Bernard founded NHBS in 1985, in the back bedroom of his London flat, producing the first mailorder paper catalogue on an electronic typewriter in the spring of that year. After moving NHBS to Devon in May 1987, Bernard led the business until 2001, when he stepped back from day to day involvement in order to help found New Philanthropy Capital (NPC), a London-based charity that provides research-based advice to private donors, charitable trusts and others on how they can direct their giving effectively.

In late 2004 Bernard returned to run NHBS for 15 months, before handing over the reins to Nigel Massen, now NHBS Managing Director. From 2006 to 2007, Bernard researched and authored the first ever report on environment charities, Green Philanthropy: funding charity solutions to environment problems. Bernard is also working on a number of other environment philanthropy projects: he is Chairman of the BBC Wildlife Fund and a senior adviser to the Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy. In 2008, Bernard will be concentrating on combating deforestation, through Forests Philanthropy Action Network, (FPAN) a new funder-led group that he has co-founded with Nick Josefowitz.

Bernard says: `The combination of bookselling and philanthropy looks at first sight to be very strange. But from my point of view, they are connected. Both are rooted in a love of wildlife and a desire to protect the environment. I am proud that NHBS has survived for nearly a quarter of a century and will continue to guide the business as its Chairman.’

Nigel started his career in natural history with a degree in Zoology & Ecology from Bangor University in 1999. Taught on a campus sandwiched between the sea and Snowdonia’s beautiful mountains, the course had a strong fieldwork element focusing on anything that lives on the side of a hill or in the inter-tidal zone.

This led to a Masters at Imperial College, London and The Natural History Museum in 2000 in Taxonomy & Biodiversity – a course which highlighted the key challenge of identifying and understanding the world’s biodiversity through traditional and molecular methods.

Nigel continued on from this to Southampton University and a PhD in Molecular Ecology of Salmon Populations. Using microsatellite DNA markers, radio tracking and catch data, the project identified a complex structure of population diversity between and within the smallest populations.

Joining NHBS in 2004, Nigel started as Catalogue and Promotions Editor before becoming General Manager and then Managing Director. Nigel is frequently found on the NHBS stand at academic conferences across Europe. He is passionate about the role that business can play in promoting science and conservation.

Jhal has been with NHBS for over 10 years. His Customer Services team oversee all customer orders and queries received by email, web, phone, fax or in writing. Jhal also manages our Purchasing Department and is a key point of contact for over 4,000 publishers we work with from around the world.

With NHBS since 2005, Anneli has a degree in library sciences and has managed special libraries in Potsdam, Germany and on the West Coast of British Columbia, Canada. Anneli speaks German fluently, and when she is not adding more titles to the NHBS catalogue, she is visiting libraries, and selling books at the NHBS stand at academic conferences all over Europe. Anneli represents NHBS in the European Botanical and Horticultural Libraries Group (EBHL), the Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries (CBHL) and the International Association of Aquatic and Marine Science Libraries and Information Centers (IAMSLIC).

With a background in IT, TEFL and farming, William joined the fledgling NHBS in 1986 in order to put into place a computer system that would handle both bibliographic data and orders. It was not foreseen that he would still be working on it 20 years later. In the meantime he has made visits to many European countries in order to introduce NHBS to libraries and academics. He is usually on hand to field customer queries in Spanish, French and Italian, in descending order of competence.