Natalie Ashworth

“I worked with Natalie throughout her sixteen year career at Global Witness, during which time we evolved from a small to a medium/large NGO, and she was a crucial part of that growth. She has built up an amazing body of campaigning experience during a very exciting period globally, being part of the movement that worked on and developed issues that were not previously worked on but are now mainstream (eg corruption, links between human rights and environmental abuses, forest campaigning, conflict resources etc). She is a truly great team leader and campaign strategist, added to which she is extremely well organised, from campaigning to networking to budgeting, so her campaigns went according to plan – a quite rare thing. In her time with us she contributed to and later became responsible for producing top class campaign materials She is a great network builder, working especially well with our partners in national civil society organisations, both on home territory and in the global south. Crucially Natalie is always very willing to learn lessons from her work. She is someone you can trust to do the job, but isn’t frightened to ask if she needs guidance.’s. She will stand her ground to defend what’s right, both in the workplace and in her work.”

“As Campaigns Director (Forests, Land and Climate), Natalie was part of Global Witness's management team that oversaw the operations of the organisation. She has excellent leadership skills and consistently impressed me with her strong emotional intelligence, integrity and courage in facing down challenging situations. Natalie is a strategic thinker and led the revisioning of the Land and Environmental Defenders programme, one of Global Witness’s flagship campaigns. She also oversaw and set the direction of the organisation’s work on Liberia over many years and the implementation of campaigns across the Forests, Land and Climate department. Natalie has considerable experience managing relationships with donors and oversaw a number of multi-year grants from institutional funders. These included managing partnerships with southern civil society. In her work as a senior manager at Global Witness, Natalie was able to draw effectively on the first-hand experience she had acquired over many years as a front-line campaigner. This experience encompasses a number of natural resource sectors, countries and thematic areas including land rights and the threats facing local activists. Natalie carried out numerous pieces of desk and field research and investigations into security issues and corruption cases in West Africa, policy and regulatory reform in the oil, timber and diamond sectors and reviews of natural resource contracts between governments and multinational companies. It is also worth noting that Natalie’s outstanding work cultivating and managing strategic relationships with Liberian partner organisations and individual activists. Natalie was involved developing a number of civil legal cases to hold predatory companies accountable. Her key campaign successes included persuading the Liberian Government to renegotiate a US$900 million-dollar agreement with Mittal Steel, the restructuring of oil sector following the publication of a GW report and supporting the Peru team carry out a high-risk undercover investigation which led to inclusion of timber traders in a US legal case. Natalie has excellent communications skills. She led meetings on behalf of Global Witness with the President of Liberia, the US Ambassador and other key diplomats and lobbied successfully for the maintenance of sanctions at the United Nations Security Council. She has experience overseeing the development of communications strategies and undertook interviews with print, radio and TV journalists for many years on Liberia. Natalie has considerable experience mitigating risks, including preparing, executing and overseeing investigations in high-risk environments and she has facilitated cross campaign learnings on physical and digital security and supporting civil society under threat. Natalie is a thoughtful and passionate manager, leader and campaigner. I very much enjoyed working with her and would warmly recommend her to any prospective employer.”