Carrie goes back to work – in a job she’ll be wild about (good job the hair band’s fake!)
ANIMAL lover Carrie Symonds is returning to work as a green campaigner after landing a new job at a high-profile conservation charity.
Nine months after giving birth to son Wilfred, Boris Johnson’s fiancee has been appointed head of communications for the Aspinall Foundation, initially working from her spacious Downing Street flat.
And as this photo shows, Ms Symonds is already acquainted with her new boss, Damian Aspinall, and some of her ‘clients’ in the form of cheetahs Saba and Nairo following a visit to the charity’s headquarters in Kent last year.
The 32-year-old – who is known for her love of eco-fashion – made sure she was suitably dressed for the occasion, topping off a khaki coat with a cheetah-print hair band.
Her mother, Josephine McAffee, has joined the Downing Street ‘ household bubble’, prompting speculation she will help take care of her grandson when her daughter and Boris Johnson are working.
The Aspinall Foundation is dedicated to protecting endangered species and returning captive animals to the wild. Saba and Nairo were born in Britain but have now been successfully rewilded in South Africa – a world first.
The charity also funds and manages animal protection projects in Congo, Gabon, Java and Madagascar, as well as supporting schemes in India and Cambodia.
As well as the two cheetahs, eight black rhinos, 159 primates and more than 70 gorillas have been returned to the wild thanks to the foundation. Mr Aspinall said: ‘Carrie takes up her role at an exciting time for the foundation and we are delighted to have someone of her calibre on the team.
‘ She is a passionate champion for wildlife and conservation, whose energy and expertise will be a huge asset to us.’
A patron of the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation, Ms Symonds was named activist group Peta’s 2020 person of the year for her ‘unwavering voice for animals’.
Last July, supermarkets stopped selling coconut products marketed by several Asian brands after she highlighted how chained monkeys were being used to harvest the fruit from trees on farms in Thailand.
Before having Wilfred, she spent two years with the marine conservation group Oceana. She will continue to advise it as a consultant.
She was previously director of communications for the Conservative Party, having earlier worked for Tory MP John Whittingdale and the former chancellor Sajid Javid as a special adviser.