Lydia has a lifelong passion for restoring natural processes to benefit people and wildlife, deepened through her PhD on the monitoring of river restoration projects, which informed the development of a UK river restoration monitoring guide. With over 23 years in the environmental sector, she has worked as a Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) specialist across public service and consultancy roles. She is currently the Biodiversity Net Gain Strategic Lead for Southern Water, developing strategic habitat creation projects to offset engineering impacts. Lydia led the development of the UK’s Natural Flood Management (NFM) evidence directory, this helped transition the way in which floods are managed from purely engineered approaches towards the greater use of NBS. During this time, she co-developed with a UK research council an NFM research programme. Internationally, she co-authored fluvial chapters for USACE’s Natural and Nature-Based Features guidelines and led the an EU-funded coastal climate change adaptation project which restored coastal wetlands in England and France. This sparked her interest in estuarine and coastal NBS, leading to the creation of innovative coastal and marine NBS strategies for a variety of clients.Lydia has a lifelong passion for restoring natural processes to benefit people and wildlife, deepened through her PhD on the monitoring of river restoration projects, which informed the development of a UK river restoration monitoring guide. With over 23 years in the environmental sector, she has worked as a Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) specialist across public service and consultancy roles. She is currently the Biodiversity Net Gain Strategic Lead for Southern Water, developing strategic habitat creation projects to offset engineering impacts. Lydia led the development of the UK’s Natural Flood Management (NFM) evidence directory, this helped transition the way in which floods are managed from purely engineered approaches towards the greater use of NBS. During this time, she co-developed with a UK research council an NFM research programme. Internationally, she co-authored fluvial chapters for USACE’s Natural and Nature-Based Features guidelines and led the an EU-funded coastal climate change adaptation project which restored coastal wetlands in England and France. This sparked her interest in estuarine and coastal NBS, leading to the creation of innovative coastal and marine NBS strategies for a variety of clients.