International Trustees and Team

Simon, Bihini, Paul, Matthias and Stella

International Trustees

The International Trustees are responsible for safeguarding the values that underlie A Rocha's mission and maintaining the integrity of the A Rocha family.

Matthias Stiefel (Chair) is President of the International Peacebuilding Alliance (Interpeace), an organisation that works with local partners in divided societies to build lasting peace.

He lives in Geneva and speaks fluent German, English, French and Portuguese. In the early 1970s he was a freelance journalist and consultant in Southeast Asia. In 1986 he resigned from employment with the UN to spend five years as a farmer on a traditional dry-land subsistence farm in the Algarve, motivated by the desire to gain practical field experience in development issues.

Steve Beck was until recently the Chief Executive Officer of Geneva Global, an organisation based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that provides research and grant management services for donors who want to increase the impact of their giving to life-changing projects in the global south.

He has twenty years of experience in strategy consulting and has led consulting businesses in Europe, Asia and South Africa. Steve was educated at Stanford University, California, and the London School of Economics.

Sarah French is an Associate Senior Lecturer and Consultant with the Centre for International Development and Training, University of Wolverhampton, UK. She is also on the Board of Earthmind, a Swiss NGO, and a member of two IUCN Commissions.

She worked in Peru and Bolivia with Tear Fund and has worked on short term projects with The World Conservation Union (IUCN), the International Financial Corporation (IFC), The World Bank, The Department for International Development (DFID), the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD), and several UN Agencies. This work has involved extensive travel in Europe, South America, Africa and Asia. Sarah lives in Geneva where her husband Mike is the Chaplain of the Anglican Church and a Director of World Vision.

Paul Jeanson is the Director of France's largest ornithological reserve at Marquenterre in the Baie de Somme and a consultant in eco-tourism. He is also a former Treasurer of IUCN France and active in Eurosite.

Paul has been involved in international conservation for many years, and has worked in Africa, French Guyana, Vietnam and Thailand. He is currently Director of A Rocha France.

Dr Paul Kariya is the Executive Director of Pacific Salmon Foundation, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the protection, conservation and recovery of Pacific salmon based in Vancouver BC. He is an adjunct faculty member at Simon Fraser University and a sessional lecturer at Trinity Western University.

Paul obtained a BA Hon in Geography from the University of BC and went on to complete an MA and PhD (in Geography) at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. Paul grew up on the West Coast of Vancouver Island as the son of a Japanese-Canadian salmon fisherman. Love of the ocean and for God’s creation comes from these beginnings. Paul is married and has 3 adult children.

Prof Sir Ghillean Prance was for eleven years Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, until his retirement in 1999. He trained as a plant taxonomist and is an expert on the flora of the Amazon rain forests, having led annual expeditions there over a period of 25 years and collected more than 450 Amazonian plants new to science.

He has devoted much attention to the relationship between plants and humans. To that end, he lived with at least sixteen Indian tribes in the Amazon. A book on his life, entitled A Passion for Plants: From the Rainforests of Brazil to Kew Gardens, was published in 1995. He is currently Scientific Director of the Eden Project in Cornwall, Visiting Professor at Reading University and was McBryde Professor at the US National Tropical Botanical Garden in Hawaii from 2000 to 2002.

Gerry Rawcliffe is a Managing Director in the Financial Institutions Group at Fitch Ratings in London. He trained as a Chartered Accountant after studying German literature at the universities of Warwick, Kiel and London.

Gerry has been interested in birds from an early age and this, along with his financial background, got him involved with A Rocha in 1991 when he became Treasurer and subsequently a Trustee, in which capacity he served for several years. This coincided with the time that A Rocha was making its first hesitant steps from a one-centre organisation to the truly international body it is today. On his regular visits to Cruzinha (the A Rocha Portugal Centre) Gerry trained as a bird ringer and has now ringed at several of A Rocha's other projects, in Lebanon, France and the Czech Republic.

Stella Simiyu works with Botanic Gardens Conservation International, seconded to the secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity to support the implementation of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation. Formerly a Research Scientist with the National Museums of Kenya, she works in plant conservation, policy, capacity building and networking.

Stella has been involved in various integrated species conservation projects in Kenya and regional African training programmes in plant conservation, the IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC) Eastern Africa Plant Specialist Group, and the Eastern Africa Network on Medicinal Plant Conservation and Sustainable Use and has served as a member of the IUCN Plant Conservation subcommittee and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility subcommittee on outreach and capacity building. The mother of three children, she is an active member of the Nairobi Chapel in Kenya and a member of the national committee of A Rocha Kenya.

Dr Simon Stuart is Senior Species Scientist for both IUCN and for Conservation International's Center for Applied Biodiversity Science. He leads the Biodiversity Assessment Unit, which is a joint initiative of Conservation International and the IUCN Species Survival Commission, and completed the Global Amphibian Assessment in 2004.

In 2005 he was a finalist in the nominations for the inaugural Indianapolis Prize, which is awarded to individuals in the forefront of animal species conservation. Simon has undergraduate and doctoral degrees in conservation biology from the University of Cambridge, and has undertaken fieldwork in Tanzania and Cameroon. He previously worked with BirdLife International. From 1991 to 2000 he served as programme head of the IUCN Species Survival Commission, and from December 2000 to April 2001 as Acting Director-General of IUCN. He lives near Bath, in the UK, with his wife Ann and daughters Claire and Jyoti.

Dr Bihini Won wa Musiti is the Programme Director for the IUCN Regional Office for Central Africa, based in Cameroon. He is a citizen of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where he was previously Director of "Parc Président Mobutu" at the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature, Kinshasa.

Originally trained as a vet, he was in charge of national park surveys and set up quotas for the sustainable management and hunting of wildlife. Ten years ago he conceived the idea of a Congolese organisation linking biblical faith with conservation and the safeguarding of nature, but his appointment with IUCN prevented him from bringing it to birth. He speaks French, English, Swahili and six Congolese languages.

Philip Young qualified as a Chartered Accountant and spent some twenty years working in a series of senior roles within the financial services sector. He retired in 2004 and became our Honorary Treasurer in July 2005. He lives in Ealing, London.

Founders: Peter and Miranda Harris

Peter and Miranda founded A Rocha in 1983 and now share responsibility for shaping the organisation's vision and ethos globally. Their local life is in France where they are based near the French team for at least half the year.

International Team

Between 1997 and 2000, A Rocha grew from one project (established in Portugal in 1983) to become an international organisation coordinating work in eight countries, with several new initiative groups preparing to join the network. The International Team was established in 2000 and now, in 2008, is assisting eighteen national organisations. The Team has three main objectives:

• To increase the capacity of the existing national organisations.
• To foster the development of new organisations in other parts of the world.
• To raise awareness, understanding and support worldwide.

The Team members are all part of local communities and endeavour to root their international work in local realities. They have no headquarters but live in five countries; sustain their relationships by meeting all together once a year and as necessary in sub-groups; and take advantage of technology to cut down their travelling by extensive use of the internet and inexpensive phone deals.

What A Rocha is matters as much to the Team as what A Rocha does. In building this team the members have tried to keep A Rocha's distinctive values at the heart of the changes - they are summarised by the five commitments: Christian, Conservation, Community, Cross-cultural and Cooperation.

Marie Connett Porceddu Ph.D, MBA, International Director and CEO

Dr Marie Connett Porceddu assumed the position of CEO in September 2007 upon a move to France with her family. Supporting A Rocha's global programmes in biodiversity conservation, she is a Ph.D. botanist with many years of experience in forestry sector research management. She also has business and intellectual property law experience in several countries and an MBA from the University of South Carolina, USA.

She previously held the Deputy CEO role in a Southern hemisphere-based NGO providing web-based information to support innovation, including by disadvantaged communities, committed to local solutions in the areas of food security and public health. She and her husband, Mariano, have four children, and he enjoys being the primary caregiver.

David Payne, MA, MBA, Managing Director

David has been Managing Director since 2000, when A Rocha International was established. Prior to that, he was chairman of A Rocha for six years, while he worked as CEO of Hospice in the Weald in west Kent. David has an MA from Cambridge University in Agriculture, following which he served with Voluntary Service Overseas for two years in Kenya.

This was followed by 17 years with Crosslinks, seconded to the Diocese of Nakuru (Anglican Church of Kenya) where he pioneered several Christian rural development programmes and handed them over to Kenyan leadership. On returning to live in the UK in 1985, David studied for an MBA at the City University, London. His wife Betty is a qualified teacher, mother of three children and grandmother of five. Betty provides hospitality for the many A Rocha people who pass through SE England and builds prayer support.

David McKay CPA, Finance Director

David is a chartered accountant and has accounting and finance experience in private practice as well as the commercial and charity sectors. His previous job was Head of Management Accounting at Aston University.

David is completing an MBA at Aston University. David is a trustee of CORD, a charity working with refugees, displaced persons and people recovering from the effects of conflict in Africa and Asia. He lives in Coventry and is married to Angela who is a teacher. They have a son and a daughter, both of whom live in London and are chartered accountants.

Will Simonson M.Sc, Scientific Director

Will is a member of both the Portuguese and International Teams. As International Scientific Director, Will provides support to A Rocha’s conservation science activity worldwide. With a degree in Natural Sciences (Botany) at Cambridge University, UK, and a Masters in Environmental Technology at Imperial College, London, he developed his field experience as assistant warden at Cruzinha in 1990-1994.

After a spell in publishing in Cambridge, he moved to the headquarters of English Nature in Peterborough to help develop and coordinate the implementation of the UK Biodiversity Action Plan. He rejoined A Rocha with his family in 2001.

Janice Weatherley, M.Sc, EU Policy Officer

Janice has a B.Sc in Geography and an M.Sc in Environmental Policy. Since 2003 she's been working for A Rocha, based in the Brussels office of the IUCN - World Conservation Union, after a year working in agricultural research in Mexico, followed by three years as the Project Development Officer for Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust.

Janice keeps A Rocha national organisations in touch with EU policy developments, assists with EU funding applications and enables A Rocha to build and strengthen links with other conservation organisations.

Brendan Bowles and David Hughes, Directors of Climate Stewards

Climate Stewards is A Rocha's global climate change programme.

Brendan Bowles, M.Sc, MMU, is the Director of Climate Stewards and promotes the programme globally and in the UK, where he is based. He has Masters degrees in Mathematics (Cambridge) and Business Management (MMU) and is a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute.

He chaired the founding committee of Jubilee 2000 and has a particular interest in global campaigns. He has run national not-for-profit companies in areas such as housing (co-founded Housing Justice) and community regeneration. Other experience includes training carpenters in Rwanda, supporting orphans in Tanzania, and coordinating Tearfund’s work with young people and students in the UK.

David Hughes is the Operations Director of Climate Stewards. He was a geologist and an officer in the British Army before his career in IT, as head of software development for the Papua New Guinea Government and then head of IT for Royal Mail in the UK.

He joined A Rocha in 2005 after a trip round Europe in which A Rocha seemed to feature more often than could be explained by coincidence. David is a mountaineer and a "bad birdwatcher" and leads several environmental groups in his home town of Sheffield where he lives with his wife Marika. Daughter Claire has followed in her father's (small) environmental footsteps by becoming a wind energy consultant.

Barbara Mearns and Rosie Rutherford, International Administrators

Barbara and Rosie run the International Office, which is in the UK. They produce the international newsletters, oversee the website, manage the Photo Database and the International Volunteer Database and respond to all the requests which flood in from the A Rocha teams and the public around the world.

Barbara is a life-long birder, also involved in local dragonfly, moth and butterfly recording. With her husband, Richard, she has co-written four books on the early naturalists including The Bird Collectors (Academic Press 1998) and John Kirk Townsend, (2007). An Occupational Therapist by training, she worked in child psychiatry before studying for a year at the Bible Training Institute in Glasgow.

Rosie works part-time for A Rocha and is also involved in more ‘hands-on’ conservation work at a local wetland nature reserve. She has an MA in Environmental Philosophy from Lancaster University.

Rachel Simonson, Prayer Co-ordinator

Rachel co-ordinates the Barnabas Ministry which is helping to ensure regular and systematic prayer support for all the projects. She also plays her part in the Portuguese national team by hosting the weekly Visitors’ Day, by spending time with visitors and volunteers, with communications, fundraising and local public relations.

Her long history with A Rocha (she opened the very first A Rocha Office in 1995) coupled with her great memory are wonderful archive resources. She trained as a bi-lingual secretary and worked extensively in both the luxury hotel (Hilton International) and charity sectors in a wide range of administrative functions. Her current role combines the best of all her careers to date – of which the very best of all has been motherhood! Her two children, Ben and Rosie, also play their part in the life and mission of A Rocha with tremendous enjoyment and pride.

3+Tiago Branco Ph.D, Alvor Campaign Co-ordinator

Tiago has been coordinating the campaign for the Alvor estuary since June 2007. See riadealvor.org . He graduated in Chemical Engineering and studied theology at a Baptist Seminary before joining a research group in Instituto Superior Técnico, where he got his Ph.D in photophysics and photochemistry applied to environmental chemistry.

He lives in Lisbon and is also a member of the A Rocha Portugal national board.

Robert Thomas, IT Officer and Corporate Counsel

Rob provides solutions for computer needs in ARI and some of the other teams. He also is a legal adviser to the ARI Finance Committee. He is based in England and works part-time for A Rocha UK, not just with their computers, but also managing their Friends scheme. Rob is qualified as a lawyer, and practiced as a solicitor in England for 23 years before joining A Rocha.

Rob specialised mainly in property law, and also in trust and charity law. He has championed the use of IT to solve practical situations, and developed a specialism in writing database software for use in large-scale property transactions for housing associations. He continues to work in this field as a consultant to solicitors.

He is a keen photographer and has developed a love of the world God created when trying to capture its variety and beauty in his photographs. He caught the vision of working for A Rocha through hearing Peter Harris preach, and then by taking part in a photographic holiday run by A Rocha France at Les Tourades.

Rob and his wife Kathy were the first managers of the A Rocha UK Centre in Southall, which they set up and where they lived and worked from 2003 to 2006.

Júlio Reis, International Webmaster

Júlio works part-time implementing all aspects of A Rocha's Internet strategy: advising the international management team on Internet-related issues; managing the websites and email; building A Rocha's websites and providing support and training to a growing number of national webmasters (mostly volunteers). He has a five-year degree in Computer Engineering from the New University of Lisbon and has been working on the Internet since 1997.

Julio holds a Certificate of Proficiency in English, and also speaks Portuguese, French and Spanish. He has another part-time job, developing a global e-learning platform for Portuguese-speaking communities. Júlio lives in Western Portugal, is married with two small children, and enjoys his friends, literature and birdwatching.

Melissa Ong and Daniel Tay

Daniel Tay and Melissa Ong are a husband-and-wife filmmaking team based with A Rocha Canada in British Columbia. Mel produces video tools for A Rocha teams (find them on Google Video by searching for "Melissa Ong") and Daniel coordinates volunteers and hospitality. They are also making A Rocha’s work known amongst the large expatriate Chinese community.

Nathan Lemphers

Nathan is at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, studying environmental policy and planning, and provides database and research assistance to Peter Harris and Marie Connett Porceddu.