Leonardo Lacerda

"Leonardo Lacerda is the Environment Programme Director at Oak Foundation, a leading international grant-making organisation head-quartered in Switzerland. The programme he supervises is focused on three priority areas: climate change, marine conservation, and illegal wildlife trade. Supporting a few hundred grantees worldwide and leading collaborative efforts among peer foundations, governments and the private sector, the programme aims to achieve a low-carbon global economy, the recovery of marine fisheries and habitats, and the disruption of the trade on endangered species. Specifically, the climate change sub-programme is focused on mitigating greenhouse gases in the energy, urban development and transportation sectors, primarily in Europe, China, India, North America, Brazil and Southeast Asia. Prior to Oak Foundation, Leonardo worked for 14 years with the WWF International network in various capacities, including the Latin America and Caribbean Programme Coordinator (Switzerland), Mediterranean Programme Director (Italy), Conservation Director of WWF Brazil, and Manager of the Global Forest Conservation Programme (Switzerland). In these various capacities Mr. Lacerda led various conservation, communications and fundraising campaigns. For example, at this last position, he coordinated a global programme that created over 80 million hectares of forest protected areas (taken together, an area larger than metropolitan France) in the most biologically important places on earth and helped to improve management in other 70 million hectares.

"He has been involved in conceiving and deploying a global network of regranting organisations in the climate change field and has extensive governance experience. In addition to his membership to the Supervisory Board of European Climate Foundation he currently serves as board member of Instituto Clima e Sociedade (iCS, Brazil). He is a founding member of the European Environment Funders Network (Belgium), of the Latin America Regional Climate Initiative, and of Fundação Vitória Amazônica. He is a former board member of WWF Spain and WWF Greece and of the environmental advisory boards of Shakti (India), WWF-Brazil, and Yad Hanadiv Foundation (Israel).

"Leonardo has a M.A. in International Relations with the Paul Nitze School of International Advanced Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University. He is a national of Brazil and Switzerland. In his spare time, he enjoys learning foreign languages and translating poetry. He speaks Portuguese, English, French, Spanish, Italian, and Greek."

• Supervisory board, European Climate Foundation