Meet the team
VACANCY
Nature Reserve & Volunteer Manager
We are currently recruiting for this post.
APPLICATIONS ARE NOW CLOSED.
Tigs Smith
Engagement Manager
Tigs joined the Denmark Farm team in June 2025 as the new Engagement Manager, in a role that felt like the perfect culmination of all her skills.
Before moving to Wales in 2023, Tigs studied for a degree in Marketing and worked as a marketing manager for a large educational IT business, but although these are valuable skills now, this wasn’t where her passion was… Tigs spent several years learning holistic therapies, and become a Zoopharmacognosy practitioner (the domesticated version of Cae Ysbyty), and has a love of learning about plants as medicine.
Now living on a 12-acre smallholding in Cellan, her skillset has had to expand rapidly to learn dry stone walling, fencing, and a host of other rural skills demanded by the land she is currently caring for! Having the space to grow her own food is important and so hacking through 8ft brambles to create a new no-dig vegetable garden is part of the current learning experience.
In her spare time, Tigs enjoys watching the red kites fly overhead, foraging and exploring local beaches, woodlands, castles and lanes with her two dogs. Mae hi’n dysgu Cymraeg hefyd!
Lulu Thelwell
Facilities Manager
Lulu qualified as a Social Worker, specialising in mental health and multiple complex needs. Her plan was to use it to establish her knowledge of social policy, in order to better support the charity sector. Her heart has always been with charity work, and she has spent the majority of her career since 2011 investing her time in wider, holistic support for people and their environments.
She is a firm believer in systemic practice, which is a belief in a truly supportive and symbiotic relationship between mind, health and environment. Based in Bristol for 10 years, her professional roles have tended to be grant-funded for a wide range of community projects; but she has also consulted on a respite project on a game reserve in South Africa, supported a sustainable community building project in Guatemala, helped coordinate the build for a not-for-profit eco-tourism and education beach-camp in the Philippines, volunteered at a sustainable beach hostel on an island in Vietnam, helped to build a school in Ghana, volunteered as a permaculture gardener for Bristol Zoo – and the list goes on!
Over the years, her personal interests in nature and sustainable living expanded into her knowledge of wellbeing practices and social prescribing; essentially meaning that being in a nicer place, doing more interesting and fun things, having an opportunity to learn and feel useful, helps you to feel happy and more fulfilled. No surprise! So Lulu fundamentally believes in creating beautiful, stress-free environments and is committed to the idea of being a cog in the wheel of Denmark Farm, helping to facilitate positive stays for guests and residents, and maintaining a beautiful functional space for people to be in.
Marc Richards
Finance Manager
Marc joined the team at Denmark Farm in May 2016. A local boy from Aberystwyth, Marc worked for Aberystwyth University for 24 years, firstly in the Finance Office and then as the Finance Administrator for the School of Education and Lifelong Learning. Prior to that Marc had worked for Lloyds Bank for over 5 years.
Marc is currently studying for the Certificate in Ecology and Conservation with Aberystwyth University and is looking forward to creating his own vegetable garden and wildlife haven at home. Marc also likes his football, having played and captained his local village team of Talybont for many years, before managing the team and is currently the Club Chairman.
We are a small but enthusiastic team – could you be part of it?
Join the team
If you’d like to get involved with our work, see the current opportunities here:
