Our People

Frank is a conservation biologist and policy advisor with many years of experience working with governments, finance institutions, civil society and local communities in Africa and around the world. He is currently a policy and finance advisor to IUCN. Frank focuses on the use of natural capital data in investment decision-making, and on bringing the conservation and finance communities together to drive changes in international conservation. He was instrumental in creating the Coalition for Private Investment in Conservation and in developing the Species Threat Abatement and Restoration biodiversity metric.

Until August 2021, Frank was the Director of the IUCN North America office. The office supports the 120+ members in the region, and works with domestic foundations, international financial institutions, policy offices and government institutions.

Prior to joining IUCN, Frank was Senior Vice-President at Conservation International (CI). In addition to leading CI’s programme in Africa and Madagascar, during which time he launched the Gaborone Declaration for Sustainability. He also worked on green economy policy and landuse planning issues, emphasizing the value of nature as the basis for sustainable development.

For 20 years until 2007, Frank worked primarily in Madagascar, with CI and other NGOs, where he conducted research on birds, lemurs and carnivores, and supported the government, local communities and local NGOs in implementing the National Environmental Action Plan. He is the co-author of Volume 8 of the Birds of Africa: the Malagasy Region, in addition to four other books and many scientific papers, and is a Chevalier de l’ordre Nationale of Madagascar.

Ian Harrison obtained his Ph.D. in systematic ichthyology at the University of Bristol, UK. He has conducted research on marine and freshwater fishes from several parts of the world, including fieldwork in Europe, Central and South America, West and Western Central Africa, the Philippines, and the Central Pacific.

Jonathan Baillie is the CEO of On The EDGE Conservation, a media and technology company promoting the natural world and advancing the science of nature communication. He is also President of the board of Natural State, a NGO committed catalyzing large-scale restoration and rewilding.

Previous to this he was Chief Scientist and Executive Vice President at National Geographic, and before this, Jonathan was Conservation Programmes Director at the Zoological Society London (ZSL) for 14 years, where he was responsible for conservation projects focusing on threatened species and their habitats in more than 50 countries.

He holds an undergraduate degree from Queen’s University in Canada, a Master of Science in Conservation Biology from Yale University, and a PhD in Biology from Silwood Park, Imperial College; his postdoctoral research was undertaken at the Zoological Society of London, Institute of Zoology. Jonathan is currently a Visiting Professor of Zoology at the University of Oxford.

Katy Scholfield is the Director of Strategic Grantmaking for the Great Apes and Gibbons Programme at Arcus Foundation.

Katy was based at Synchronicity Earth for 10 years, where she led efforts to centre Indigenous and community rights and the revival and protection of biocultural diversity across the organisation. During this time, she played a key role in developing Synchronicity Earth’s forest grantmaking in Africa, Brazil and Papua New Guinea, as well as establishing collaborative funding initiatives to amplify conservation impact.

Prior to this, Katy held various conservation and development posts before completing her PhD using a case study of mountain gorilla conservation to explore how different people and their ideas are included or excluded in conservation.

She also holds a bachelor’s degree in environment, ecology, and economics from the University of York and a master’s in environment and development from the University of Manchester. Katy has sat on the executive committee of the AgroEcology Fund since 2015 and has a strong interest in how agroecology can help conservation re-imagine its relationship with agriculture to support all species to flourish. Katy joined the board of Synchronicity Earth USA in 2021.

Liz Hosken is co-founder and Director of the Gaia Foundation.

She is from South Africa and was active from a young age in both environmental issues and the anti-apartheid movement. During the first decade of Gaia’s work Liz spent many years in the Amazon, where she learnt about Indigenous ways of seeing and accompanied Indigenous communities in a process of reviving their knowledge, practices, and governance systems to protect their ancestral lands.

When Liz returned to her continent, she was inspired to share these lessons with African colleagues to restore Africa’s rich cultural, spiritual, and ecological heritage.

She also spent precious time with Thomas Berry exploring his ideas of Earth Jurisprudence and Rights of Nature and the need for an Earth-centred paradigm shift in the dominant world.

Liz then developed and co-facilitated a three-year training in the philosophy and practice of Earth Jurisprudence and the Amazonian approach to enhancing indigenous traditions to restore biocultural diversity, rooted in experiential learning for practitioners in Africa. She has a BSc in Environmental Sciences and a Masters in Philosophy and Education for Social Change.

Rudo Angela Sanyanga Hungwe is an environmental scientist and activist based in South Africa. Born in Zimbabwe, she spent the first ten years of her professional career as a freshwater research biologist on Lake Kariba before moving to university teaching and scientific research administration. She holds a doctorate in freshwater system ecology from the Stockholm University and has spent nearly three decades of her working life on numerous research and consulting assignments in the Zambezi River basin especially on Lake Kariba. She has also worked on a number of other river basin ecosystems in over 20 southern, central, eastern and west African countries. These assignments have given her first-hand experience of the sustainability issues surrounding natural resource utilisation on the continent as well as the impact of development activities on the lives of vulnerable people.

Over the ten-year period, 2011 – 2021, Rudo was the Africa Regional Director for International Rivers based in Pretoria, South Africa, responsible for directing highly impactful research and advocacy campaigns against socially and environmentally destructive hydropower infrastructure on the continent while promoting more environmentally friendly renewable energy alternative programs. She oversaw the growth of the International River Africa Programme into a highly regarded science-based advocacy organisation.

She currently works as a consultant for a number of organisations and initiatives in African countries, using her experience to provide technical analysis and advice on the establishment of environmentally sustainable and gender sensitive water and sanitation infrastructure projects at community level. She has developed some effective gender assessment guides.

Samuel Nnah Ndobe is an agronomist from Cameroon and a leading advocate for the rights of Indigenous Peoples.

With a degree in Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology from the University of Dschang, Samuel began working in Cameroon on community-led conservation initiatives such as community forest management, sustainable livelihood development, participatory mapping and advocacy for community land rights.

He moved on to develop Payments for Ecosystem Services projects around the Dja Forest Reserve and became a consultant delivering workshops for various organisations working on sustainable development projects in Central Africa, including the United Nations Development Programme, Jane Goodall Institute, and Rights and Resources Initiative.

Samuel also facilitated the contribution of organisations in Africa, Asia and Latin America in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change REDD negotiations and helped build capacity in those regions to participate in these negotiations.

Most recently he has been a consultant for many international organisations, including the IUCN, Global Greengrants Fund, and Synchronicity Earth, using his expertise to facilitate strategic planning for projects focussed on conservation, sustainable development, and REDD+. Samuel’s experience and knowledge has been invaluable in helping Synchronicity Earth develop a robust and successful programme in the Congo Basin.

Simon Stuart was previously our Director of Strategic Conservation.

In December 2020, Simon took on the role of Executive Director of A Rocha International but remains as our Chief Scientific Adviser on a part-time basis. Before joining Synchronicity Earth, Simon served as Chair of the Species Survival Commission (SSC) for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The SSC is a science-based network with more than 10,000 experts from all over the world. SSC’s major role is to provide information and advice to the worldwide conservation community on biodiversity conservation, including through the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

Simon has undergraduate and doctoral degrees from the University of Cambridge, with fieldwork in Tanzania and Cameroon.

Simon started work in BirdLife International in 1983, joined the IUCN Secretariat in 1986, and was elected as Chair of the SSC in October 2008.

Simon has been instrumental in the development of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and the Key Biodiversity Area global standard and played a key role in identifying and addressing the global amphibian extinction crisis.

He has also produced numerous high-impact scientific papers and books. For all this work, he won the Blue Planet Prize in 2020.

With a background in development economics, Thomas has lived and worked since 2011 in Central Africa, between Cameroon, Congo Brazzaville, Gabon, and the DRC, where is active in environmental protection issues, interlinked with issues of territorial governance and socioeconomic development.

His work supports African Civil Society Organizations and regional networks of local actors, ranging from strategic and organisational reflection to the development of technical and networking support.

In this context, he collaborates on a daily basis with several of Synchronicity Earth’s partners in the Congo Basin.