Tamsin Betti - Former Director of Communicaions and Engagement

A tribute to Tamsin Betti: Change maker and innovator

2 minute read

Tamsin Betti, who was our Director of Engagement & Communications from 2019 to 2022, has sadly passed away. Here, our CEO Sandy Luk pays tribute to a remarkable woman.

A healthy ocean means a healthy planet, and a healthy planet means healthy people. The same people who, in so many cases, are struggling to make ends meet, keep their homes warm and feed their families. All of which makes the health of the ocean seem a whole lot more distant and less relevant. Yet, it is of existential importance, and it is in an existential crisis. How then, can a marine conservation charity fulfil its objectives on the one hand and yet persuade busy and distracted people to support our work on the other?

Nobody understood this tension better than Tamsin Betti, who was our Director of Engagement & Communications from 2019 to 2022. Tamsin cared about our seas and also about people, and that shone through in the way she communicated – about our seas and how to protect them, and about our charity too. For us, Tamsin was hugely influential, a real change maker and an innovator. Tamsin died on 6th April 2024. We are heartbroken.

Tamsin catalysed a huge positive transformation for the Marine Conservation Society (and she’d have been very happy about the use of ‘Marine Conservation Society’ and not ‘MCS’ here). She was the architect of our digital renewal – the driving vision and passion behind our new-look website, brand and logo. The way we portray ourselves, the language we use, the way we communicate and are seen in the world today is down to Tamsin. She believed deeply that it is by telling stories that we engage people and make them as passionate about the ocean as we are. We are still trying to do her proud.

Credit: Billy Barraclough

More than all of that, Tamsin was simply a really lovely person, kind, friendly and insightful. She was very much liked and respected by all her colleagues. She made time for everyone, and her warmth and friendliness radiated through, even when things got tough. That was especially the case during the pandemic when we had to update and change our Covid guidance pretty much on a daily if not hourly basis! Tamsin always mentioned the need to carry our beliefs lightly. That’s something that has stayed with many of us.

It's not surprising then that Tamsin was at the heart of the work we did together to develop our organisational values. We are brave. We have integrity. We are a community. We are credible. We are positive. We are solutions focused. All of these attributes have more than stood the test of time. A testament to Tamsin. Our community is immeasurably the poorer for her loss.

If you'd like to leave a tribute to Tamsin, please leave your comments here.

Instead of flowers, it was Tamsin's wish for donations to be made to her chosen charity. Leave a donation here.