co-founded two eco-diving businesses, including The Fifth Point, the UK’s first PADI Eco Centre. During their time managing B&J Diving in Malaysia, they helped achieve recognition as the Green Fins Global Top 10 dive operator. Currently, as Seasearch Programme Manager at the Marine Conservation Society, Nic drives marine biodiversity initiatives while serving on The Reef-World Foundation’s board to advance sustainable marine tourism and coral reef protection.

Nitya Teagarajan

Nitya joined Reef-World as a Trustee in 2024. With years of experience working in the charity sector, she brings with her skills gained in fundraising, grant management, policy, compliance and social investment. She previously founded and ran a grassroots organisation for 6 years, advocating for gender equality. She cares about fairness, social justice and human connection. As a mother of three, her interest in marine conservation is inspired by her middle child who aspires to be a future marine biologist.

Anne Paranjoti
Founder

Anne Paranjoti (Miller) is a coral reef naturalist and educator. She is a scuba diving instructor and in 2001, she returned to live in North Wales after 9 years in Thailand. 

Anne enjoys quietly observing wildlife and the reef environment. She says, “There are a lot of parallels that can be drawn between one of our own communities and a coral reef – that’s where the idea for Reef-World originated. I wanted to find a way to quickly illuminate for a snorkeller or diver what was going on in the reef system” and to give people an opportunity to do something to help protect them. 

Anne began diving in the Maldives in 1988. She has dived and taught throughout the United Kingdom, New Zealand, the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean. 

In 1988, she graduated from Loughborough University of Technology with a Bachelor of Science Upper Second degree in Management Science. After two years work with a software consultancy firm, Anne began looking for ways to apply management skills to save tropical coral reefs, mangroves and seagrass beds and to educate the public about them. She has led workshops and presented papers at a number of international seminars. 

In 1992, she became a PADI Open Water SCUBA Instructor and spent one year diving and teaching in the Dominican Republic. In 1993, she moved to Phuket, Thailand. Since then, she has taught and dived extensively in both the Andaman Sea and the Gulf of Siam. In 1995, she founded Reef-World to educate tourists and community members about how to be active in the conservation of tropical coastlines. 

The Reef-World Foundation was established as a Charitable Trust in the UK in 1999. Anne has designed and written Reef-World courses ranging from a one hour slide show presentation, all the way to a full three day Coral Reef Ecology Course, with courses for local fishing communities which focus on English language training and reef monitoring and courses for visiting tourists which are a light-hearted look at life on a reef. She is a Reef-World Instructor who has taught and led field trips for local primary and secondary schools in Thailand. She has developed strong links with the United Nations Environment Programme East Asia Seas Regional Coordinating Unit (now COBSEA) to provide Reef-World training to tropical communities actively working to conserve reefs and tropical coastlines in their area.