SPEAKER BIOS

Panel One

Challenges facing African Wildlife Conservation

Angela Grimes

Angela Grimes is Born Free USA’s Chief Executive Officer. She joined the organization in 2010 and has served as Director of Development & Operations and Acting CEO. Prior to Born Free USA, Angela was Executive Director & Chief Operations Officer of Wildlife Rescue & Rehabilitation and chorus and operations manager for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Angela currently serves on the national Board of Directors for EarthShare, a federation of leading environmental organizations. She has also served as Chair of Mindy's Memory Primate Sanctuary, EarthShare of Texas, and Chicago Chorale as well as Vice President of the Kappa Alpha Theta Fraternity Housing Corporation and on the boards of Harmony House for Cats and Arts San Antonio. Angela graduated from Drake University with a degree in English. She was born and raised in Iowa, and has lived in Paris, France; Blanco, Texas; and Washington, DC; and she is now based in Chicago, Illinois. She shares her home with four rescued cats."

Lexi Bowes-Lyon

Lexi is the Philanthropy Director for Space for Giants USA. Space for Giants is an international conservation organization that protects the great wildlife landscapes that Africa's remaining elephants need to survive and thrive. Lexi’s passion for conservation and environmental causes, combined with her background in fundraising through donor engagement, creative projects and event management have helped shape her vision to raise awareness and funds for Space for Giants. She works with donors, Governments and corporations to fund critical projects and is focused on seeking sustainable fundraising and business solutions to conserve the biodiversity of Africa. She develops opportunities within sectors such as impact investing and innovative use of investment funds that attract benefits to the conservation space. 

Edwin Tambara

Edwin is a hands-on conservation practitioner with more than ten years’ in conservation. He joined African Wildlife Foundation in 2013 through the Conservation Leadership and Management Program. In his tenure as AWF’s Conservation Planner and then Strategy Manager, he helped develop conservation strategies, management and tourism plans for some iconic parks and conservancies across the continent. From Laikipia, Maasai Mara, Tsavo and Amboseli in Kenya to -- Mbeya and Kilombero in Southern Tanzania; Kazungula and Mana Lower-Zambezi landscapes in southern Africa; Mt Cameroon and Campo Ma’an in Cameroon, Nimule and Imatong in South Sudan, and Lomako in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Edwin is now the Director, External Affairs representing the AWF to external audiences in North America working with Account Managers in Program Design, Development and Communications to devise strategies to win support for AWF’s strategy, cultivate existing and new relationships and elevate the African agenda in conservation and development discussions dialogues in the US and Canada.  Edwin holds a Master of Philosophy degree in Terrestrial Ecology and Conservation and a BSc Hounours Degree in Biological Sciences form the University of Zimbabwe; and a Master in Business Administration from the African Leadership University School of Business, Rwanda. 

Panel Two

The Next Generation of Conservationists, Education & Community Engagement

Alexandra Mor

Alexandra is an American jewllery designer and artistic director, who works from headquarters in New York City's Diamond District, where she founded her jewelry brand ALEXANDRA MOR. Mor debuted a series of pieces created exclusively for the New York City retailer Bergdorf Goodman. Mor's work has been worn on the red carpet by many, including Oprah, Lupita Nyong'o and Mila Kunis.During her time in Bali, she discovered the Tagua seed, a botanical alternative to elephant ivory and developed a capsule collection featuring the material. The collection features Tagua seeds, black and red Balinese wood, Sumatran pearls and 22 karat yellow gold alongside Mor's signature details of knife-edged wire, gemstones and Diamond melee.

Esther Agbarakwe

Esther is a Climate Change Campaigner & Co-founder, International Climate Change Development Initiative (ICCDI), Nigeria. She has over four years of international experience including with the United Nations, and over seven years of cumulative experience in advancing priorities for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). She has a proven record in developing, managing and implementing development and communications strategies and polices including online campaign creation, managing and growing social media following of high-profile individuals and organization, data analysis and measuring results across digital channels. 

Fleurie Leclercq

Fleurie was born in Cameroon and grew up with her grandmother, “Mamie Marguerite”, in the Bankolo Hills of Yaounde. She is proud of her African roots and culture and thankful to her loving grandma who taught her to stand strong and keep her head up whatever life’s challenges. Under her grandma’s nurturing wing, Fleurie learned to work hard and to love and care for others. She grew up with the self-belief to follow her dreams. She named her daughter Marguerite, after her grandma. Through her stories, Fleurie shows the beauty and culture of Africa and creates a heroine that children can look up to. She wants to inspire little children of the world, especially African children, to tell their story and be proud of their origins and culture."

Conversation

Technology & Innovative Solutions for Wildlife Conservation

Dale Jamieson

Dale Jamieson is Professor of Environmental Studies and Philosophy, Affiliated Professor of Law, and Director of the Animal Studies Initiative. He is also Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Dickson Poon School of Law at King’s College, London, and Adjunct Professor at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia. Formerly he was Henry R. Luce Professor in Human Dimensions of Global Change at Carleton College, and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he was the only faculty member to have won both the Dean's award for research in the social sciences and the Chancellor's award for research in the humanities. He has held visiting appointments at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Cornell, Princeton, Stanford, Oregon, Arizona State University, and Monash University in Australia.

David Chadwick O'Connor

David is the Permanent Observer of IUCN to the United Nations. For the past 12 years, he has been Chief of Policy and Analysis of the Division for Sustainable Development of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. In that role his team has guided the analytical support to the negotiations for the Rio+20 Conference, the proposal on sustainable development goals of the General Assembly's Open Working Group on SDGs, and the September Summit outcome, Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. His team also helped support the work of the Intergovernmental Expert Committee on Sustainable Development Financing, which helped shape the Addis Ababa Action Agenda agreed in July of this year. His former team also produces the Global Sustainable Development Report (GSDR), mandated by the Rio+20 Conference as an important means of strengthening the science-policy interface in international discussions on sustainable development at the United Nations.  Before joining the United Nations, David worked for 14 years as a researcher at the Development Centre of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), based in Paris. Soon after the first Rio Conference in 1992, he published a study entitled Managing the Environment with Rapid Industrialisation: Lessons from the East Asian Experience. He has also written extensively on estimating the co-benefits of climate policy in emerging economies in terms of reduced health and agricultural impacts from local and regional air pollution. He has also served on the Economic Options Panel of the Montreal Protocol on ozone depleting substances. Prior to joining the OECD, he worked as consultant to the World Bank and to UNIDO, where he was responsible for helping develop the electronics industry development strategy as part of the Government of Malaysia's Industrial Master Plan. 

Networking Break

Zigi Ben-Haim

Zigi was five years old when he and his family and fled his birthplace of Baghdad, Iraq, and immigrated to Israel via Iran. It was in Tel-Aviv where he spent my adolescence and graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts in 1970. Following a solo exhibition as a young artist, the America Israel Cultural Foundation awarded him a scholarship to study abroad. He arrived in California and enrolled in California College of Art in Oakland and San Francisco State University. After graduating and receiving my MFA, he set off for the East Coast and have been living and working in SoHo, New York City since 1975. His multi-layered cultural background and experience inspires his art through the years.

Closing Remarks + Way Forward

Jill Abrahams

Executive Director, Francine A. LeFrak Foundation and Same Sky Foundation Fund

Adey Hailu

As the founder and experienced conference producer and events curator, Adey assists businesses, governments, and non-profit organizations with developing substantial and well-organized events internationally and in various sectors. She produces and puts together numerous Africa related events ranging in size from 20 to 8000 people in attendance. The topics of these events range from African Art events, investment and business networking events, film screenings, presidential events to international conferences.

Kunal Sood

Kunal has 20 years of experience in organizational leadership specializing in strategy, innovation, and experience design. Kunal is a TED Resident and Founder of the X-Impact Group and Novus. Kunal has led high-impact teams in multinational companies and NGO’s globally on projects that range from working in the slums of Mumbai to collaborating with the United Nations. He is deeply passionate about leveraging exponential technologies to solve our global grand challenges to positively impact the lives of a billion people. He has an unwavering commitment to making the world a better place and is a champion for the UN Global Goals. Kunal curates high-level summits at the UN including the Novus Summit and TEDxUNPlaza. Most recently he partnered with the Executive Office of the Secretary General and President of the UN General Assembly to produce the first-ever SDG Innovation Event during the UN General Assembly. Kunal has a lifelong love for learning having earned his MBA from Kellogg at Northwestern and holds a Master’s in Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. He is also a graduate of Singularity University’s Global Solutions Program headquartered at the NASA Ames Campus in Silicon Valley. Kunal serves an advisor and on the Advisory Boards of many distinguished ventures such as EDCast, SDG Action Campaign and Women’s Entrepreneurship Day."