WiserEarth Suggestions

I work for The Nature Conservancy's Asia Pacific and North Asia Regions, focusing on helping our own staff and our partners build their ability to do effective conservation.  As Regional Director of Conservation Learning and Partnerships, my goal is to build the numbers, capabilities and confidence of conservation professionals across a very large, very culturally and geographically diverse area.  In some countries, that means building the pipeline of young people entering the conservation profession by providing short-term jobs that combine a conservation business curriculum with real projects, to give them a foundational understanding of how to do this work.  It can also mean connecting conservation leaders who work in isolated places to help them get access to the resources they need and to help them meet their peers so that they can benefit from the synergy that results.  Right now, I am focusing on building web-based and other resources that can help as many conservationists as possible get the tools and skills they need, at as low a cost as possible.  In every instance, I am interested in working with others who are also after the same goals, and where possible pooling our efforts and our resources so that we are building on eachother's work rather than duplicating it.

As of early 2009, I have an additional interim assignment which is to coordinate a learning network comprised of the Conservancy's partnership professionals around the world.  These are people who are building their expertise at the art and science of creating and sustaining effective partnerships to get conservation results on the ground.  Increasingly, those partnerships are not just with communities and conservation NGOs but are also with governments at all levels, the private sector such as resource extraction companies, poverty alleviation NGOs, and indigenous landowners, among others.