The King’s Association is delighted to announce the next lecture in the Enlightening Minds speaker series. We will welcome Robert Gardner for his talk on 'Nature: our hidden superpower' (the big idea that could bring Britain back to life).

The Enlightening Minds lecture series aims to nurture and ignite intellectual curiosity across the entire King’s community - including students, parents, governors, alumni, teachers, and partner schools. These lectures feature knowledgeable members of the broader King’s community, sharing insights related to their field of research or expertise in a topical subject.

Join Robert as he challenges our assumptions about nature with his talk that presents 'The big idea that could bring Britain back to life': We often think of nature as scenery — something nice to look at, something “out there”. But what if we’ve got it completely wrong? Nature isn’t a backdrop. It’s infrastructure. It’s technology. It’s an asset so powerful we’ve barely begun to understand it. And right now, those systems are breaking faster than we’re repairing them. But here’s the twist — and the opportunity: nature isn’t just a resource. It’s an investible system. A system we can rebuild. A system that pays us back in cleaner water, safer communities, stronger resilience, and future stability. This isn’t environmentalism. This is how countries win the future. And if we choose to lead, the UK could become the fastest nature-recovering nation on Earth. 

Robert Gardner is the Co-Founder and CEO of Rebalance Earth, the UK’s largest dedicated natural capital asset manager. Formerly Investment Director at St. James’s Place and Co-Founder of Redington, Mallowstreet, and RedSTART, he believes finance can be a force for good. His mission is now on making nature an investible asset class to help deliver financial well-being in a world worth living in.