Emma Cusworth

At heart still a child of the African continent on which she grew up, Emma Cusworth’s professional life has been marked by hard work and passion for her subject. An expert on sustainable finance, she talks of how Bedales may have influenced her in that direction, her sometimes uneasy relationship with the school as a student and why today she often returns to Bedales to encourage the leaders of tomorrow.

“Africa always was and in many ways still is my base-line,” Emma Cusworth declares. “My father, who had a great sense of adventure and a romantic view of Africa, worked in large-scale infrastructure and I grew up in Tanzania, where I went to the international school. From a child’s point of view it was a heavenly place to grow up. When I was six years old, I recall sitting on a beach and being told by my mother that I would have to marry a rich man but I was already sure that I would build my own fortune."

Emma’s childhood African paradise was abruptly terminated by educational necessity. “My brother and I were at the international school and it became apparent that an English boarding school would be required for the pair of us,” she explains. “Our grandparents lived in Liss in those days, which I think is how Bedales became the obvious place for us to go. For me, Africa was home and England was somewhere foreign and therefore exciting. Hampshire woodlands were (and still are) special, exotic places.”

At Bedales, however, Emma had difficulty in adjusting to her new environment. “It was a huge culture shock, especially the business of moving from a continent where there is so much poverty to a place of such deep privilege” she says. “I knew well enough that we sat at the apex of the system and at times I found a sense of entitlement at school that was difficult for me to handle. I wasn’t particularly popular, apart from with my like-minded international gang of friends, and didn’t really care about that. The culture was about being cool, which I didn’t value and so I didn’t make life any easier for myself. In retrospect, I probably needed the guidance of my parents at that age.”

Another difficulty for Emma was the fact that she was neurodivergent. “So much teaching is process-driven and my mind works in a completely different direction,” she explains. “One person who seemed to understand that in me and became my great influence at Bedales was John Scullion, my economics teacher. He also had a wonderful, very visual sense of humour; I vividly remember him putting golf balls across the classroom to explain something. I needed to be pushed and John was good at that. My brother was very different and had an absolute riot at Bedales.”

“Outdoor work was a great love of mine while I was at Bedales – David Strutt actually helped to change my life, although I didn’t necessarily know it at the time,” Emma continues. “I did a lot of tree-planting and I shall always remember the smell of the turpentine that we used to keep wooden posts from rotting. Aside from that, I did a bit of art, not much in the way of acting and enjoyed my walks on the Downs. On the academic side, I did my A Levels in Economics, Maths and German without ever having much of an idea what might lie ahead as far as a career was concerned. One of the problems that I encountered at boarding school was the absence of context to our subjects." 

Although it had not always been smooth sailing for her, Emma did not leave Bedales without certain happy memories. “In the first place, my time at the school reinforced my feeling that I was naturally anti-authoritarian and wanted to be responsible for my own outcomes”, she says. 

Emma’s further education took place at what was then known as UMIST (now a part of the University of Manchester), where she studied commerce. “It was a very broad course, covering elements such as marketing, communications, finance and corporate finance, and it was extremely enjoyable,” she says. “This was my choice, no-one else’s, and I enjoyed it all the more because of that fact. At university I gained both a better understanding of myself and of the significance of economics and by the time I finished there I knew that I wanted to work in the Square Mile of the City of London.”

Beginning as an executive at Brunswick as the new millennium got underway, Emma subsequently worked increasingly on the strategic communications, marketing and PR side of commerce with organisations including Fishburn Hedges, Penrose and Barings. “In many ways communications suited me temperamentally, particularly the business of telling stories as a means of persuading or influencing other people in the finance sector,” she says. “Some of my time with Brunswick was spent in Germany, where there was a start-up mentality and a pioneering spirit that I found especially appealing. Communications is a technically complex, often fascinating area of work but I left it behind for a while because I’m not a diplomat in any way. I was too frank to be a media spokesperson back then. For me, business is all about leading other human beings in a shared endeavour and the only thing that really matters, or should matter, there is hard graft.”

From 2008 and for most of the next decade, Emma became a freelance financial journalist, with a focus on institutional asset management and pensions and a particular interest in what are now known as Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) issues. “Sustainability as a concept made complete sense to me very early,” she says. “Getting involved in it was my long-term career trajectory. We always needed to translate sustainability into the language of economics; if we failed to do so, we risked allowing every traditional method of making money to fail – and fail catastrophically.”

Financial journalism was an ideal way to explore these ideas and disseminate them to a wider audience. “I loved being a journalist,” Emma recalls. “I still believe that it was my neurodivergence that allowed me to see links between and within stories that others might not have noticed. It was telling stories in a different way and it was also something that allowed me to have a career at the same time as I was raising a family.”

Tempted back to the commercial front line by Lombard Odier Investment Managers, Emma’s work on the strategic side involved a deepening focus on sustainable investment and stewardship. Her move to the Green Finance Institute as Director of Corporate Affairs was a natural extension of her passion for, and expertise in, sustainability, which today is deployed as Vice President for Communications and Marketing with Everland.

Everland represents the world’s largest portfolio of high-impact, forest conservation (REDD+) projects that protect wildlife and enhance the well-being of forest communities. The company brings together forest communities and corporations in a common cause to protect some of the world’s most important and vulnerable forests. Among other places, Africa is again front and centre in Emma’s thoughts. “Africa is the thread that runs through my life; if the right opportunity to work there ever came up, I would return tomorrow,” she says. “Everland is a really special team, and gives me a connection back to my roots, as well as with so many other places and my job now is to build up the marketing function, which we hope will be up to seven people by the autumn.”

Perhaps surprisingly, the Old Bedalian who did not always see eye to eye with the school as a student is now a frequent visitor, giving talks and preaching the gospel of carbon-offsetting and sustainability in its widest sense. “Yes, I go back a lot and there is a very good reason for that,” says Emma. “Bedales has so many people with so much potential to do things that really matter. Bedales itself matters as an institution because it can turn out independent, free-minded thinkers. I recognise that, I value that and I can’t help the fact that there are elements of my own personality that are very Bedales."

Emma Cusworth was interviewed by James Fairweather in Autumn 2023