Helen Marquard has been the Executive Director of SEED from 2007 to 2015, accompanying the organisation through considerable change as it has scaled up the reach of its partnerships, extended the elements of its support to growing numbers and types of small enterprises in the developing world, and built bridges between local enterprises and policy makers.

Previously Helen was Deputy Director at the UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and Deputy Head at the UK FCO’s Environment Policy Department at the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office; her responsibilities were international and European sustainable development, chemicals, and biotechnology safety. Helen’s academic background is in molecular biology and cancer research which she pursued mainly in Germany.