User:RMDafter/sandbox

Ray Dafter is an author and a highly experienced communications specialist, notably in the energy industry, where he has more than 40 years’ experience both as a journalist and as a senior public relations practitioner. Ray has also been involved with the Young People’s Trust for the Environment for well over 25 years, initially as a corporate sponsor and then as Trustee, including more than a decade as Chairman.

An award winning journalist, Ray spent 13 years with the Financial Times where he was Energy Editor and Resources Editor, before moving into industry as the Electricity Council’s Central Director for Public and Overseas Relations to manage the image and corporate reputation of the electricity supply industry in England and Wales in the five years prior to the privatisation of the sector. He then spent a period as Managing Director of a large communications company, Valin Polllen, working with a number of key clients including BP, BT and the British Government.

For nine years Ray was Director of Corporate Affairs with Enterprise Oil with responsibility for internal and external communications. In this capacity Ray managed the companies’ relations with the media, investment communities and governments as well as environmental organisations and other interest groups. In recent years Ray has been working as an independent communications consultant advising mainly energy-related corporations. Apart from YPTE, Ray has served as a Trustee for two other charities – the Christina Noble Children’s Foundation and Hope (Kent) – as well as serving a term as a local councillor.

A former Fellow of the Center for International Affairs, Harvard University and a Fellow of the Institute of Petroleum, Ray is author of eight published books, most of them on energy including two reference works on enhanced oil recovery but two relating to the maritime history of the Channel Islands. In February 2020 The Book Guild published Ray’s latest work: ‘An Uncommon Slave’ an imagined autobiography of Ayuba Suleiman Diallo, a West African Muslim cleric and slave trader who was himself enslaved. In addition, he has broadcast and lectured widely in many parts of the world.

Ray lives in Matfield, near Tonbridge, with his wife, Christine – a volunteer educationalist with Sussex Wildlife Trust. Together they share a passion for travel and the environment, interests that have taken them to a number of the remote wildernesses of the world.