Nicole Rycroft

Nicole Rycroft is the Founder and Executive Director of Canopy, an award-winning nonprofit that partners with brands and producers to transform supply chains and protect the world’s forests, biodiversity, and climate. Originally from Australia, her commitment to conservation was sparked early by witnessing deforestation firsthand. In 1999, she founded Canopy on a simple premise: society is smarter than turning ancient forests into disposable products like pizza boxes and t-shirts.

Under Nicole’s leadership, Canopy has helped shift practices across fashion, publishing, and packaging, engaging more than 1,000 companies and contributing to the conservation of over 39 million hectares of forest. Through initiatives including CanopyStyle and Pack4Good, she has mobilised collective action from brands representing more than $2 trillion in annual revenue, proving that large-scale change can move at ecologically meaningful speed.

Named to The Business of Fashion’s BoF 500 (2024), Nicole is an Ashoka Fellow and a member of the UBS Global Visionaries program. Her work has been recognised with honors including the Climate Breakthrough Award, the Canadian Environment Award Gold Medal, and the Meritorious Service Cross of Canada. She also helped secure a transformative $60M investment from The Audacious Project to accelerate the adoption of low-carbon, forest-free alternatives.