Alan Heeks is a social entrepreneur, facilitator and writer with a passion for sustainability in the full sense: human, social, economic and environmental.

Since 1990, Alan has been the founder and prime mover in three land-based social enterprises. He owns and manages Hazel Hill Wood a 70-acre, woodland nature reserve and retreat centre near Salisbury (www.hazelhill.org.uk).

He led the creation of The Magdalen Project, an organic farm, educational charity and residential teaching facility in Dorset helping disadvantaged young adults and others to apply organic growth principles to their own life and work (www.themagdalenproject.org.uk).

In 2002, Alan founded the Rural Renewal Company, to create an eco-village and education centre in Dorset. The Natural Living Centre will embody and teach sustainable living in the full sense, renewing the local community and economy. It will pioneer answers to a range of issues, including creative ageing, affordable housing and sustainable transport (www.ruralrenewal.co.uk).

Alan has had a successful management career, starting in marketing with Procter and Gamble. In 1985 he co-founded Caradon plc, a major building materials group which grew to become a FTSE 100 company within 10 years. Alan is also a widely experienced facilitator in both personal and organisational development. The clients for his consultancy, Working Vision, have included social enterprises, public sector bodies and large businesses including bp, Mercury and 3M. He has also been a keynote speaker at major conferences in the UK and USA.

From 2000-2003, Alan was non-executive Chair of Abel & Cole, the UK's largest home delivery supplier of organic produce, and Organic Retailer of the Year 2004. His role included facilitating organisational and strategy development, and coaching for the senior team.

Alan’s first book, The Natural Advantage, was published in the UK by Nicholas Brealey in 2000 and since then in the US, Netherlands, Korea and Japan. The Natural Advantage translates the principles of sustainable development and organic growth to the way people and organisations work: using organic farming as a model to show how to achieve better results at work whilst renewing one’s potential: see www.thenaturaladvantage.com.

Alan has an MBA from Harvard Business School and an MA in English from Balliol College, Oxford. He lives in Dorset at a pilot sustainable cohousing project which he co-founded, see www.thresholdcentre.org.uk