ECOLOGIC - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Finance Assistant, Regional Office
Adan has a degree in Public Accounting and Auditing from the Univeristy of San Carlos of Guatemala. He has experience providing administrative support in several Guatemalan banks and most recently worked as a general accountant for a rural development association.
Job Titles:
- Social Media and Outreach Coordinator
Eager to develop an international career, Alessandra moved around across the United States and Europe where she worked in PR, journalism and online communications - in diplomatic, UN and EU agencies, broadcasting companies, and the private sector. In recent years, Alessandra has been working with international NGOs to develop social media strategies and create social media campaigns about human rights, climate change, and renewable energy.
Job Titles:
- Field Technician
- Field Technician, MFN
Antonio joined EcoLogic as a field technician in 2015, supporting the project with MFN in Ixcán, Guatemala. Antonio is involved with on-the-ground project activities, including supporting beekeepers and linking honey producers with local markets.
Learn more about the project Antonio works on.
Barbara serves as executive director since 2012, working closely with the Board of Directors to manage all aspects of the organization. Prior to joining EcoLogic, she completed the Hydropower Reform Fellowship at American Rivers in Seattle, WA. Barbara has been passionately involved in tropical conservation work since her early teens, conducting water quality sampling for the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute to monitor the Panama Canal watershed and supporting fundraising for Panama's National Association for the Conservation of Nature (ANCON). Barbara holds a JD with a concentration in Environmental Law from the University of Washington and is a member of the Washington State Bar Association. She holds a BA cum laude in environmental earth science and anthropology from Dartmouth College. Barbara grew up in Panama City, Panama, and is fluent in Spanish and English and proficient in French.
Bill was founder and coordinator of the Subcommittee on Renewable Energy and Sustainable Design for Boston Harbor Islands National Park Area. Since leaving his practice of gastroenterology and hepatology at University of Massachusetts Memorial Medical Center, much of his time has been directed toward promoting sustainability with respect to natural resources and ecosystems. He and his wife spent several months a year in volunteer capacities in Guatemala. Bill holds a BA in philosophy from Bowdoin College and an MD from Boston University. His current work actively relates to 350Mass in its effort to combat climate change and, for therapy, continues to maintain the community orchard he started in 1992.
Job Titles:
- Program Officer, Honduras
Carlos monitors and supports the implementation of activities with our local partners in Honduras, verifying that the field execution is consistent with the financial execution. He also supports fundraising processes. Carlos is a member of the College of Professionals of Agricultural Sciences of Honduras (COLPROCAH) and Deputy Coordinator of the National Advocacy Board of the Aguán Region (MNIGR), among others. Carlos is an agronomist, and has worked on a variety of conservation projects in Honduras focused on rural development and watershed protection. From 2006 to 2010, Carlos worked in various managerial and technical capacities, he has a diploma in Agroforestry and Cacao from the Regional University Center of the Atlantic Coast and has participated in stakeholder workshops and courses on Sustainable Landscapes.
Job Titles:
- Retired, World Resources Institute ( WRI )
Before his retirement, Dan was director of international cooperation at the World Resources Institute (WRI). His principal role was to secure long-term funding relationships with bilateral and multilateral agencies around the world. Previously, he was director of WRI's information program supporting the development and use of state-of-environment reporting, data and indicators, ecosystem assessments, and information policies. He worked closely with a number of public and private African institutions to strengthen their use of geospatial information in development planning. From 1970 to 1975, Dan worked for the US Office of Management and Budget, where he helped to develop the first set of social indicators for the federal government; from 1976 to 1981 he worked at the president's Council on Environmental Quality; during which time he developed its initial report on environmental conditions and trends. Dan graduated from Northwestern University in 1963 with a degree in biology and received a master's degree in international relations and economics from Columbia University in 1968. He served in the Peace Corps in Malacca, Malaysia.
Daniel is a technical specialist through our local partner, the Alliance of Municipalities of Central Atlántida (MAMUCA), for our project in Northern Honduras. His activities include the construction of fuel-efficient stoves, the establishment of family gardens and agroforestry parcels, and workshop facilitator. He has extensive experience in rural extension, Focal Technician, Climate Change and Risk Management Facilitator, and First Aid Specialist. He has certificates in Agroforestry with Cacao and Rambutan and received training from RARE on coastal marine protection.
Learn more about the project Daniel works on.
Job Titles:
- Professor in the Earth and Environment Department at Florida International University
- Professor, Dept. of Earth and Environment, Florida International University
David Barton Bray is a professor in the Earth and Environment Department at Florida International University. He carries out research on community forest management in Mexico and Central America and pursues interests in natural resource and ecosystem management in Latin America and globally. He was chair and associate professor in the Environmental Studies Department at FIU from 1997 to 2002 and is currently Professor in the department. He received his PhD from Brown University in 1983 in Anthropology; he also has a master's degree in Anthropology from Brown and a BA in Anthropology from the University of Missouri. From 1983 to 1986 he was assistant director and visiting assistant professor at the Roger Thayer Stone Center for Latin American Studies at Tulane University. From 1986 to 1997 he was foundation representative with the Inter-American Foundation, a U.S. government foreign assistance agency, in Arlington, VA. With the IAF he worked in Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay 1986-1989 and in Mexico 1989-1997. From 1992 to 1998 he was a member of the Tropical Ecosystems Directorate of the US Man and the Biosphere Program. In 1997 he left the IAF to take up the position at FIU.
Since 1997, he has received research funding from the Fulbright Program, the Ford Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, the Tinker Foundation, and the US Agency for International Development. He has also consulted for the MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He is the lead editor of the book The Community Forests of Mexico (University of Texas Press, 2005) and is widely published in academic journals such as Conservation Biology, World Development, Land Use Policy, and Forest Policy and Economics and in journalistic outlets such as the New York Times and the Miami Herald. He has been invited to give presentations on research by himself and colleagues for high-level Chinese forestry officials in Beijing, the World Bank in Washington, D.C., and Mexico City, the Secretary of the Environment and Natural Resources of Mexico. In November 2020, Dr. Bray added another book to his portfolio: Mexico's Community Forest Enterprises: Success on the Commons and the Seeds of a Good Anthropocene.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder, Restoration Initiative for Sustainable Ecosystems
- Executive Board Vice President of the Restoration Initiative for Sustainable Ecosystems, Inc
Dominique Cagalanan is a co-founder and the Executive Board Vice President of the Restoration Initiative for Sustainable Ecosystems, Inc. (RISE), the President of Reforest Our Future, and a Senior Associate Scientist with the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF)-Philippines. She is a geographer whose work focuses on the challenges that arise at the intersection of forest conservation and restoration, agriculture, and rural development. Her areas of expertise include tropical forest restoration, agroforestry, governance strategies and mechanisms for conservation and restoration in human-dominated landscapes, and land tenure particularly in protected areas and indigenous people's ancestral domains. Dominique received her Ph.D. in Geography from Clark University in Worcester, MA.
Job Titles:
- Technical Specialist
- Field Technician, APROSARSTUN
Eliazar is a technical specialist through our local partner, the Mayan Association for Well-Being in the Sarstun Region (APROSARSTUN), as part of our Youth Restoring the Nature of Sarstun project in Guatemala, close to the Belizean border.
Job Titles:
- Field Technician
- Field Technician, MFN
Elmer works as a field technician through our local partner, the Northern Border Municipalities Alliance (Mancomunidad de Municipios Frontera del Norte - MFN), based in Ixcán, a town in the department of El Quiche, Guatemala. Elmer grew up in the region and has a degree in agricultural business management. His family fled to Mexico during the Guatemalan Civil War and he returned with a deep desire to help his community. After four years working at the Ak'Tenamit School in Livingston, Guatemala, where he supported Mayan youth pursuing careers in sustainable tourism and agriculture. He coordinates EcoLogic and MFN's day-to-day work in Quiche.
Learn more about the project Elmer works on.
As the finance officer, Ernesto manages EcoLogic's regional and US-based finances, budgeting, and reporting. Ernesto coordinates with all departments to help maintain the organization's financial health and support its growth. After spending nearly seven years working with non-profit accounting and grants management, Ernesto knows that what truly drives the success of an organization is the ability to connect with organizational leaders to plan for the future. After living in the desert for over a decade, Ernesto has a special connection with the desert. He understands the importance of protecting it for today's and future generations as well as the importance of conservation in protecting the desert ecosystem.
Job Titles:
- Policy Specialist, Global Programme on Nature for Development, Nature, UNDP
Eva is a development professional with 10+ years of experience managing global projects and advocacy campaigns, and coordinating multi-stakeholder teams and networks in the fields of natural resource management, climate change and sustainable development.
Job Titles:
- Technical Specialist
- Field Technician, 48 Cantones
Fernando works as a technical specialist through our local partner, the Forest Commission of the 48 Cantons (Comision del Bosque de los 48 Cantones), on our Forest of the Water Spirit project in Totonicapán, Guatemala. He implements the day-to-day aspects of the project. Fernando is a trained agronomist with a degree from la Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala. He also has a specialization in hydrologic engineering from Centro de Estudios y Experimentación de Obras Públicas (CEDEX) in Spain. Fernando has over 18 years' experience in conservation projects in Guatemala. He is based in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala.
Job Titles:
- Finance Officer, Regional Office
Jacobo coordinates finance, budget, and reporting for EcoLogic's regional office in Guatemala. He has more than 10 years' experience in commercial, service, industrial and non-profit organizations, holding financial positions. He has a degree in Public Accounting and Auditing. Jacobo is inspired by being able to see people from so many communities working to conserve the environment every day.
Job Titles:
- Director of Planned Giving at Dartmouth - Hitchcock Medical Centers and Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine
Judi drects the gift planning efforts of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Centers and Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine. As a philanthropic advisor for organizations ranging from arts to education to environmental sustainability, she has extensive fundraising expertise in staff management, feasibility studies, strategic planning, major gifts and planned giving, and program development and delivery. From directing the gift planning efforts for Harvard T.H.Chan School of Public Health, the American Museum of Natural History (New York) in their largest campaigns ever to directing Individual and Principal Giving for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, her fundraising expertise extends from creating branding strategies to increasing attendance at events to implementing multi-million dollar campaigns. Her greatest love is working with individuals to help them create their legacies.
Job Titles:
- Enterprise Change Office, Capital Group
Marc is an Earth scientist who studies land use and climate change effects on terrestrial ecosystems, including carbon, nutrient and water cycling, with a focus on semi-arid developing landscapes in sub-Saharan Africa. His work emphasizes scaling among field and remotely sensed data to understand environmental change at landscape and watershed spatial scales. For his PhD, based between Brown University and The Marine Biological Lab Ecosystems Center (Woods Hole, MA), Marc studied nutrient cycling (carbon, nitrogen) and land cover change in the Tanzanian Miombo Woodlands, focusing on changes in the N cycle and woody biomass accumulation during forest regrowth, and characterization of Miombo Woodland land cover with MODIS, Landsat and Worldview satellite imagery. Marc's previous work as a Nature Conservancy NatureNet Fellow (2016-2018), formally affiliated with the Princeton Environmental Institute at Princeton University, addresses effects of climate change, agriculture and forest land-use for landscape water and nutrient budgets, including understanding effects of wood-fuel extraction on Miombo ecosystem processes and improving the mapping of forest and agricultural land cover change.
Marco leads our project in Mexico since 2011, which we implement with local partner FARCO in La Chinantla, Oaxaca and coordinates local efforts for monitoring and evaluating conservation and social impact. He collaborates with our regional teams to integrate GIS data and the creation of maps. His area of expertise is related to NGOs and Government efforts for protection of forests and jungles. He has a PhD in the Use of Natural Resources from the Instituto Politécnico Nacional. He considers that sustainable development in rural communities can be achieved by empowering people, understanding that "there is no recipe that guarantees success without making adaptations to local conditions and getting approval from the involved parties."
Job Titles:
- Program Officer, Guatemala
Mario is the main link and coordinator with EcoLogic's partners and local organizations in Guatemala. Mario is an Agricultural Engineer in Agricultural Production Systems by training and specializes in subsistence, environmental, and conservation agriculture. He has more than 18 years of experience working with non-profit and non-governmental organizations. His work has focused on agricultural resilience in the most vulnerable areas of Guatemala, development of forest conservation and restoration projects, community agroforestry, environmental education using participatory methods, implementation of alternatives to reduce firewood consumption, public health programs, he was a professor of environmental courses at the Rural University. He lives in the Municipality of Villa Nueva, Guatemala.
Job Titles:
- Behavioral Scientist
- Vice President, Surveys and Data Collection, Mathematica
Mark is a behavioral scientist with extensive experience conducting health policy research and commercializing decision aids that have been demonstrated to improve health and contain costs. Mark joined Mathematica in 2019 as Vice President of Surveys and Data Collection. Mark previously spent 13 years with Abt Associates and 10 years with the RAND Corporation. He has multifaceted professional experience, including conducting research on the quality of care, teaching university courses in health and psychology, leading start-up enterprises to commercialize health services research, founding and directing the Center for Healthcare and the Internet, and managing more than 200 scientists and other professionals within RAND's behavioral and social sciences group. Mark holds a BA in psychology and philosophy of science from the University of Pennsylvania and earned his PhD and MA degrees in social psychology from the University of California, Berkeley.
Job Titles:
- Executive
- Executive Coach and President, Westwind Coach
Monica is an Executive Coach and Organizational Consultant with over 25 years of executive coaching experience and proven results in the corporate, education and not-for-profit sectors. Monica's approach affirms and builds on strengths and assets to accelerate change and optimize leader and business performance. Prior to founding Westwind, Monica served as Executive Director of Human Resources at the Boston Globe Newspaper and Co-Chair of the Diversity Council at The New England Media Group. Before that Monica was a human resources internal consultant and coach at the New York Times , designing and delivering leadership development, employee relations, talent management and succession planning programs. Monica holds an MBA in Organizational Behavior and Labor & Human Resource Policy from the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University and a Certificate in Nonprofit Management from the Mandel Center for Nonprofit Organizations. She received her BA in Political Science from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is proficient in Spanish and Portuguese.
Job Titles:
- Acting Assistant Administrator and Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Risk Management Directorate
- Deputy Assistant Administrator, FEMA
Nick Shufro is the Acting Assistant Administrator and Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Risk Management Directorate (RMD) in the Federal Insurance & Mitigation Administration (FIMA). Nick was appointed to the Senior Executive Service in September 2016 and previously served as Chief Learning Officer (CLO) in FEMA's Office of the Chief Component Human Capital Officer where he focused on Training, Education and Professional Development (TEP) initiatives for FEMA employees, including leading Onboarding and Orientation and delivery of Mandatory, Supervisory, Management, and Leadership training (2018-2020) and as Assistant Administrator, RMD, FIMA (2016-2018). Prior to joining federal service, Mr. Shufro worked at PwC, the US Asia Environmental Partnership, United Technologies Corporation, and Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc.Nick has more than 35 years of energy, financial, adaptation, resilience, environmental health and safety management, and performance reporting experience, working and consulting for industry, government, utilities, trade associations, and non-governmental agencies in the U.S., Latin America, Europe, and Asia. Mr. Shufro is a graduate of The University of Michigan (Bachelor of Arts in Honors History), New York University's Stern School of Business Administration and L'Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (Masters of Business Administration in Finance & International Business) and the Yale School of Environmental Studies (Masters of Environmental Management in Industrial Environmental Management).
Job Titles:
- Research Professor With the Tropical Forests and People Research Centre at the University