Georgina Catacora-Vargas

Georgina Catacora-Vargas is an Agricultural Engineer and Ph.D. in Agroecology. She is currently a tenure-track professor at Catholic Bolivian University’s Academic Peasant Unit “Tiahuancu.” Georgina is also the president of the Latin American Scientific Society of Agroecology (SOCLA) and a global consultant on biodiversity and climate change issues. She has practical experience in national and international policy development and transdisciplinary research, primarily in countries from the Global South, in the fields of agroecology, sustainable local food systems, biodiversity, genetic resources, and biosafety of emerging genetic applications in agriculture. She served for 11 years as a negotiator for her country (Bolivia) in various multilateral environmental agreements, as well as an advisor to the Bolivian National Competent Environment Authority. She also served on the Ad Hoc Expert Technical Group on Farmers’ Rights of the International Treaty on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, the Ad Hoc Expert Technical Group on Socio-Economic Considerations of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, and the Compliance Committee of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety under the Convention on Biological Diversity. Her work, as scholar and practitioner, is also dedicated to gender equity as well as to indigenous peoples and peasant rights.

Kevin Chang

Kevin Chang is from Kahalu’u, O’ahu, Hawai’i and serves as the Executive Director of Kuaʻāina Ulu ʻAuamo (KUA) a capacity building and network facilitation and mobilization mechanism founded by and for rural Native Hawaiian community-driven biocultural resource management initiatives. Kevin is of Chinese, Irish and other ancestry and grew up at the convergence of urban and rural life in O’ahu, Hawai’i. He spent the last few decades working on the social, cultural, and environmental justice issues of his community on land and in the ocean, both locally and internationally. He is also an attorney who has worked in litigation, entertainment law, and business. He is married to Alma Siria Vega de Chang of ciudad Obregon, Sonora, Mexico, and is the lead singer and songwriter of the band Kupaʻāina (citizen of the land).

Francisco Chapela-Mendoza

Francisco Chapela-Mendoza is an agronomist. He holds a Ph.D. in natural resources economics and is a rural planner advocate of devolving Indigenous and rural communities their role as stewards of nature. Since 1980, he has been a technical advisor and ally of Indigenous and rural communities and their organizations, helping develop their ideas about how to achieve a Good Life or Buen Vivir. Over the last 20 years, Francisco has led programs to support and enhance the stewardship role of Indigenous and Rural Communities and organizations with international institutions, such as The World Bank, Rainforest Alliance, and the Christensen Fund. He has authored and co-authored more than 50 publications about natural resources management, forest management, institutional design and natural resources management policies. Francisco is a member of Estudios Rurales y Asesoría, the International Association for the Study of the Commons, The Forest Stewardship Council, and the International Society of Tropical Foresters.

Milka Chepkorir

Milka Chepkorir is a young Indigenous woman from the Sengwer peoples in Cherang’any Hills, Kenya. For the last six years she has been working with her community to address land tenure issues in their ancestral lands, the Embobut and Kabolet forests. Due to lack of recognition of her community land rights, the community has faced human rights violations through evictions by the government of Kenya, all in the name of forest conservation. Milka has a special interest in gender issues and has been working with women and elders in her community to ensure women are included in the community land rights struggles. Together with the women in Embobut forest, she helped develop a cultural centre where the community hopes to carry out indigenous education classes to educate the youth and children about the Sengwer indigenous knowledge and systems, most of which have been lost or are diminishing. She is currently completing her Masters in Gender and Development Studies at the University of Nairobi. Her specific focus is on gender relations in community forest conservation among Indigenous Peoples. Milka coordinates the “Defending Territories of Life” stream of work at the ICCA Consortium. She was previously the Coordinator of Community Land Action NOW! (CLAN), a Kenyan movement of communities working to register their lands as community lands under the Community Land Act 2016.

Lim Li Ching

Lim Li Ching is a Senior Researcher at Third World Network (TWN). TWN is an independent non-profit international research and advocacy organization involved in bringing about a greater articulation of the needs, aspirations and rights of the peoples in the South and in promoting just, equitable and ecological development. Li Ching coordinates its biodiversity, biosafety and sustainable agriculture work. She has a B.Sc. in Ecology and an M.Phil. in Development Studies. She is a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) and has contributed to various international publications on sustainable agriculture.

Jyoti Fernandes

Jyoti Fernandes is an agroecological smallholder farmer based in Dorset, UK. She runs a micro-dairy on her farm and produces a wide range of products from cheese and meats to cider, juice, and preserves. The farm is part of a local smallholders’ cooperative that shares collective processing facilities and markets the products of the members’ smallholdings collectively. Jyoti coordinates the Policy, Lobbying and Campaigning work of the Landworkers Alliance, a small farmers union in the UK, which is a member of La Via Campesina.

Tabara Ndiaye

Tabara Ndiaye has more than 15 years of experience in international philanthropy supporting rural women and their organizations in French-speaking Africa in the promotion of agroecology and the transition to agroecology. Tabara is active in various platforms at local, sub regional and regional levels of the African continent on rural women’s seeds and knowledge, land rights, climate justice, feminist agroecology and healthy food systems. She has close links with the culture and environment of rural women, and understands the challenges they face as well as their prospects for the future. Previously, she worked with New Field Foundation for ten years, developing its grantmaking program for rural women and their organizations in French-speaking West Africa. Tabara is a Program Officer at the American Jewish World Service, responsible for Land Water & Climate Justice Programs in Senegal and DR Congo. She is a board member of the Global Fund for Women and the West African Network for Peacebuilding, and is an advisor to the Africa Women’s Collaborative for Healthy Food Systems.

Alibek Otambekov

Alibek Otambekov was born and raised in Pamir Mountains of Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous region, Tajikistan. He has MS degree in environmental engineering and 17 years of experience in working with local farmers, grassroots organizations, and communities of Tajikistan, as well as working on the regional level in Central Asia and globally. Most recently, as an Associate Program Officer of the Christensen Fund, Alibek has supported Central Asian peasants—Dehkans; their innovations and practices that sustain agrobiodiversity of fruits, nuts, and cereals and their wild relatives; medicinal and wild food plants and herbs as well as the associated agroecosystems and cultural land management practices and livelihoods necessary to sustain this diversity. The work is set in the high-altitude agricultural valleys of Eastern Tajikistan and Southern fruit and nut forests of Kyrgyzstan. Alibek was instrumental in setting up the International Network of Mountain Indigenous People (INMIP), where he is currently the country coordinator. He is a musician and passionate advocate of the culture of his people and building partnership of local, national and global institutions.

Sridhar Radhakrishnan

Sridhar Radhakrishnan is a Steering Committee member in the India-wide Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture (ASHA-Kisan Swaraj). He is also a Director in a honorary role, in Thirunelly Agri Producer Company, a Farmer Producer Organization based in Kerala, and serves as a Consultant with Asar Social Impact Advisors. An engineer by education and an environmentalist by passion and practice, Sridhar works closely with various agriculture and environmental groups as well as eco-centric startups and enterprises across India. He is notably a founding member and co-coordinator in the Kerala state-wide collective of environmental groups, Kerala Paristhithi Aikya Vedhi, and served as a coordinator (policy and campaign) and administrator of the Save our Rice Campaign-India. He was also Programme Director of Thanal, a voluntary organization working on matters related to environment, agriculture, and climate change, as well as an honorary advisor for the Consumer Research, Education, Action, Training and Empowerment (CREATE) Trust in Tamilnadu. He is a founder member and continues to be associated with the Coalition for a GM Free India. Sridhar also works closely on state policies. He writes and comments on agriculture, food, and environment policy and facilitates two policy dialogue platforms – Agri Insight & EcoDialogue Kerala. He has authored two books related to environment and resource use, and co-authored the publication “A Green Print for Sustainable Kerala – Lessons for Existence.” Sridhar lives in a mud and bamboo (COSTFORD) home, with a tiny food garden, with his wife and son at Karakulam, a village panchayath on the outskirts of Thiruvananthapuram city, Kerala.

Annie Shattuck

Dr. Annie Shattuck is an Assistant Professor in Geography and the Sustainable Food Systems Science Initiative at Indiana University, and a Fellow at Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy in Oakland, California. Her research engages agroecology, environmental health, food politics, social movements and the quest for a more just rural world. She co-edited the recent book: Food Sovereignty: Concept, Practice and Social Movements.

John Wilson

John Wilson is a free range facilitator and activist in East and Southern Africa, with strong links to West Africa. He has worked with many different organizations at different levels — from community-based organisations to regional and continental networks, to help facilitate a stronger food sovereignty movement in Africa. Increasingly, he is focused on helping to catalyze and support collaborative and strategic work on agroecology and food sovereignty. In recent years, he has also become a strong proponent and facilitator for a principles-based approach to development work. Working with very complex situations requires a way of decision-making and assessment based on guidance rather than goals; Principles Focused Evaluation has been a strong source of inspiration and experience for his practice.

Jeanne Zoundjihekpon

Through her academic research and collaboration with civil society organizations, Jeanne has been involved in environmental protection in West Africa – and specifically biodiversity conservation – for several decades. Her work has included the assessment and regulation of GMOs in French-speaking African countries, and the last Ph.D. thesis she supervised was on the sexual reproduction of yams in Benin’s agroecological zones. Jeanne is a founding member of JINUKUN (a local network for the sustainable use of biodiversity in Benin), and COPAGEN (Coalition for the Protection of African Genetic Heritage), which includes the countries of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Bissau Guinea, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Togo and Benin) and Guinea. In 2022, Jeanne resigned from JINUKUN, but remained a member of the Federation of AgroEcologists of Benin (FAEB).

Angela Cordeiro

Co-Director

Angela serves as Co-Director at Agroecology Fund. Angela is an agronomist from Florianopolis, Brazil. She has an M.Sc. in Use and Conservation of Plant Genetic Resources from the University of Birmingham, UK. She started her professional career in the non-governmental sector, providing technical support to agroecology projects, with a focus on community management of agrobiodiversity. Angela has more than two decades of experience as a consultant, and has worked with NGOs, the Brazilian government, and UN agencies such as the UNDP, FAO, and WFP. In the last 15 years, Angela has worked extensively on program/project monitoring and evaluation, in Brazil and internationally. Part of the Agroecology Fund’s Advisory Board from 2015 to 2019, she joined the AEF team as Program Director in October 2019. 

Daniel Moss

Co-Director

Daniel serves as Co-Director at Agroecology Fund. Daniel has worked in philanthropy for over three decades, channeling resources to community-led organizations and collaborations. Trained as a community organizer, he strengthened tenant organizations in public housing in Boston and then lived in El Salvador and Mexico for five years, working in support of social movements defending rights to land and water. He worked  as an on-farm trainer in a workers’ rights certification program and with Latin American water utilities to strengthen watershed conservation strategies. He holds a Master’s degree in City Planning from MIT and writes frequently on food and water issues for traditional and online media.

Minhaj Ameen

Director of Strategic Operations, Finance and Administration

Min is passionate about promoting sustainable living to address the planetary challenges we face today, particularly climate change and biodiversity loss. He holds a degree in engineering and  an MBA from the Manchester Business School, UK. His conviction that humanity will truly thrive if we alleviate suffering for all living beings has led him to co-create and direct initiatives in renewable energy, solid waste management, afforestation, water conservation, agriculture and education. He helped set up the National Coalition for Natural Farming, the largest network of its kind in India, to advance agroecology at scale. 

Catherine Dodaro

Operations Assistant

Catherine Dodaro is an agronomist from Laval University, Canada. She currently resides in Peru where she obtained a Master’s degree in sociology at the Pontifical Catholic University. Since 2017, she has been dedicated to agroecology and food sovereignty from a political and feminist perspective, working both in Argentina and Peru. She is the co-founder and current academic coordinator of Alsakuy Agroecológica, a space emerging as a youth movement advocating for the transformation of food systems. She has a particular interest in the socio-cultural elements of the agrarian sector, including its artistic manifestations, popular pedagogies and the fight for gender equality.

Bruno Ganzo

Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Assistant

Bruno is a Brazilian agronomist graduated from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), in Florianopolis. His studies and research explored plant genetic resources. He  first worked with the Agroecology Fund w as an intern in early 2020 to support monitoring of  COVID-19 Emergency Grants.

Allison Finnegan-Kihega

Grant Lead

Allison Finnegan-Kihega has a decade of experience in project management, international development, and grantmaking. Allison resides in Colorado, initially the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Ute Tribes’ territories. She has worked in direct care with organizations supporting at-risk youth and seniors aging in place. Allison completed her Masters in Development Practice in 2020 with a thesis focused on environmental justice and the role of backbone organizations. She has since been working with international grantmaking organizations to provide administrative and programmatic support for a diverse portfolio of Advisory Boards globally.

Carlos Barahona

Grassroots Evidence for Agroecology

Carlos is a founder and managing director of Statistics for Sustainable Development (Stats4SD). Stats4SD is a not-for-profit social enterprise specializing in design research and transforming data into information to support decision-making for the benefit of society and the environment. His background is in statistical methods, participatory approaches and agriculture. Currently, he is interested in the adaptations and innovations in research methods that will help us learn how to move faster toward food systems based on agroecological approaches.

Jen Astone

Agroecological Entrepreneurship & Territorial Markets

Jen Astone is a financial activist and philanthropic leader. At Integrated Capital Investing, she educates and catalyzes foundations and investors to use all their assets – grants, investments, and leadership – to create equitable, regenerative and restorative economies. She publishes The Transformative 25, a list of funds transforming finance for people and the planet. She lives on unceded Awawas land in California, represented by the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band. 

Emile A. Frison, PhD

Agroecology Donors Group with Bilateral and Multilateral Agencies

Emile Frison is a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems. A Belgian national, he spent his entire career in international agricultural research for development, including six years in Africa in Nigeria and Mauritania. In 2003, he became Director General of Bioversity International and developed a strategy entitled “Diversity for Well-being” focusing on the contribution of agricultural biodiversity to the nutritional quality of diets and to the sustainability, resilience and productivity of smallholder agriculture.

Dr Frison is Senior Advisor to the Agroecology Coalition and a member of the Africa Europe Foundation Strategy Group on Agriculture. He is the lead author of the IPES-Food report “ From Uniformity to Diversity: a paradigm shift from industrial agriculture to diversified agroecological systems”.

Toby Lynn Herzlich 

Organizational Development and Strategic Planning Support

Toby is the Founder of Biomimicry for Social Innovation, a not-for-profit dedicated to applying nature’s intelligence to leadership, social change, and organizational development. Her workshop offerings include Biomimicry Thinking for Social Innovation, and Living Systems Leadership, a retreat for Women. Toby’s 30+ years of organizational consulting, training, and executive coaching has supported a diverse range of philanthropic, business, and not-for-profit clients in their mission success. She has worked closely with the Agroecology Fund since 2016 to support the Fund’s growth through strategic planning and organizational development. Other engagements include the Sierra Club, the Turner Foundation, Intuit, the Cultural Conservancy, the National Hispanic Cultural Center, and the facilitating the Volgenau climate summit series. She serves as key faculty in Biomimicry 3.8’s Professional Certification Program and a Senior Trainer with the Rockwood Leadership Institute. Toby finds much of her purpose in catalyzing diverse networks of social change innovators, including facilitating the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable, the Women’s International Climate Summit, the Young Climate Leaders Network and the 2019 UN People’s Summit on Climate and Human Rights.

Yodit Kebede

Africa Regional Funds Development

Yodit Kebede holds a PhD in landscape ecology and an MSc in Soil and Water Conservation from Wageningen University, The Netherlands, and an MSc in agronomy from VetAgroSup, France. Yodit works from the field to landscape scales and at both the scientific and policy aspects of agroecology. Her experiences are mostly focus on African context, working with IRD (French national Research Institute for Development) as post-doctoral researcher in Montpellier, France; consulting for UN-FAO Agroecology and Ecosystems Services division, Biovision Foundation, ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States), CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research), CTA (The Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation) in the Netherlands. Originally from Ethiopia, she lived and worked in several African countries (Ethiopia, Madagascar, and Guinea) and European countries (Belgium, France, the Netherlands).

Erin Eberle

Communications Consultant

Erin Eberle is a queer communications consultant partnering with creatives, nonprofits, foundations, and small businesses across the globe to create change rooted in equity and justice. They leverage their food systems transformation experience to support Agroecology Fund in creating impactful and strategic communications. Her social movement practices include engagement with Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Presencing Institute, and Dharma Action Network for Climate Engagement. Erin is a writer, photographer, connector, collaborator, seed saver, and works to amplify the stories + voices that often go unheard.