Who we are

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Dom Koole

After graduating with a degree in politics, philosophy and economics, Dominic started his career in the civil service. He worked at the Department for Education on a range of policy areas, including initial teacher training. He then spent six years working at United Learning, an academy sponsor, supporting schools in some of the most deprived areas of the country. His various roles included bringing new schools into the charity and strategy and planning across the organisation.

At Jamie’s Farm, Dominic is responsible for ensuring as many children as possible get to visit our farms. He works across all of our farms and with schools and other organisations to develop new partnerships to benefit pupils across the country.

When not at work, you’ll find Dominic climbing, cycling, surfing or camping in the wilderness somewhere. At our farms, he loves chopping wood and going for a hike with the visiting groups.

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Chloe Thomas

Chloe graduated with a degree in Psychology from Cardiff University. She then went on to work in various public sector and academic roles, with a focus on reducing health inequalities. She completed an MSc in Environment and Human Health whilst working at the University of Exeter Medical School, before working on a large scale RCT of an obesity prevention programme in primary schools. A passion for working with children led her to change career and become a primary school teacher in 2015, successfully completing the Teach First programme in Bristol. Chloe originally joined Jamie’s Farm as a Visit Co-ordinator, working directly with groups of children on the Bath farm. Now part of the HQ team, Chloe’s current role involves overseeing impact measurement across all our farms, and leading on our newest strand of work; sharing the Jamie’s Farm approach more widely with teachers, schools and other organisations.

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Katie Francis

Katie graduated from Oxford University in 2006 with a degree in Geography. She then went on to work in Community Fundraising for various charities, and after completing a first-class MSc in Environment and Sustainable Development at UCL worked for the London Cycling Campaign and Department for International Development.

Having always been passionate about working with young people and being happiest surrounded by nature, Katie was delighted to join Jamie’s Farm in 2012- when there was just a small core team of 8 based at our Bath farm. Initially she worked full time alongside young people as a Visit Coordinator, as well as being Fundraising Manager, and led on several other roles including Comms and Volunteer Management.

Katie has been Head of Fundraising since 2020, helping to grow the charities income from around £500k in 2012 to £1.7m in 2022, and growing. Katie is also passionate about youth engagement and has set up and led our Ambassador Programme since 2018. She is also Deputy Chair of our DEI Committee.

She has also done an Organic Gardening Course, and Permaculture Design Course and has an allotment that keeps her busy outside of work!

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Phoebe Ruxton

Phoebe completed a degree in French and Spanish with Russian at Exeter University, spending time working in Paris and Guatemala. After uni, she lived in France, teaching English in secondary schools. She then decided to return to UK life in Bristol, working for language schools before switching to the third sector to work in Fundraising and Communications. She has completed a Diploma in Fundraising from the Chartered Institute of Fundraising, and worked for nearly five years at FareShare South West, a surplus food redistribution charity where she supported the fast growth of the organisation as Director of Fundraising and Communications, including building programmes with schools, children’s centres and holiday clubs to tackle child hunger.

She jumped at the chance to work for Jamie’s Farm as their Partnerships Manager, and work to help as many young people as possible benefit from the farm experience. Her role connects farms to schools and organisations sending groups of young people.

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Natalia Borg

Natalia grew up in Brighton and graduated with a degree in Geography and Archaeology. She volunteered with local charities and soon realised that working with young people was where her passion lied. After completing a fundraising internship, Natalia worked at Brighton’s youth homeless day centre The Clock Tower Sanctuary, helping raise awareness of the charity. After hearing that Jamie’s Farm were opening their latest, fourth rural farm just on her doorstep, she jumped at the opportunity to be involved. Natalia helps look after fundraising and enjoys bringing life on the farm alive for the charity’s supporters.

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Matthew Chambers

Matthew is based at Jamie’s Farm Lewes. He is responsible for our major gift fundraising and a significant number of trusts and foundations, in addition to helping develop our strategy. He has worked for UK conservation organisations and international development agencies previously, as well as spending some time as a TEFL Teacher. Matthew is a big fan of ‘the great outdoors’ and very much enjoys supporting the Jamie’s Farms mission and working from a farm.

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Lucy Carr

Lucy grew up in Cornwall before setting off to do a Degree and Masters in International Development and Education, in Norfolk. She has since made Wiltshire her home, where she enjoys being outdoors as much as possible (when not doing renovation work on her house). She’s worked in the charity sector for over 8 years, largely in community fundraising, helping to connect people with the opportunity to make positive change in the world. She is passionate about education, and everyone being supported to fulfil their full potential and why she is excited to be part of the Jamie’s Farm team. Her role involves helping to look after fundraising, with a particular focus on our events programme and corporate relationships.

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Laura Crouch

Laura grew up in sunny Southampton before moving to Bristol to study Media and Drama. Having worked in a variety of roles, she found a love of fundraising when volunteering for a local scout group and hasn’t looked back. Having settled in Bath, she enjoys gardening, swimming and taking on a challenge, in between learning new renovation skills on her house.

She’s worked in community fundraising for over 14 years and loves how fundraising can provide such a positive outlet for people. She is extremely passionate about providing excellent support through fundraising, making it accessible to everyone whilst making it as fun and creative as possible and is looking forward to bringing this passion to her role in the Jamie’s Farm team. Her role involves helping to look after fundraising across the board.

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Elly Hayes

Although born and bred in London, Elly has always had a great love of the outdoors and of animals. With a childhood home complete with multi-storey guinea-pig hutches, numerous cats, a dog, rabbits and a tame pigeon, it was inevitable that Elly would, one day, end up in the countryside.

After completing her degree in English Literature and having a family, Elly worked in schools for a number of years. Following her family relocation to the Welsh/English borders, she started volunteering at Jamie’s Farm where the combination of young people enjoying the outdoors and experiencing the joy of working with animals, provided the perfect place in Elly’s eyes!

Elly joins us at Jamie’s Farm Monmouth to work with the visiting young people in the gardening sessions, but can also be found finding any excuse to help with the animals whether that be bottle feeding lambs, moving cows or mucking out the hen house!

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Sarah Argyle

Sarah grew up in Wiltshire and following university initially trained in marketing and communications (on the job) in the corporate sector. After gaining some experience in this area it was corporate social responsibility that she wanted to pursue further. She worked on placements in London, Burkina Faso and Malaysia before working in fundraising and comms for an international NGO. Firmly settled in the charity sector, Sarah joined Jamie’s Farm early 2016. Previously she jointly headed up the fundraising function with Katie, but now oversees our communications and PR, enjoying the variety this role brings from managing the website and brand to being creative with sharing our story through our wide range of communication channels.

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Chloe Raynor

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Sam Ardin

Sam graduated from Cambridge University in 2011 with a degree in Natural Sciences. She then went on to train as a secondary Science teacher in Hartlepool, as part of the Teach First programme.  Wanting to pursue another of her enthusiasms, sustainable agriculture, Sam went on to complete a PhD at the University of Bristol, focusing on the relationship between ecosystems and agriculture.  Sam joined Jamie’s Farm in 2017 as a Visit Co-ordinator at the Monmouth Farm, where she was able to combine many of the things she most enjoyed about her previous roles.

After returning from maternity leave, Sam worked at ImpactEd, a social enterprise that supports education organisations to evaluate their impact, where she worked with a wide range of organisations and charities.  Having gained valuable experience in this role, Sam returned to Jamie’s Farm as Impact Manager, where she leads on our impact measurement.  Sam has a love of data and information and is always working to make our impact measurement as robust, creative and informative as possible.

Sam now lives in the beautiful Scottish Borders, where she can be found mountain biking, gardening, swimming in the river and making music.

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Siân Cogan

After completing her master’s degree in chemistry at Durham, Siân returned to her home county of Wiltshire to try a career in the charity sector. Before joining Jamie’s Farm, she worked for the Trussell Trust, supporting food banks with operations, systems and training so they could serve their communities effectively. Through her time at university, she volunteered as a STEM Ambassador to inspire young people to continue science education and volunteered overseas in Colombia and Hong Kong supporting local staff to teach English and lead activities for disadvantaged children.

With a passion for ensuring young people have every opportunity to thrive in education and beyond, she leapt at the opportunity to join the Jamie’s Farm team. Bringing data to life alongside the real experiences of young people visiting our farms is what Siân is most excited about, as well as supporting staff and teachers to get the most out of our systems. Outside of work, she enjoys adventures in the countryside, listing to live music and spending as much time as possible by the seaside.

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Nia Cowcher

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David Parker

David has wide experience of working in businesses in vastly different industries and sizes. He has worked nationally and internationally, even owning a garden centre for a number of years. He has returned to live in Wiltshire for the third time in his life – this time for keeps! David has joined our finance team, working alongside everyone at HQ based at our Bath Farm.

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Ed Norris

Ed has been with Jamie’s Farm from the early days, when alongside his day job he would volunteer his time every Monday to lend a hand on the farm to Doug our Farm Manager. Ed now works in the finance team, looking after our accounts but can occasionally still be found in a tractor.

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Wendy Kemp

After graduating from Swansea University with a degree in Modern Languages with Business Studies, Wendy worked in financial PR and in recruitment for a few years, before becoming a Primary School Teacher. Wendy now manages the charity’s office, helping to keep things running smoothly behind the scenes at Jamie’s Farm.

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Andy Ward

Andy joined Jamie’s Farm after a career in the Royal Air Force and numerous years running an electrical contracting business. It was as the Bath farm electrician that Andy first encountered the charity. Being a regular contractor on site, seeing 1^st hand the great work done on the farm and always receiving a warm welcome, led him to grab the chance to become the Estate Manager. The role entails looking after the infrastructure, facilities and aesthetics of all farms across the charity.

Andy loves being active and ‘fixing’ things. Just as well, as his list of jobs is always long. When not on the farms Andy enjoys his motorbike, family and ‘bagging’ Munros.

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Maggie Mohr

Maggie joined the farm in September 2020, after a number of roles in sales, business development and telemarketing. She initially joined the housekeeping team making sure the farmhouse, barn and offices are clean, tidy and sparkling for the weekly children’s visits, the HQ staff and weekend farm lets with the help of her amazing housekeeping team. 

In March 2021 she was appointed as Houselets coordinator.  She ensures all the Jamie’s Farm properties are rented out to maximum capacity at the weekends to earn valuable extra income for the charity.

In her very little spare time, she enjoys walking in the beautiful Wiltshire countryside with her family and 3 dogs, a lovely chocolate Labrador, a naughty Jack Russell and a lively English springer spaniel.

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Tora Smith

Tora is the house let’s coordinator for our Monmouth and Hereford farms. Working alongside the amazing housekeeping team to ensure properties are let out at the weekends to raise precious money for Jamie’s farm.

After completing a degree in human geography at Sussex University Tora went on to study rural crafts including coppicing, Willow growing and basket making. She weaves baskets and teaches willow weaving in and around the southwest and Midlands

In his spare time, Tora loves walking, wild swimming and spending time with her family in the beautiful Herefordshire countryside.