Fiona Hewer BSc MSc FRMetS

    Fiona is a published meteorologist with project management, consultancy and business development experience. Following a mathematics degree at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, her career began as a research scientist in the Met Office Hadley Centre for climate change where she completed a master's degree in meteorology at the University of Reading. Her research work then specialised in numerical modelling of flow over hills with peer-reviewed publications in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society and Boundary-layer Meteorology. More recently she studied at the Open University, taking a postgraduate module on "Ecology, justice and citizenship" including environmental ethics, political approaches to the environment, and biodiversity.

    After 10 years of scientific research she moved on to international relations, working with agencies such as the World Meteorological Organisation and the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts. She established a training course in statistical climatology in Nairobi.

    Fiona then assisted Peter Ewins CB, Chief Executive of the Met Office, as his Private Secretary, in the run-up to the relocation of its HQ and operations centre from Bracknell to Exeter. There then followed a series of corporate and commercial appointments at the Met Office in business process re-engineering and business development. Fiona worked with clients in the transport, insurance, water, energy, central government and local government sectors.

    More recently, Fiona established a climate change consultancy unit for the Met Office. She was the project manager and lead author of 'Climate change and energy management', a scoping study on the impacts of climate change on the UK energy industry. She moved back to south-east England in 2006 where she has been the Head of Meteorology at the Royal Meteorological Society. Her responsibilities included organising the Society's biennial conference in Edinburgh.

    Fiona aspires to helping society and business improve the ways we work with the environment through effective exploitation of science and greater ecological awareness. Based on this goal she now leads her own environmental consultancy Fiona’s Red Kite.  Current projects include an overview paper and workshop on Climate change and social justice for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and for the Business models in digital publishing for Royal Meteorological Society.