Julia Hailes grew up near Ham Hill in Somerset. She attended Knighton House Girls' Prep School in Dorset; and St Mary's School in Calne, Wiltshire.

In 1986, Julia Hailes and John Elkington co-founded SustainAbility Ltd, a think tank consultancy that now has offices in London, Washington and Zurich, with another planned later in 2008 in India.

Julia has been a director of Jupiter Global Green Investment Trust, co-founded the Haller Foundation (being re-named 'Haller), a charity supporting eco-system projects after meeting Dr. Rene Haller as a fellow Global 500 Laureate and Louise Piper, sits on the Food Ethics Council and is a Patron of the Ecos Trust, which promotes green building practice.

She is an environmental campaigner and a sustainability consultant advising a number of multi-national companies, including Marks & Spencer, Reckitt Benckiser, Morrisons, McDonalds, Shell, Numis Investment Bank and Procter & Gamble. She also regularly makes speeches and presentations, write articles - and a blog.

She lives in Somerset with her three sons, Connor, Rollo and Monty, aged 14, 12 and 10.

In 1989, Julia Hailes she was elected to the UN `Global 500 Roll of Honour’ for ‘outstanding environmental achievements' and in 1999 was awarded an MBE in the New Years Honors List.

"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little" Edmund Burke

'Do as you would be done by."

"Don't be deterred by 'we've always done it this way'"

" We may not be able to stop climate change but we should do as much as we can"

"We shouldn't just look for big solutions to the big problems we face - lots and lots of small solutions are the way forward."