Our Team
Bill Finch works with the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation and the Half-Earth Project to address conservation issues throughout the southeastern United States, including creation of a Mobile-Tensaw Delta national park unit in Alabama. Bill is founding director of Paint Rock Forest Research Center located within one of the most biologically diverse forests in North America, and founding partner of the Alabama River Diversity Network working toward the establishment of a Black Belt National Heritage Area Act.
Bill was formerly the Conservation Director for The Nature Conservancy in Alabama, Director of the Mobile Botanical Gardens, and a managing editor with the Mobile Press-Register. Bill has received numerous regional and national awards for his writing on conservation and environmental issues and is the author of Longleaf, Far As the Eye Can See.
Brooks Bonner serves as the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation’s Program Director, collaborating with scientists, scholars, and communities working around the globe to advance biodiversity science. His work centers on amplifying the reach and utilization of the Foundation’s Half-Earth Project Map and related products.
Brooks worked as the Director of Community Engagement for the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS), an organization that E.O. Wilson helped found. In this role, he led the processes to develop and implement strategies for effectively engaging three stakeholder groups– Science Pioneers, Science Participants, and Science Stewards–at local, national, and global scales. At OTS, he also led the management of undergraduate, field-based study abroad programs in Costa Rica and South Africa, and helped to streamline management of Faculty-Led Academic Groups. Brooks also previously worked with Nature & Culture International in the Peruvian Amazon region of Loreto, contributing to the first co-managed regional conservation network established in Peru.
Brooks has a MA in International Environmental Policy from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, and is a graduate of San Francisco State University, where he pursued a B.A. in Intercultural Speech Communication.
Dennis Liu, PhD, is an internationally recognized expert in science education. Dr. Liu directed the production of educational media at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and before that with Video Discovery and Microsoft. He’s worked with scientists, education specialists, graphic designers, animators, and filmmakers to produce an array of educational products that have had a lasting impact on science education. Dr. Liu has managed cross-disciplinary teams devoted to assessing and assuring the educational impact of media products, including professional development and community building. He’s been an executive producer and editorial advisor on over a dozen film projects for theater, broadcast television, large screen, and digital science programs aimed at educational audiences and the general public.
Dennis studied zoology at the University of Wisconsin, earned a PhD in Biology from the University of Oregon, and then conducted research and taught in the Department of Genetics at the University of Washington. He has a passion for explaining diverse science to diverse audiences, and has advised on numerous museum exhibits and media projects. He wrote a longtime feature for the journal Life Sciences Education.
Dr. Jocelyn Miller is a former middle and high school teacher and a passionate conservationist who has dedicated her career to fostering an appreciation for wild spaces and biodiversity among students and fellow educators. She is deeply committed to improving equity and access to science education. She has collaborated with educators, schools, and educational organizations to develop strategies to empower diverse learners, ensuring that high-quality environmental education is relevant and accessible to all students. Dr. Miller has authored science curricula, presented at national and international conferences, and published her work in several prominent peer-reviewed science education journals.
Dr. Miller earned an M.Ed. degree in Science Education from the University of Houston, then completed a Ph.D. in STEM Curriculum and Instruction at Texas Tech University, where she researched climate change education. She is a Georgia Master Naturalist and holds teaching certifications spanning multiple grade levels in science, technology, engineering, and design.
Kiara serves as the Development Coordinator. She has experience in administrative and program support, employee relations, customer service, and fund development. Prior to joining the foundation, Kiara held positions at Girl Scouts – North Carolina Coastal Pines where she supported the product program and fund development teams. Kiara is a graduate of East Carolina University where she earned a Masters of Arts in Anthropology. In her free time, she enjoys crocheting, baking, and reading.
Lori Parro, MBA, is a Carolinas CFO Partner with TechCXO LLC, a national fractional C-Suite contracting firm based in Atlanta, GA. Lori brings more than 30 years of financial and operational leadership with a proven track record of execution, having served as CFO in R&D, manufacturing, service, and not-for-profit companies. Lori provides immediate value to companies through strategic business plan development, process streamlining, and cash flow optimization. Client companies are frequently long-term engagements managing finance, tax, cash, business valuation, budgeting, modeling, audit, and government compliance. Additionally, Lori has collaborative experience with many areas of business operations including H/R, supply chain, contracts, and sales. Lori also has unique and extensive experience with federal funding (i.e., government agency contracts and grants).
Prior to her work as a consultant, Lori worked in industry finance roles for ~15 years in the areas of manufacturing, professional services, and medical devices. In 2019, Lori also co-founded a drug-development company that is developing science against certain diseases with significant unmet medical needs, such as ALS and Parkinson’s Disease.
Lori holds an MBA and BA from the Jenkins Program at North Carolina State University, and is a North Carolina Certified Public Accountant.
Mindy McPeak serves as Office Manager and Executive Assistant to the President & CEO. She has over 20 years of administrative experience serving senior and C-suite executives, managing complex scheduling, supporting event planning, and organizing ad hoc projects.
Prior to joining the Foundation, Mindy held executive assistant positions at Glaxo Wellcome, GlaxoSmithKline R&D, Duke University, and Cabernet, Zinfandel & Shiraz Pharmaceuticals. Most recently, she was Manager of Office Operations at Ribometrix, where she facilitated highly demanding and complex engagements.
Mindy is a graduate of Virginia Western College, where she studied Business Administration. When she’s not caring for her officemates, she’s caring for her horses at her farm. Mindy is an avid rider and enjoys spending time in the saddle and camping in the NC and VA mountains with nature and friends.
Niquole Esters is an environmental conservationist with a passion for the oceans, geopolitics, and equity. With a background in international relations, governance, and policy she works in the space between sustainable natural resource management, community, and economic development.
Niquole spent almost 20 years working across the Asia Pacific, Africa and Latin America with Conservation International (CI), specializing in large scale program design and strategy, program management, fundraising related to oceans and coasts, and promotion of inclusivity and diversity across environmental philanthropy as part of a broader reimagining of conservation.
From 2009-2019 she worked with CI’s Coral Triangle Initiative (CTI) Program, taking over as Director of the program from 2013-2019. CI’s CTI Program supports the Coral Triangle Initiative on Coral Reefs, Fisheries and Food Security, a regional initiative between Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Solomon Islands, and Timor-Leste to sustainably manage the global epicenter of marine biodiversity. In 2019, Niquole joined CI’s Major Gifts Development team as a Senior Director, and subsequently became CI’s Inclusive Philanthropy Lead, co-leading development and execution of divisional diversity, equity, and inclusion planning. At the institutional level, Niquole co-developed Afro-descendant focused programming in the US and Latin American and advised on institutional DEI strategy design and implementation from executive leadership to field programming.
In her private time Niquole works to elevate the intersectionality of marginalized peoples and environmental issues by working with groups focusing on LGBTQIA+ issues, Latino communities across the Americas, and Afro-descendant initiatives worldwide.
Niquole received her B.A. from Washington and Lee University and her M.A. in Geopolitics, Territory and Security from King’s College London. She lives in Oakland, California.
Paula J. Ehrlich, DVM, PhD, is President & CEO of the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation, whose mission is to reimagine the way we care for our planet through actionable scientific research that supports communities in their stewardship of biodiversity.
Dr. Ehrlich is also co-Founder of the Half-Earth Project and has led the development of the Half-Earth Project Map, a global, spatially-explicit, and taxonomically comprehensive map of species, which informs how well conserved places are protecting species and identifies priorities for future conservation. She is founder of Half-Earth Day, which brings together world-wide participants from across disciplines to share perspectives and thought leadership on how to achieve Half-Earth and ensure the health of our planet for future generations.
Dr. Ehrlich has over 30 years of strategic scientific management and research expertise, and diverse academic, non-profit, and corporate leadership experience. Her current work embodies the hopes of the greatest naturalist of our time, E.O. Wilson.
Piotr Naskrecki, PhD, is an entomologist, conservation biologist, author, and photographer, based at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. He currently directs the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Laboratory at Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique where he trains a new cadre of Mozambican biologists and conservationists, and helps rebuild the park, which suffered during the recent civil war in that country. Dr. Naskrecki created and administers the Half-Earth Project Fellowship in Taxonomy and Biodiversity Exploration which has several graduates working throughout the African continent. His scientific interests focus on the evolution of communication and sound production in insects and other animals, and the phylogenetic reconstruction of insect relationships. He is the author of over 50 scientific, peer-reviewed papers and book chapters.
Dr. Naskrecki’s popular writing and photography captures both the beauty and vital roles of insects, often critically important members of the planet’s ecosystems. He is one of the founding members of the International League of Conservation Photographers and his photographs and nature writing have been published in a number of national and international publications, including The Smithsonian Magazine, Natural History, National Wildlife, National Geographic, BBC Wildlife Magazine, BBC Knowledge, Terre Sauvage, Time magazine, Ranger Rick, and many others. He is the author of The Smaller Majority, A Window on Eternity with E.O. Wilson, Relics, and his most recent title, Hidden Kingdom, which showcases the diverse insect fauna of Costa Rica.
Raymond Farrow serves as director of donor relations. In his role, Raymond manages The Path to Half capital campaign, designs donor strategies and engagement efforts, and supervises the foundation’s development operations. He has 20 years’ experience building and scaling programmatic initiatives and securing major and principal gifts.
Prior to joining the foundation, Raymond held senior leadership positions at UNC-Chapel Hill. Most recently, he served as associate provost for global affairs. Earlier, he served as executive director of the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. While at Carolina, Raymond also led several comprehensive fundraising programs, including those at Carolina Performing Arts and UNC Global.
A graduate of Wake Forest University, Raymond received a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy (MALD) from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. In 1989, he was one of 18 young Americans selected as a Luce Scholar by the Henry Luce Foundation and served a one-year internship with Chinese Public Television in Taipei, Taiwan.
Walter Jetz, MSc, PhD is a Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Adjunct Professor in the School of Forestry and the Environment at Yale University. Dr. Jetz is Director of the Yale Center for Biodiversity and Global Change, which links scientists, students and practitioners engaged in the environment, biological, informatics, policy or health aspects and implications of global biodiversity change. Dr. Jetz leads the Map of Life at Yale University, which utilizes geospatial species distribution data and analytics to guide where we have the best opportunity to conserve the most species.
Dr. Jetz’ work addresses patterns and mechanisms of changing biodiversity distribution and the resulting implications on conservation and environmental management. His research combines remote sensing, phylogenetic, functional, and spatiotemporal biodiversity data with new modeling approaches and informatics tools. Dr. Jetz is particularly interested in how environmental, ecological, and macroevolutionary mechanisms combine to determine the co-occurrence of species and the structure of species assemblages.
In addition to his work at Yale, Dr. Jetz chairs the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) Task Group on Biodiversity Indicators and is Co-Lead of the GEO BON Working Group on Species Distributions. Dr. Jetz was previously a professor of biological sciences at the University of California San Diego. Dr. Jetz earned his MSc in Integrative Bioscience and PhD in Zoology from the University of Oxford.
Board of Directors
Alison Taylor is Chief Sustainability Officer for ADM. She oversees the company’s global sustainability strategy and works closely with the Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility Committee of ADM’s Board of Directors. She oversees many facets of the company’s progress toward achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, including Zero Hunger and Climate Action. She guides implementation of the company’s Respect for Human Rights policy, No-Deforestation policy, Strive 35 environmental stewardship program, and ADM’s philanthropic efforts through ADM Cares.
Prior to joining ADM, Taylor worked for Siemens Corporation, where she was Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer of the Americas. Taylor also worked on Capitol Hill as counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce, and chief counsel of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. She was previously a partner in the law firm now known as Davis Graham & Stubbs, LLC.
Taylor currently serves on the boards of the Nicholas Institute at Duke University, the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Chicago, the Nature Conservancy-Illinois, and the Leadership Council of the Corporate Eco-Forum. She is also chairs the ADM Cares Committee and serves on the external advisory board of the ADM Institute for the Prevention of Postharvest Loss. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Duke University and a Juris Doctor from the University of Denver.
Charles Smith is a serial entrepreneur who has launched four companies and one foundation. He is perhaps best known for developing the royalty-free licensing model for digital images which today accounts for over 95 percent of worldwide image sales. Mr. Smith also co-founded Knowledge Factor, a company that pioneered the Amplifire protocol, which demonstrably accelerates learning and enhances long-term retention. He has served on the Director’s Cabinet at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the world’s oldest and largest organization devoted to understanding the dynamic between land, ocean, and atmosphere.
Smith currently serves on the board of Nature and Culture International, a position in which he is applying his time and expertise toward the goal of saving remaining biodiversity hotspots on the planet before they disappear forever. To date, Nature and Culture has conserved nine million acres in the most diverse ecosystems of Latin America.
David J. Prend is Managing General Partner and co-founder of RockPort Capital Partners, a venture capital firm focusing on investments in technologies in the energy, mobility and sustainability sectors.
In addition to serving on the boards of RockPort portfolio companies, he is Chairman of the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the New Hampshire Nature Conservancy. David has served in the past as a Member of the Board of Directors of the National Venture Capital Association (2007-2011) and on the National Advisory Council for the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
David began his career in the energy industry as an engineer at Bechtel where he worked in the area of advanced energy technologies. He held multiple positions in the energy sector and on Wall Street culminating at Salomon Brothers where he was Managing Director and headed the Global Energy Investment Banking Group. In 1998, David co-founded RockPort Partners, a merchant bank specializing in the energy and environmental sectors and in 2000 he co-founded Rockport Capital Partners.
David received a BS in Civil Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Dinesh Nandan is an experienced corporate attorney who advises on various legal issues ranging from corporate, governance, regulatory and contract matters. Dinesh spent the first decade of his career as corporate in-house counsel for Providian Financial, a consumer bank headquartered in San Francisco. He then joined Education Finance Partners, a startup focused on private student loans, as General Counsel and Secretary. He later became founding executive of Home Value Protection, Inc., a Kleiner Perkins-financed company which developed and sold insurance to secure home values against market decline. Most recently, Dinesh served as General Counsel and Secretary of Humu, Inc., a human resources startup co-founded by a friend and former Googler.
Dinesh studied Microbiology and History at U.C. Berkeley (A.B. 1990), lived in Beijing, China where he worked as a university lecturer, and completed a law degree at the University of San Francisco (J.D. 1996). During his time at the University of San Francisco, Dinesh worked at the Asia Foundation in Phnom Penh, Cambodia supporting their democracy-building initiatives with the newly elected democratic government.
Jorgen Thomsen is the Director of Climate Solutions at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Prior to joining the foundation in 2009, Thomsen spent 14 years with Conservation International as Senior Vice President of the organization’s Conservation Funding Division and as Executive Director of the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund, which included leading a $260 million grant making and partnership development facility for civil society organizations in the most biodiversity-rich areas of the world.
Before this he was the chief executive of TRAFFIC, an organization that monitors trade in natural resources, and he held positions at WWF and IUCN, as well as in the Danish Ministry of Environment. Thomsen has a Master’s of Science in zoology and also attended law school at the University of Copenhagen in his native Denmark.
Keith Tuffley is a Vice Chairman and Global Co-Head of the Sustainability & Corporate Transitions Group at Citigroup, leading Citi’s sustainability engagement with its corporate clients. In 2014 until 2017, he was the CEO of The B Team, an NGO composed of 24 CEO’s of global companies, leading entrepreneurs, and civil society leaders, to drive a better way of doing business. He was an active participant in the Paris Climate Agreement process by helping to mobilize CEO’s in support of ambitious climate targets and assisting The B Team companies to make bold “net-zero by 2050” commitments.
Keith was a Managing Director, Head of Investment Banking, and Partner of Goldman Sachs in Australia, and was also based in London as Head of the Industrials group across Europe. Keith is the Founder of Switzerland-based impact investing company, NEUW Ventures SA, Chairman of the Global Footprint Network, Governor of WWF-Australia, a Global Ambassador to the Wilderness Foundation Global, a Senior Advisor to WILD11, and a member of the Rewilding Europe Circle. He was previously a Director of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, Bush Heritage Australia, and We Mean Business.
Lee Ann Daly is a globally recognized American marketing and media executive. She provides strategic, trans-media, creative advice and action plans to a broad range of early-stage and established private and public companies. At ESPN, Reuters and Thomson Reuters Markets she was a member of the executive committee, holding the positions of Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, and leading global marketing and communications teams.
She was North American Chairman of The Talent Business, a UK based executive search firm. She is a member of the Dean’s Board of Advisors at The Media School at Indiana University where she graduated with a BA in Journalism. She is a Distinguished Alumni Fellow at The Kelley School of Business at Indiana and is a graduate of The French Culinary Institute and University of Santa Monica.
She has been a member of the board at Avenues For Justice in New York City, President and Chairman of the Board of The American Marketing Association and is a special advisor to the founder of MFK: Haiti. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and sons.
Marcia Angle is an environmental advocate and preventive medicine physician, who has published and worked in the area of international reproductive health. Marcia was medical director at IntraHealth, focusing on Sub-Saharan Africa for two decades. In North Carolina, she served as Medical Director of the Orange County Health Department and taught environmental epidemiology at Duke University’s School of the Environment. Dr. Angle has a BA from Harvard University, an MD from Duke University, and an MPH from the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health in Chapel Hill, NC.
Dr. Angle currently serves on the Board of Directors of four non-profit organizations: E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation, Nature and Culture International, Rachel’s Network, and the Southern Environmental Law Center. She also serves on four Advisory Councils: Duke University’s Superfund Research Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Gillings School of Global Public Health, The North Carolina Conservation Network, and Reserva La Esperanza.
Mark Burget, JD, MBA, is the Managing Partner of Tumalo Creek Partners, LLC, a mission-driven partnership dedicated to supporting the future of life. Mark also is Vice President for Strategic Initiatives at Re:wild.
For 25 years, Mark served The Nature Conservancy, including as Chief Conservation Programs Officer, North America Managing Director, California Director, and Colorado Director. Mark also served as President and Chief Operating Officer of the ClimateWorks Foundation, a $1B+ global philanthropic network focused on energy and land use policy.
Mark earned both his JD and MBA from the University of Virginia and his BA in Government from Dartmouth College. Mark has served on numerous boards, most recently including the Energy Foundation (U.S. and China) and Allotrope Partners. He also has served on the boards of the European Climate Foundation, the International Council on Clean Transportation, the Climate and Land Use Alliance, the Institute for Industrial Productivity, and Bio-Logical Capital, LLC.
During his distinguished career spanning six decades, musician and songwriter, Paul Simon, has produced timeless masterpieces, such as Bridge Over Troubled Water, Still Crazy After All These Years, and Graceland, all of which garnered GRAMMY Album of the Year. Mr. Simon was awarded the inaugural Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, which recognizes the profound and positive effect of popular music on the world’s culture.
Mr. Simon is also a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors, and, in 2006, was named one of Time magazine’s “100 People Who Shape Our World.” In June 2017, net proceeds from Mr. Simon’s month-long U.S. concert tour were donated to benefit the Half-Earth Project, an initiative of the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation.
Stephen Lockhart, MD, PhD, was most recently the Chief Medical Officer for Northern California-based Sutter Health, a not-for-profit health system caring for three million patients—or one in every 100 Americans. Prior to being named CMO, Stephen served as Sutter’s regional Chief Medical Officer for the East Bay, Chief Administrative Officer at the St. Luke’s campus of Sutter’s California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC), and Medical Administrative Director of surgical services at CPMC.
His passion for equitable health outcomes has fueled his leadership efforts to provide equitable care across the Sutter system, which resulted in the design and implementation of a health equity program and Health Equity Index (HEI) across Sutter in 2017. Using a precision medicine-like approach, the HEI provides Sutter with a deeper understanding of health outcomes among different patient populations.
In 2017, Stephen was named to Governor Brown’s Advisory Committee on Precision Medicine as part of California’s continued effort to use advanced computing and technology to better understand, treat and prevent disease.
A Rhodes Scholar, Stephen earned his Master’s in economics at Oxford University, and received his MD and PhD degrees from Cornell University. He is a board-certified anesthesiologist. An avid climber and backpacker, Stephen has a long-standing passion for providing environmental science education and introducing the U.S. National Parks to an increasingly diverse population of people. He serves on the boards of the ECRI Institute, REI, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and is chairman of Parks California – a new statewide nonprofit dedicated to supporting California’s parks and public lands.
Other Members
- Paula J. Ehrlich, DVM, PhD, President (Ex-officio)
- Lori Parro, Treasurer (Ex-officio)
- Paul Sennott, Secretary (Ex-officio)
Half-Earth Council
- Piotr Naskrecki, Gorongosa National Park, Half-Earth Chair
- Gregg Carr, Gorongosa Restoration Project
- Sean B. Carroll, HHMI
- Laura Turner Seydel, Turner Foundation
- Kris Tompkins, Tompkins Conservation
- Mathis Wackernagel, Global Footprint Network
- Jeff Sachs, UN SDSN
- John Seager, Population Connection
- Mike Phillips, Turner Endangered Species Fund
- Robin Kimmerer, SUNY
- Louie Psihoyos, Oceanic Preservation Society
- Sylvia Earle, Mission Blue
- Dawn Wright, Esri
Board of Advisors
- Edward O. Wilson, Chairman (1929–2021)
- Gretchen Daily, Stanford University
- Sylvia Earle, Mission Blue
- Harrison Ford
- Carol Greider, Johns Hopkins Institute of Basic Biomedical Sciences
- Eric R. Kandel, Columbia University
- Amory Lovins, Rocky Mountains Institute
- Gregory T. Lucier, NuVasive
- James B. McClintock, The University of Alabama at Birmingham
- Sir Paul Nurse
- Steven Pinker, Harvard University
- Peter H. Raven
- Larry G. Rosenstock, High Tech High
- Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia University
- Daniel Schrag, Harvard University Center for the Environment
- Holden Thorp, Science
- John Taylor “Ike” Williams, Sennot Williams & Rogers, LLP
