Stephen Rumsey is a life-long environmental conservationist who grew up in West Africa. He has served on a number of boards of environmental non-profits and was Deputy Chairman/Treasurer of Birdlife International. He lives on his farm on the south coast of England where he has developed his own nature reserve over the last thirty years. Elsewhere he has been particularly involved with tropical forest projects in Brazil, West Africa and Southeast Asia.
Professionally he was investment manager for the biggest pension fund in the UK. He then designed and ran the debt markets business for BZW for eight years, which was re-named Barclays Capital after he left. He built a business for Merrill Lynch and set up his own asset management business ECM (with some colleagues) which grew from zero to $30 billion AUM in six years before being sold to Wachovia/Wells Fargo in 2007. Stephen is a graduate of the London School of Economics.