Katie Derham
One of the UK’s leading broadcasters, Katie Derham’s career has spanned news and current affairs to music and the arts. Since 2010, she has been the face of BBC Proms and a regular presenter on BBC Radio 3. Partial to a foxtrot, she narrowly missed lifting the glitterball in Strictly when she reached the final with her partner Anton du Beke in 2015. Katie regularly fronts music and arts documentaries on TV and radio and is co-founder of production and media strategy company, Peanut and Crumb. Katie can be heard on Radio 3’s flagship live music and chat show, In Tune. When Katie moved to live on the edge of Ashdown Forest nearly 20 years ago, she fell in love with its stunning landscape.
“I feel very strongly that we need to cherish this precious Forest.  It takes an extraordinary team of people who work hard every day to look after it.”
Kathryn Aalto – International Ambassador
Kathryn Aalto is a New York Times bestselling author, educator, speaker, garden historian, and designer whose work bridges the realms of nature, culture, and storytelling. For over twenty years, she has cultivated a richly interdisciplinary creative practice from Exeter, England—integrating the literary, visual, and performing arts to deepen our understanding of place, memory, and the human experience.
She is the author of three books including The New York Times bestseller, The Natural World of Winnie-the-Pooh: A Walk Through the Forest that Inspired the Hundred Acre Wood (2015) and Writing Wild: Women Poets, Ramblers, and Mavericks Who Shape How We See the Natural World (2020). She is particularly concerned with children’s access to the natural world. Her essays and literary criticism have appeared in Smithsonian Magazine, Outside, Sierra, Buz
Her work has been featured and reviewed widely across national and international media including National Public Radio, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and BBC Countryfile Magazine.
Kathryn has also made television and film appearances, speaking on the power of nature, narrative, and placeBefore leaping across the pond in 2007, she restored a salmon spawning stream and created habitat for nesting bald eagles with her family on their farm. A native Californian, she loves mudlarking on the River Thames, walking public footpaths, and attempting to harvest tomatoes by the Fourth of July in her valiant greenhouse.
Neil Reed
Neil Reed has been part of The Ashdown Forest community since acquiring Pooh Corner in Hartfield in 2019. Â The business now focusses around three key elements; a museum, gift shop and tea room, as well as working as an information hub for the Forest.
Prior to Pooh Corner, Neil gained over 30 years of experience in the world of music, television and media, including floating a media company on the London Stock Exchange AIM market.  He has built and turned around a number of media-affiliated businesses with worldwide attention, as well as raising over £20m for number of start-up and small companies in the entertainment sector.  Having worked in multiple forms, from engineer/producer/songwriter to video and creative director for artists such as Celine Dion, Passenger, Ed Sheeran, A-Ha, Texas, Eminem, Boyzone, Westlife, Peter Green (Fleetwood Mac), Brian May (Queen), Dame Vera Lynn; as well as brands such as Lotus Cars, BMW, England Rugby and many more.
Over the last 6 years, Neil has developed a great appreciation of the ‘real’ stories, people and landscapes that inspired Winnie-the-Pooh. Â The museum has generated interational interest and turned Pooh Corner into one of the leading locations for Pooh fans, providing education and entertainment as part of a visitor’s Ashdown Forest experience. Â Everyone has an image of the 100 Acre Wood in their mind, and for Neil, it is a privilege to be able to live by the ‘real’ 100 Acre Wood and support The Ashdown Forest for generations to come.
