‘I want to engage fellow alumni in ways that are meaningful to them’: Dee Brecker (BSc 1989), new Chair of the Alumni Association

Dee Brecker (BSc 1989) is a Director at Ten Years’ Time, a philanthropy consultancy that create learning experiences for donors and organisations to interrogate their wealth, unlearn harmful practices and develop holistic and reparative approaches to philanthropy. She’s also a leadership coach and is passionate about supporting people of colour and women at all stages of their professional journeys.

A Zoology student at Bristol in the late 1980s, Dee worked for nature and conservation projects before moving into high-value philanthropy and communications. She’s worked in higher education, the charity sector, government and the arts, leading teams at King’s College London, London School of Economics (LSE), the Cherie Blair Foundation and Carers UK, among others. She is former Chair of Blind Aid and former Trustee at CASE Europe and brings a wealth of expertise to her new role as Chair of the University of Bristol’s Alumni Association. As she looks ahead to her new role, Dee reflects on her time at university and what inspires her work.

I was the daughter of political refugees from South Africa, and I came to Bristol on a local authority education grant. Arriving at university, I was suddenly surrounded by people my own age yet with very different life experiences to me. The student body wasn’t nearly as globally diverse as it is now, and it was a struggle to find my place.

While I wasn’t from the same socioeconomic background as many of my peers, I felt sure that I matched them academically, a confidence that came from knowing only the select few were offered a place at a leading University. And in that way, Bristol was a level playing field; it took me out of some of the limitations imposed on me by society (systemic racism, misogyny, class) and gave me the privilege of obtaining a degree in a subject – Zoology – that I loved.

My favourite memory of university is an expedition we did in second-year to Tioman Island in Malaysia. The kindness shown to us by the people we met there was spectacular, as was the beauty of the place, and our expedition’s  passion for documenting possible influences of climate change on island flora and fauna. My peers included zoologists, botanists and geographers, many of whom have gone on to do amazing things – Theresa Bailey (née Mowbray) (BSc 1989); Mark Day (BSc 1989), Co-Founder of conservation initiative Altyn Dala and winner of the 2024 Earthshot Prize; Stephen Dunleavy (BSc 1989), who was a producer with the BBC Natural History Unit and went on to establish Humble Bee Films; Dr Max Coleman (BSc 1989), now a science communicator at Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and Rachel Harding-Hill (BSc 1989), now Head of Water and Planning at the Scottish Environment Protection Agency.

It was very complicated for me to go, however, not least because I didn’t have UK citizenship at the time and was on a residency permit in the UK. The reality of me going  somewhere the Earl of Cranbrook had been 20 years earlier for his landmark expedition was astonishing. You can come into these opportunities cowed, or you can realise you belong too.

I remember how much code switching I had to do at university. A lot of Black and racially minoritised students in British society and institutions  are ‘othered’, but I think if I went to university now I would still feel more comfortable than I did back in the late 1980s. It was during my final year of my undergraduate degree, living with PhD students whose families came from the UK and other countries , that helped inspire the realisation that education is lifelong and that I could and did belong in that space.

My family are from South Africa and are obsessed with nature and the outdoors. I found that here  there was a belief that people who look like me don’t enjoy nature, which blew my mind. As a teenager in Zimbabwe, I spent  days during summer holidays in the back of WWF pick-up trucks in rural areas. My step-mother was working for an Italian government funded rural redevelopment programme to support communities post-independence; the experts were all  Black, from the wildlife rangers to local women showing me different plants and trees. I never doubted that the natural world is our world.

While I didn’t always fit in during my time at Bristol, I’ve always had a sense of warmth for the University and the city. It showed me what it means to be part of a large cohort of young adults discovering their hopes and dreams. And my professors were amazing – it was the Head of the School of Biological Sciences who wrote my letter of commendation which enabled me to get British citizenship.

I did my master’s at University College London (UCL), exploring how women interact with outdoor spaces. Not everyone feels they have the right to outdoor spaces, and there are ‘rules’ on how we expect people to engage with nature. Many women would, and still do, interact with outdoor space only in company – with their dog, their children, or in a group setting for safety. After my studies I worked on an English Nature funded project to encourage Black and racialised communities to use and explore nearby ancient woodlands, river walks and the countryside. In many ways, it involved telling  people they didn’t have to wear specialist gear or seek permission – they could just go out in their trainers and explore.

Through these nature projects I worked with artists and storytellers to connect people  and the spaces they lived near. And of course, we had to apply for grants to facilitate the work, which over time I got quite good at. That was my journey into philanthropy, and since then I’ve led fundraising teams in Higher Education, international development, education, family carers, hospital charities, and the arts. Now, I’m a director at the philanthropy advisory firm Ten Years’ Time and I coach individuals, often supporting their development as leaders.

The thread that ties all my work together is community. I’m passionate about supporting people and ensuring those who have been othered in society can discover and pursue their ambitions. Through my consultancy and coaching work, I create spaces that celebrate  people, acknowledging where they’ve got to so far and supporting  them to go on to be their very best.

As Chair of the Alumni Association, I hope to bring intention and perspective. There are some 200,000 Bristol alumni working in diverse professions across 190 countries. We’re sitting in meeting rooms with decision makers and legislators; collectively we have powerful influence, and a diversity of thought. I want to engage fellow alumni in ways that are meaningful to them, encourage us all to raise our voices in the spaces we occupy, and work in partnership with academics and staff to support Bristol students and help them discover a life and career that is rewarding to them.

To find out more about the Alumni Association click here.