Journeys
With Purpose
"The only way forward, if we are going to improve the quality of the environment, is to get everybody involved."
Journeys With Purpose provides immersive Hosted Experiences with inspirational leaders, extraordinary “People With Purpose”. Our mission: to catalyse the celebration and advancement of nature conservation projects across the world.
These hosted experiences, based on a “Seven Worlds, One Planet” approach. They are a global curriculum designed around the recovery and conservation of our natural world. Discover opportunities to participate and collaborate on restoring vibrant landscapes, biodiversity and livelihoods. Our mission is to provide unparalleled access to the most ambitious, exciting and successful initiatives protecting and restoring nature across our seven continents.
Experience remarkable achievements of harmonising nature and communities. Be inspired to protect, conserve and restore our natural world, and safeguard our own future. This is our mission at Journeys With Purpose.
"Together, if we harness the very best of humankind and restore our planet we will protect it for our children, for our grandchildren and for future generations to come."
HRH Prince William, The Prince of Wales
Our Team
Duncan Grossart
Venetia Martin
Venetia’s passion for exploration was sparked during teenage years spent in Maseru, Lesotho where she attended a local school and would spend weekends discovering the mountains. After studying Business Leadership & Management, an early career in London in marketing, design and advertising was overshadowed by the allure of Argentina, where she pursued a passion in equine therapy in Cordoba and learnt Spanish. She travelled extensively in Latin America and relocated to Buenos Aires, where she worked for a London based luxury travel company, leading sales and expanding their Latin offering. A curiosity for Central America took her to Costa Rica, where she spent three months driving across the country and discovering truly wild and unspoilt places. She started a travel advisory, working with a number of private ranches and reserves to create transformative experiences in, and for, conservation.
Venetia joined Journeys With Purpose as Partnerships Director in January 23 and from a home base in Madrid, is responsible for designing exceptional experiences with our network of remarkable conservation partners, to catalyse impact through transformative travel.
Lara Webster
Lara’s love of nature began with family holidays to the remote Isle of Mull, off the west coast of Scotland, which, despite its soggy climes, remains one of her favourite destinations for its vast wild spaces, wildlife, and opportunities for solitude. At the polar end of the spectrum in terms of climate, Lara first travelled to Africa in 2013, a visit which sparked her ongoing obsession with this beautiful continent.
Over the years, she’s been lucky enough to return to Southern and East Africa, exploring areas across Kenya, Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa – with more to come. She joined Journeys With Purpose as Journey Planner in 2023, where she specialises in travel to Europe and Africa, and has relished connecting with Impact Partners and conservation initiatives around the globe, helping guests access some of our most spectacular wildernesses and the exciting projects working to preserve them.
Katya Payne
Katya comes from a photography and film making background which is where her love of travel began. With a love of visual anthropology she sought to capture images of people immersed in their natural environment.
Taking every opportunity to travel, she spent time working and living in the cloud forest of Ecuador before travelling extensively through South America and Asia and studying film at Manchester and Melbourne universities.
Moving back to London she started a career in furniture design, becoming a director of a contemporary furniture company in London for 12 years. Now happily ensconced in the Cotswolds with her family, she joined Journeys With Purpose in 2022 as Operations Manager and delights in connecting guests with remarkable people, places and projects across the Nordics and Asia.
Our Impact Ambassadors
Prof. Alastair Driver
Prof Alastair Driver has been immersed in nature and nature conservation since he was a toddler clinging onto his naturalist father’s coat-tails on birding trips in the early 1960s.
He was privileged to be appointed as the first conservationist for the Thames catchment in 1984 and went on to become the national Head of Conservation of the Environment Agency in the UK for 15 years, before taking “early retirement” from public service in 2016 and almost immediately becoming the Director of the newly established charity Rewilding Britain. Since then he has been thoroughly enjoying the challenge of mainstreaming rewilding as a crucially important part of the solution to nature recovery in Britain.
In his “spare time”, Alastair has had the privilege of visiting over 50 countries around the world for public speaking, advisory and exploration purposes and he has been hugely inspired by the many conservation success stories he has encountered in the process. He is therefore delighted to become an Ambassador for Journeys with Purpose and he is particularly excited by the prospect of visiting rewilding sites around the world with like-minded individuals passionate about the large-scale restoration of nature.
Lorna Buchanan-Jardine
Building on her career as a photographer, Lorna moved to Kenya and spent seven years living in the Masai Mara. There she managed and built high-end safari camps for Great Plains Conservation, taught photographic safaris for ‘Wild Studios’, and worked in community conservation for The Maa Trust, helping to establish Maa Beadwork cooperative to empower five hundred local women to support their families across the greater Mara ecosystem.
Following this chapter, Lorna moved to Indonesia and worked for the founders of The Green School in Bali managing their hotel, Bambu Indah, during which time she also photographed for many organisations around the archipelago, including the Environmental Bamboo Foundation.
She currently lives between Costa Rica and the UK.
Sam Sutaria
Sam is the CEO of the WaterBear Network: a B Corp-certified interactive streaming platform, learning academy and content studio dedicated to the future of our planet.
WaterBear transforms documentaries into popcorn worthy entertainment; turns people into active doers from passive viewers; and, ultimately cares more about measuring real-world impact than collecting awards. From pioneering storytelling training workshops across the Sahel in Africa, to spearheading global impact campaigns with NGOs across the world, WaterBear – and its partner, the Resilient Foundation – are innovating a new definition of success for the global media industry.
Prior to roles at WaterBear, Sam was the GM of The European Nature Trust (TENT), produced content and campaigns at Nice and Serious, and trained with the BBC’s Natural History Unit in Bristol. Sam is also the Founder of social enterprise DrawFor, and a Trustee of the Hartswood Trust and London Breeze Film Festival (re-launching 2024). He is a passionate conservationist and photographer, and is deeply committed to providing opportunities for the next generation of creative storytellers. He fundamentally believes that if you want to change human behaviour, the only thing that beats impactful storytelling is a transformative travel experience.
Sarah Woodhead
Sarah’s passion focuses on preserving wild, intact land and forests for the keystone species that depend on their habitat conservation.
She works closely with Space for Giants, and is an Ambassador for Panama Wildlife Conservation. Sarah co-founded the Leuser Ecosystem Action Fund (LEAF) alongside partners Ben Goldsmith and Leonardo Di Caprio Foundation, to protect 2.4 million hectares of pristine rainforest in Northern Sumatra where the last of Sumatra’s remaining orangutans, tigers, rhinos, and elephants can be found.
She has additionally helped to redesign and rebrand the islands of Islas Secas in Panama, a luxury desert island offering with sustainability and community at the forefront of its vision, as well as being a Journeys With Purpose Ambassador.
Sarah is thrilled to be an Ambassador for Journeys With Purpose because she believes both that seeing with your own eyes is the best way to understand these conservation efforts, and that making these experiences into an informative holiday is both pleasurable and rewarding. These journeys are eco tourism at its best!
Taran Gehlot
Taran Kaur Gehlot has a profound love for nature and a deep commitment to the protection of our planet’s biodiversity. Growing up in Kenya, she developed a deep appreciation for wildlife and the interconnectedness of all living beings. Her passion for conservation led her to actively contribute as a board member of the Zeitz Foundation. She also serves as the Regional Daughter for Kenya for Daughters for Earth, a commendable campaign which is dedicated to revealing the power of women on the frontlines of conservation and environmental protection, and that aims to raise a staggering $100 million to directly support these impactful women.
Realising the importance of fostering personal connections between individuals and the natural world, Taran founded Soul Safaris. By facilitating transformative experiences in nature, Soul Safaris not only allows individuals to reconnect with their wild-primordial selves and our incredible Planet Earth but also instills them with a profound sense of responsibility towards its protection. Her purpose is clear: to champion the cause of Earth’s preservation, protecting biodiversity and inspiring others to do the same! She is thrilled to join as a JWP Ambassador and is excited to fulfil more of her purpose through this beautiful collaboration.
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Our mission: deliver transformative journeys based on the Seven Worlds, One Planet model.