OUR BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Our expert Board includes esteemed environmentalists, scientists, and leaders from around the world, all dedicated to protecting life and biodiversity.
David Baldock
Institute for European Environmental Policy
David Baldock
David Baldock is the executive director of the Institute for European Environmental Policy. He joined the institute in the mid-1980s to establish a programme on agricultural and rural environmental issues. He became deputy director in 1992 and director in 1998. As well as being an authority on European agricultural policy and the environment, Baldock’s expertise includes EU strategies for climate change, natural resources and public investment. He has an active interest in sustainable development and the growing implications of building a bioeconomy. Baldock is also a member of the European Commission’s High-Level Group on the competitiveness of the car industry in Europe.
Dror Ben-Ami
Centre for Compassionate Conservation
Dror Ben-Ami
Dr. Dror Ben-Ami has been involved in environmental activities for nearly 20 years. Ben-Ami earned his bachelor of arts from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his master’s and doctorate in ecology from the University of New South Wales, Australia. His dissertations were on the eastern grey kangaroo in northwestern New South Wales and on the life history of the swamp wallaby and peri-urban adaptive wildlife management. Ben-Ami was a research assistant at the University of New South Wales; a lecturer in conservation biology at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, Israel; and a postdoctoral research fellow at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. He is the co-founder of THINKK, the think tank for kangaroos, at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia, where he works as a research fellow. Ben-Ami also co-founded and is a lead researcher at the Centre for Compassionate Conservation at the University of Technology, Sydney.
Hadas Dabas
Yale University
Hadas Dabas
Hadas is a Ph.D. student in the genetics department at Yale University, studying neuroscience. She got her Bachelor of Science in biology at Tel Aviv University, and has conducted research on biodiversity at Stanford University and on head and neck cancer at the University of California San Francisco. Hadas has counseled gap-year volunteers working with youth at risk, promoting equal opportunity and social mobility via informal education and after-school enrichment programs. Hadas is currently active in a science communication initiative (SITN) and on a committee to increase social equity in genetics research (GenERA), and mentors women undergraduates in STEM through the Women in Science at Yale (WISAY).
Darrell Erb Jr.
Harmony Foundation of Canada
Darrell Erb Jr.
Darrell Erb Jr. worked for 23 years in Oregon’s least affluent communities, where he experienced first-hand the crippling effects of generational poverty on students. Erb worked as a teacher and later as an administrator alongside dedicated colleagues to create safe, welcoming, and effective schools to empower students to rise above their daily struggles and gain the ability to dream and live fruitful, happy lives. Between stints in education, Erb served as Executive Director of the Tommy E. Short Charitable Foundation, working with the Earth Council Alliance and alongside environmental leaders in the Americas, Europe, and China to establish strategic local partnerships for the environment. Later, he joined the Harmony Foundation of Canada to develop and implement the Leadership Training Program for Sustainable Community Development in China. Erb holds a BA in Secondary Education from Western Oregon University and an M.Ed. from George Fox University.
Deborah Goldberg
University of Michigan
Deborah Goldberg
Deborah E. Goldberg is the Arthur Thurnau Professor Emerita and Margaret B. Davis Distinguished University Professor Emerita in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan, where she served as associate chair and chair for a total of 15 years, and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Arizona. Her research in plant community ecology has been recognized by her election as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Fellow of the Ecological Society of America, and Vice President for Science for the Ecological Society of America. Current research foci include the integration of community and ecosystem processes in plant invasions, the role of clonality in species interactions and community dynamics, and effects of climate change on alpine plant communities. Professor Goldberg has worked actively as a faculty member and department chair to increase recruitment and retention and improve the climate for under-represented groups, and she has received multiple awards for her diversity and inclusion work at the University of Michigan.
Clive G. Jones
Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies
Clive G. Jones
Dr. Clive G. Jones is an Emeritus Scientist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York. A research ecologist, he has studied how species affect the physical environment—ecosystem engineering—including how they create habitats and affect biodiversity. Recognized as the founder of this now large and rapidly growing field of basic and applied research, he is the author of over two hundred publications, including six books. An elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, his other awards and honours include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Blaise Pascal International Research Chair and a Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Visiting Professorship. He is a founder of the Ecological Engineering Applications Group in France, a founding editorial board member of the journal SAPIENS (Surveys and Perspectives Integrating Environment and Society) and an international expert of the Institut Veolia. He has served on numerous international advisory boards and panels.
Josephine Kishapoi
Oikos East Africa
Josephine Kishapoi
Josephine Kishapoi started her career in environment, development and women’s economic empowerment in 2003 with the African Wildlife Foundation. Kishapoi co-founded the Maasai Women Development Organisation in 2000 to build the capacity and awareness of women from pastoral communities in Tanzania. She is currently working with Oikos East Africa, an international organization mainly funded by the European Union, to mitigate the effects of climate change, provide alternative energy and water, and promote women’s economic empowerment. Kishapoi was born to a family of ten children and raised in the Maasai Steppe—Kiteto District in northern Tanzania. She obtained a diploma in environmental resource management at Kenya Polytechnic University College and her bachelor of arts in development studies at Kimmage Development Studies Centre, Ireland.
Konstantinos Makris
Cyprus University of Technology
Konstantinos Makris
Dr. Konstantinos C. Makris is an assistant professor of environmental health at the Cyprus University of Technology and leads the Water & Health Laboratory at the Cyprus International Institute for Environmental and Public Health, in association with the Harvard School of Public Health. His research team studies the effects of environmental chemicals on human health, particularly with respect to chronic diseases. Since 2004, Makris’s team has published more than 75 peer-reviewed articles and 40 conference proceedings. He has been awarded more than one million euros in external funding since 2008 from the European Union, the Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation and the National Institutes for Environmental Health Sciences Center at the Harvard School of Public Health. Makris received his PhD in environmental chemistry from the University of Florida.
Wanjira Mathai
World Resources Institute (WRI)
Wanjira Mathai
Wanjira Mathai is vice president and regional director for Africa at the World Resources Institute (WRI). She is also the current chair of the Wangari Maathai Foundation and the former chair of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya. An inspiring leader, Wanjira has over 20 years of experience advocating for social and environmental change on both local and international platforms. Over the years, Wanjira has served important strategic and advocacy roles, raising the prominence and visibility of global issues such as climate change, youth leadership, sustainable energy, and landscape restoration at Partnership on Women’s Entrepreneurship in Renewables (wPOWER), the Wangari Maathai Foundation, and the Green Belt Movement, the organization her mother, Wangari Maathai (2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate), founded in 1977.
Wanjira currently serves on the board of World Agroforestry (ICRAF) and is an advisory council member of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. Wanjira is one of a few Six Seconds EQ Practitioners in Kenya and was named one of the 100 Most Influential African Women in 2018 and 2020.
Guy Milhalter
Pearl Cohen
Guy Milhalter
Guy Milhalter is a partner in the Corporate Group in Pearl Cohen’s New York office.
Tom Murtha
Preventable Surprises
Tom Murtha
At Preventable Surprises, Thomas (Tom) Murtha focuses on forceful stewardship, asserting the rights investors have as owners to engage corporations to reduce the systemic risks of climate disruption, biodiversity loss, and other impacts that compromise the resilience of nature. After an earlier career as an institutional investor at T. Rowe Price Associates and later one at The Nature Conservancy (TNC), Tom works to help business reduce environmental impacts and become more regenerative. Post-TNC, Tom also advises pensions and endowments and is an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Earth Institute Center for Environmental Sustainability. A resident of Norfolk, Connecticut and NYC, Tom also serves on the advisory boards of Climate and Forest Capital and the Alliance for a Viable Future.
Kirsten Oates
Parlee McLaws LLP
Kirsten Oates
Kirsten Oates is a patent agent at Parlee McLaws LLP, drafting and prosecuting patent applications for life sciences–related inventions before the Canadian and US patent offices and the World Intellectual Property Organization. Previously, she gained experience in the development of natural health products derived from herbaceous plants at a Canadian biotechnology company. She holds a bachelor of science in zoology and a master of science in anatomy and cell biology from the University of Alberta, Canada. Oates currently serves on the Life Science Committee of the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada.
Jack Platt
Jack Platt
Jack M. Platt, CPA, is a trustee of Friends of the Arava Institute and a longtime supporter of environmental causes.
Tauni Sauvage
Executive Director at TiME
Tauni Sauvage
Tauni spent more than ten years working for The Nature Conservancy where she served as Associate Director of Philanthropy for Corporate and Foundation Relations in the California chapter, Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations and, most recently, Director of Philanthropy for the Asia Pacific region. Prior to joining The Nature Conservancy, Tauni was the Chief Marketing Strategist/Corporate Brand Manager for Educational Testing Service, a nonprofit organization that develops and administers educational assessments such as the SAT. Tauni also founded and managed the Sauvage Marketing Group, an advertising agency that included such clients as Microsoft, Intel and Pacific Gas & Electric. She received her B.A., J.D. and M.B.A. from the University of California.
Uri Shanas
CEO and founder of TiME
Uri Shanas
Uri Shanas received a PhD in zoology from Tel Aviv University in 1996. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia University, he joined the Department of Biology and Environment at the University of Haifa–Oranim, Israel, where he served as head of department between 2009 and 2013. Prof. Shanas has published over 50 papers in scientific peer-reviewed journals. He was a visiting academic at Massey University, New Zealand, in 2007 and at Portland State University in the 2014/15 academic year. Shanas co-established the Israel Union for Environmental Defense and serves on the governmental Israel Nature and Parks Authority. He leads the expert committee of Israel’s Green Movement Party and has served on various committees including the board of directors of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere Programme and the Long Term Social and Ecological Research Network.
Contact: [email protected]
Ondine Sherman
Voiceless, the animal protection institute
Ondine Sherman
Ondine Sherman is the co-founder and managing director of Voiceless, the animal protection institute.
She is the author of Vegan Living: A simple guide to a cruelty-free, healthy, plant-based life (2020) and the YA fiction series, the Animal Allies, with Pantera Press: Sky, Snow and Star.
Ondine is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Sydney, exploring the human-animal relationship. She holds a BA in Communications and an MA in Environmental Studies from Macquarie University.
She is a director of several NGOs, including TiME, Society for Compassionate Conservation, the MCT8-AHDS Foundation and the Sherman Foundation.