DIAN FOSSEY GORILLA FUND - Key Persons
Alan Root accompanied Dian Fossey from Kenya to the Congo and was instrumental in helping her obtain the permits she needed to work in the Virungas. He helped her recruit two African men who would stay and work with her at camp, as well as porters to carry her belongings and gear to the Kabara meadow. Root also helped her set up camp and gave her a brief introduction to gorilla tracking. It was only when he left, and after two days at Kabara that Dian realized just how alone she was. Soon, however, tracking the mountain gorillas would become her single focus, to the exclusion even of simple camp chores.
On her first day of trekking, after only a 10-minute walk, Dian was rewarded with the sight of a lone male gorilla sunning himself. The startled gorilla retreated into the vegetation as she approached, but Dian was encouraged by the encounter. Shortly thereafter, Senwekwe, an experienced gorilla tracker, who had worked with Joan and Alan Root in 1963, joined Dian, and the prospects for more sightings improved.
Slowly, Dian settled into life at Kabara. Space was limited; her 7-by-10-foot tent served as bedroom, bath, office and clothes-drying area (an effort that often seemed futile in the wet climate of the rainforest). Meals were prepared in a run-down wooden building and rarely included local fruits and vegetables, other than potatoes. Dian's mainstay was tinned food and potatoes cooked in every way imaginable. Once a month, she would hike down the mountain to her Land Rover, "Lily," and make the two-hour drive to the village of Kikumba to restock the pantry.
Senwekwe proved invaluable as a tracker and taught Dian much of what she came to know about tracking. With his help and considerable patience, she eventually identified three gorilla groups in her area of study along the slopes of Mt. Mikeno.
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- VICE PRESIDENT, SALES EFFECTIVENESS of SOUTHERN WINE & SPIRITS of AMERICA, INC ( SOUTHERN )
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- FOUNDING PARTNER, the PRIDE LAW FIRM
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- CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER, LANSOLUTIONS LLC
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- PRESIDENT and CEO OMAHA's HENRY DOORLY ZOO & AQUARIUM
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- Researcher
- BIODIVERSITY RESEARCH PROGRAM MANAGER, RWANDA
Deogratias Tuyisingize is a wildlife biologist, researcher, and ecologist whose research focuses on biodiversity conservation in Rwanda. He first arrived at Karisoke in 2004 as an intern working on the habituation and behavioral ecology of the endangered golden monkey (Cercopithecus mitis kandti). Since 2006, he has been working as a researcher at the Karisoke Research Center collecting long-term behavioral data on the golden monkey in the Volcanoes National Park (VNP). In 2010, after completing his master's degree in conservation biology from the University of Cape Town, he was appointed as the Biodiversity Program Manager for the Karisoke Research Center, and he is honored to remain in this role today.
His primary areas of research for more than 11 years have been the golden monkey and its habitat, as well as developing effective conservation and management strategies to protect Rwandan biodiversity. An enthusiastic and ambitious conservationist, he has implemented multiple research projects, including an investigation into the population size and range of the golden monkey in the VNP in 2007 and 2011, studying the distribution of large and small mammals, piloting the camera trapping in the VNP, examining the phenology of bamboo in the both VNP and Kahuzi-Biega National Park in Congo, and he has conducted an extensive bird and amphibian monitoring program. In addition, Deogratias is responsible for mentoring and supervising undergraduate students from Rwanda's national universities and teaches applied conservation biology field courses for university students at Karisoke. In April 2016, Deogratias was admitted as a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Rwanda where his research focuses on the "conservation ecology of the golden monkey in their remaining habitats in Rwanda" while remaining the biodiversity research manager at Karisoke.
Job Titles:
- Key Staff Member
- DIRECTOR, DATA & DONOR INFORMATION
Dian Fossey was born in San Francisco, Calif., in 1932. Her parents divorced when she was young, so Dian grew up with her mother and stepfather. By all accounts, she was an excellent student and was extremely interested in animals from a very young age. At age 6, she began horseback riding lessons and in high school earned a letter on the riding team.
When Dian enrolled in college courses at Marin Junior College, she chose to focus on business, following the encouragement of her stepfather, a wealthy businessman. She worked while in school, and at age 19, on the summer break following her freshman year of college, she went to work on a ranch in Montana. At the ranch, she fell in love with and developed an attachment to the animals, but she was forced to leave early when she contracted chicken pox.
Even so, the experience convinced Dian to follow her heart and return to school as a pre-veterinary student at the University of California. She found some of the chemistry and physics courses quite challenging, and ultimately, she turned her focus to a degree in occupational therapy at San Jose State College, from which she graduated in 1954.
Following graduation, Dian interned at various hospitals in California, working with tuberculosis patients. After less than a year she moved to Louisville, Ky., where she was hired as director of the occupational therapy department at Kosair Crippled Children Hospital. She enjoyed working with the people of Kentucky and lived outside the city limits in a cottage on a farm where the owners encouraged her to help work with the animals.
Dian faced a number of challenges while setting up camp at Karisoke. Upon the departure of her friend Alyette, she was left with no interpreter. Dian spoke Swahili and the Rwandan men she had hired spoke only Kinyarwanda. Slowly, and with the aid of hand gestures and facial expressions, they learned to communicate. A second and very significant challenge was that of gaining "acceptance" among the gorillas in the area so that meaningful research could be done in close proximity to them. This would require that the gorillas overcome their shy nature and natural fear of humans.
In the course of her years of research, Dian established herself as a true friend of the mountain gorilla. However, there was one gorilla with whom she formed a particularly close bond. Named Digit, he was roughly 5 years old and living in Group 4 when she encountered him in 1967. He had a damaged finger on his right hand (hence, the name) and no playmates his age in his group. He was drawn to her and her to him. Over time, a true friendship would form.
Dian had not been back in Rwanda long when, a few weeks before her 54th birthday, she was murdered. Her body was found in her cabin on the morning of Dec. 27, 1985. She was struck twice on the head and face with a machete. There was evidence of forced entry but no signs that robbery had been the motive.
In September 1967, Dr. Dian Fossey established the Karisoke Research Center in Rwanda's Virunga Mountains and set in motion one of the longest-running studies of any animal species anywhere in the world. Her focus, courage and passion have inspired many conservationists who have followed since. And her legacy lives on today, in the gorilla protection, science, education and people programs of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.
Job Titles:
- CEO
- CHIEF SCIENTIFIC OFFICER
- PRESIDENT
- PRESIDENT & CEO / CHIEF SCIENTIFIC OFFICER / Atlanta, GA
Dr. Tara Stoinski serves as President and CEO and Chief Scientific Officer for the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund. Prior to taking on the CEO role in 2014, she worked with the Fossey Fund for 13 years in a scientific capacity. Tara has studied gorillas for more than two decades and is the author of over 100 scientific publications and books. Her work has been featured in numerous press outlets, including National Geographic Magazine, CNN, and NPR. She holds degrees from Tufts University, University of Oxford and the Georgia Institute of Technology and is an adjunct professor at Emory University. Dr. Stoinski also serves in a number of leadership positions within the conservation, primate and academic communities.
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- PUBLIC RELATIONS / COMMUNICATIONS SPECIALIST
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- RESEARCH & CONSERVATION PROGRAM MANAGER, Democratic Republic of the Congo
Escobar Binyinyi obtained his bachelor's degree in management in 2003 in Goma and specialized in GIS in 2004 at the University of Rwanda in Butare. He has been working with the Fossey Fund's Congo program since 2004. After seven years working as GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and database expert at the Fossey Fund's Goma office, Binyinyi changed career direction and became one of the Fossey Fund's key field staff. He is now based in the small village of Nkuba where he organizes the Fossey Fund's expeditions in the low-altitude forests of eastern Congo. He is also in charge of the Fossey Fund's camera trap network in Congo.
Job Titles:
- Director, Rwanda Programs & Karisoke Research Center
- DIRECTOR, RWANDA PROGRAMS & KARISOKE RESEARCH CENTER / RWANDA
- First Rwandan Director of the Fossey Fund 's Karisoke Research Center
- Karisoke As a Research Assistant
Felix Ndagijimana became the first Rwandan director of the Fossey Fund's Karisoke Research Center in January 2012. He oversees all of the Fossey Fund's programs in Rwanda, which include protecting gorillas, conducting scientific research, training future leaders in Africa conservation and helping local communities. He leads a staff of more than 120 and manages the Fossey Fund's many partnerships in the country.
Felix joined Karisoke as a research assistant in 2004 and served as deputy director after
George Schaller's earlier work served as a basis for the techniques Dian would use to habituate the gorillas to her presence. Schaller laid out suggestions in his book, The Mountain Gorilla, which Fossey used to guide herself through the process of successfully habituating six groups of gorillas in the Kabara region.
At Karisoke, Dian continued to rely on Schaller's work and the guidelines he set forth. She also came to depend on the gorillas' natural curiosity in the habituation process. While walking or standing upright increased their apprehension, she was able to get quite close when she "knuckle-walked." She would also chew on celery when she was near the groups, to draw them even closer to her. Through this process, she partially habituated four groups of gorillas in 1968.
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- EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR & CEO, DALLAS ZOO and the AQUARIUM at FAIR PARK
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- EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT
- OFFICE MANAGER
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- Community Development Manager
- COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT MANAGER / RWANDA
Hilary Hilsabeck serves as the community development manager for the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund. Hilary has worked in community development across the U.S. and East Africa for the past nine years, with seven of those spent in Rwanda. She began her career with the U.S. Peace Corps as a community health volunteer and moved into leading the growth and scale of two social enterprises that deliver impact to women. Hilary is passionate about sustainable and impactful community development. She believes that a local, eco-feminist approach is critical to conservation efforts and that protecting natural resources provides opportunities for both men and women to rise from social and financial hardships.
She holds a bachelor's degree in communication studies from the University of Iowa and a master's in public health from the University of Minnesota.
Job Titles:
- GORILLA PROGRAM MANAGER, KARISOKE RESEARCH CENTER / RWANDA
- SENIOR MANAGER of PROGRAM OPERATIONS, KARISOKE RESEARCH CENTER
Jean Paul Hirwa ("JP") joined the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund in 2009 as a research assistant. From 2015-2017 he completed his master's degree, within an Erasmus Mundus master's program on tropical biodiversity and ecosystems (called "TROPIMUNDO"), through a scholarship from the European Commission. For his thesis research, he studied foraging-related interactions between arboreal monkeys and terrestrial mammals on Barro Colorado Island in Panama.
JP returned to Karisoke in 2017 as gorilla program manager in Rwanda, where he is responsible for more than 80 Fossey Fund field staff, including gorilla trackers, anti-poaching teams, and research assistants, as well as collaborations with Rwandan park authorities and other partners.
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- SENIOR MARKETING and COMMUNICATIONS COORDINATOR
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- EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN of the BOARD and CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, ORACLE CORPORATION
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- PRESIDENT and CEO, HOUSTON ZOO
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- Chief Financial Officer
- CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER, ATLANTA, GA
Marcie Beskind serves as Chief Financial Officer for the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund. In this role, she is responsible for the accounting operations and financial reporting for the organization. She also provides support for HR, IT, and other administrative areas.
Marcie began her career with Deloitte and held management positions at GE Capital, BellSouth and Turner Broadcasting prior to shifting her focus and passion to the nonprofit sector. Most recently, she was the CFO/Chief Administrative Officer at the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta. Marcie is an alumna of Emory University.
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- Key Staff Member
- DIGITAL MARKETING and COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER
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- PARTNER, KILPATRICK TOWNSEND & STOCKTON LLP
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- FOUNDER and PRESIDENT BROOKFIELD COMMUNITIES, INC
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- PHILANTHROPIST and CONSERVATIONIST
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- SAN DIEGO ZOO GLOBAL EXECUTIVE BOARD and TREASURER
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- PHILANTHROPIST and CONSERVATIONIST
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- SAN DIEGO ZOO GLOBAL EXECUTIVE BOARD and TREASURER
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- Key Staff Member
- MANAGER of GRANTS and FOUNDATIONS
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- Director of the Fossey Fund 's Congo
- DIRECTOR, CONGO PROGRAMS
- DIRECTOR, CONGO PROGRAMS DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC of CONGO
Urbain Ngobobo is the Director of the Fossey Fund's Congo programs. Since he joined the Fossey Fund in 2011, Ngobobo has led the Fossey Fund's work to create community-based conservation areas for the critically endangered Grauer's gorillas. The last five years has seen this program grow from 700 sq km to 1,300 sq km of protected forest, which is home to an estimated 150-200 Grauer's gorillas plus a host of other endangered species.
Ngobobo's expertise is the research and development of policies and strategies to protect Grauer's gorillas and their habitat, in partnership with local communities and authorities.
Ngobobo holds a master's degree in innovation and development. Before joining the Fossey Fund, he worked with the Zoological Society of London and with the Frankfurt Zoological Society and did field work in several Congolese protected areas, including Virunga, Maiko, Garamba and Upemba National Parks.
Job Titles:
- GORILLA PROGRAM SENIOR ADVISOR & REGIONAL PR DIRECTOR, RWANDA
Veronica has worked for the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund in Rwanda since 2005. She manages the gorilla program for the Karisoke Research Center and also takes responsibility for the public relations work of the center. She has worked in Africa since 1999, based in several countries, including the Central African Republic, Gabon, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. Veronica has extensive experience working with wild apes and other primate species such as western lowland gorillas, bonobos, mangabeys and mountain gorillas.
Among her skills are: field research techniques, camp management, gorilla habituation, field data collection, program management, communications and capacity building.
A native of Rome, Veronica earned a master's degree from the University of Rome in conservation of nature and other resources, with a dissertation on western lowland gorillas in the Central African Republic.
Winnie has many years of practical experience with gorilla behavior, ecology and conservation, reaching back to 2004 when she joined the Fossey Fund's Karisoke Research Center as a research assistant. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Chester, UK, with a dissertation on maternal investment in mountain gorillas. Afterward, she returned to Rwanda as a teaching fellow with the National University of Rwanda to train and supervise graduate students conducting research at Karisoke.
From 2011-12, she spent a year and a half working at Karisoke to study the physiology of stress among mountain gorillas in relation to their health and to help to collect data on mountain gorilla behavior and fecal samples. From 2013-14, she analyzed those data at the Fossey Fund's headquarters in Atlanta, Ga in collaboration with Emory University and the Davee Center for Epidemiology at Lincoln Park Zoo.
In 2015, Eckardt returned to Karisoke to work as research manager. Her duties include supervising the ongoing long-term Karisoke data collection and current research projects, supporting the publication and scientific writing process of Karisoke researchers and students, implementing electronic data collection, ensuring high-quality field data, strengthening scientific collaborations, supporting grant writing, and continuing her own gorilla research projects.