Meet the team

Martine Holberton, Founder. Martine has dark brown hair, blue eyes and light skin. She is smiling and wearing a black button-up shirt while standing in front of a red brick wall.

Martine Holberton

Martine Holberton is a renewable energy and stakeholder engagement specialist with experience spanning government, industry, communications, and the not-for-profit sector.

Over the past decade, she has led community engagement, regional collaboration, and trust-building initiatives across Australia’s renewable energy sector, including roles with Tilt Renewables, Pacific Blue, and The Energy Charter.

Martine is the surefooted force guiding the co-creating the Biodiversity & Renewables Institute Australia (BRIA), a national organisation dedicated to producing the shared science, data and cross-sector relationships needed to ensure Australia’s renewable energy transition accelerates without costing nature in the process.

Founder

Emily Haley, Founder. Emily has blonde hair, hazel eyes and light skin. She is smiling, wearing a polka dot blouse and is outside.

Emily Haley

Founder

Emily Haley is a strategic communications and stakeholder engagement leader with experience spanning the energy and nonprofit sectors in Australia and the United States.

Her career has been spent building trust and alignment across diverse stakeholder groups to address complex environmental challenges in partnership through roles at Xcel Energy, Environmental Initiative and Pacific Blue.

She has led communications, engagement, fundraising and consensus-building initiatives on issues including energy, corporate sustainability partnerships, conservation agriculture, air quality and environmental policy.

Strategic Advisors

  • Abby Arnold has light skin, dark short hair, and brown eyes. She is smiling and wearing a grey blazer and white shirt.

    Abby Arnold

    Abby Arnold is the founder and former executive director of the Renewable Energy Wildlife Institute (formerly the American Wind and Wildlife Institute) where she worked for seventeen years advancing science-based solutions to understand and reduce renewable energy impacts on wildlife.

    Her work has included designing and conducting training in renewable energy siting challenges and conflict resolution techniques to improve stakeholder community engagement outcomes, and she hosted dozens of conferences on wind and solar and wildlife, transmission, resource assessment and siting renewables.

    She is currently principal at MGC partners where she provides strategic advice for challenges associated with siting clean technology, transmission and associated facilities.

  • Rebecca Lake has light skin, long blonde hair and blue eyes. She is wearing a dark blue shirt and there are trees in the background.

    Rebecca Lake

    Rebecca Lake is a corporate climate strategy and nature finance specialist with experience spanning investment advisory, carbon markets, international development, and landscape restoration.

    Over the past 15 years, she has designed decarbonisation strategies and advised clients on nature risk, environmental markets, project investment and climate adaptation. Her experience spans roles at Pollination Group, leading Australian asset managers, the United Nations, and global environmental organisations including WWF, with a focus on deforestation, industrial energy transition, and supply chain transformation throughout Africa, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America.

    Rebecca is currently based in Washington DC completing post graduate studies at Georgetown University.

  • Bronya has light skin, short brown hair and brown eyes. She is wearing a black shirt and there is a corporate office in the background.

    Bronya Lipski

    Bronya Lipski is a planning and environment law and policy specialist. She has 15 years' experience working across public interest and industry planning and environment matters, with a special interest in the renewable energy transition.

    Her work includes policy development and law reform in nearly every Australian jurisdiction to find practical solutions to the tensions inherent in three entwined and wicked problems: energy transition, climate change, and biodiversity decline. Her previous roles include public interest law reform, litigation, policy and advocacy, and she played a leading role in planning and environmental policy and guidance for renewable energy development as the Clean Energy Council's General Manager Planning and Environment.

    In her spare time, she is a strategic advisor on the establishment of the Biodiversity and Renewables Institute of Australia, and Chair of the Biodiversity Working Group at the National Environmental Law Association.

Why Wagtail Collective?

Found across Australia, the Willie Wagtail, djirri djirri in Woiwurrung language, is the largest and most well-known of the fantails. These birds are always moving, very chatty and fearless. They are famously unintimidated by larger animals (or, love a good challenge).

At Wagtail Collective, we believe the toughest problems can get solved when the right people are in the room together. We convene bold conversations and build unlikely coalitions that lead to better outcomes for people and nature.

A willy wagtail perched on a branch with green foliage in the background. Willy Wagtails are black with a white breast and white eyebrows.