The Team
It’s not proven but we’re pretty sure Chris eats, sleeps and dreams in Javascript. Although, evidence does stem from his daily routine of pressing random keys and clicking the mouse a bunch 'o times in order to make the Cool Earth website a better place for all. He’s also been a vegan for the last 12 years and could teach the team a thing or two about a good diet.
Chris Bird
Back End Developer
Stephen once tagged along on a Cool Earth press trip to the Amazon, moonlighting as a journalist, and has been with us ever since. He calls New York City home (though one wonders why), where he works tirelessly developing Cool Earth’s education initiative. He founded the Cool Earth Teacher Fellowship, a program - and heart’s work - that supports the development of teachers through expeditionary learning experiences in the Amazon Rainforest.
Stephen Brodbar
Trustee, Cool Earth Action USA
Born and bred in Cutivireni, in the heart of the Asháninka partnership, Adelaida is the most capable person we’ve ever met. With medical training in Cuba and an encyclopedic knowledge of the rainforest, she’s sought out by everyone. The arrival of baby Sayumi hasn’t slowed her down and we see her as the next generation of chief.
Adelaida Bustamante
Maternal Health Promoter (Consultant)
Daylar is the most cheerful person we have ever come across, which in itself is one of the reasons she is such a successful local coordinator, assisting Nazario in all that he does. She is never afraid to get stuck in and gives everything her all. The Asháninka women absolutely love her.
Daylar Capaquia
Field Assistant (Consultant)
Hugo is full of beans for cacao. Cool Earth’s chocolate wouldn’t be possible without his expert knowledge for producing the finest quality cacao trees. After a busy day training the local growers in sustainable soil improvement, pruning, sowing seeds and all things green, Hugo enjoys helping the community with the important task of testing the latest brew of ‘Masato’, the Asháninka’s traditional tipple.
Hugo Chamorro
Cacao Technician (Consultant)
Sarah’s come a long way from her childhood days of torturing woodlice. In fact, she loves animals now. So much so that she has dedicated years of her life to working alongside them in several tropical locations such as Cambodia, Costa Rica and the Congo. As a result, Sarah’s knowledge of the rainforest is second to none. Luckily for us, she’s turned her attention from insects to indigenous people, managing our rainforest partnerships with an efficiency rarely seen here at Cool Earth.
Sarah Cheetham
Programme Manager
Isaac is the most practical person we have ever managed to work with. Whether it’s fixing a massive truck’s puncture with a bicycle repair kit or stripping an outboard at sea, nothing defeats him. In his new role as Biodiversity Officer at Gadaisu, he has already tracked down the elusive crowned pigeon and we suspect he’ll soon rediscover the dodo.
Isaac Dauge
Biodiversity Officer
John Gummer, Baron Deben is a former MP for Suffolk Coastal and a member of the House of Lords. He’s the chairman of the UK’s Independent Committee on Climate Change. He also chairs the sustainability consultancy Sancroft International. He was instrumental in the passing of the Climate Change Act in 2008.
LORD DEBEN
Trustee
Johan is a rare thing. As well as one of Europe’s most successful businessmen, he was committed to actively protecting the environment well before it became fashionable. With Frank Field he came up with the idea of saving trees from the ground-up, he also thought of the name “Cool Earth.”
JOHAN ELIASCH
Co-founder and Trustee
Mark pretty much invented independent travel when he launched the Rough Guides in 1982. As well as helping us all “make the most of your time on earth”, he has published the most interesting books on saving the planet and the best ones on world music.
MARK ELLINGHAM
Trustee
Can you say “ichthyofauna”? Claudia can. And she knows what it means too. If you ever need to know about the breeding cycle of Amazonian fish, Claudia is your girl. Her love of the field and the communities she works with are a winning combination and despite spending most of her time knee deep in fish ponds, she’s a true romantic at heart.
Claudia Fabiola Grandez Pezo
Agricultural Technical Specialist (Consultant)
So much of what Cool Earth does is only possible because companies, small and large, recognise we’re onto something special. Lauren makes sure our business backers are up to date with everything we do, creating partnerships like no other. A true people person, Lauren makes friends for life and when not waxing lyrical about the merits of Cool Earth, is apparently a musician of some repute.
Lauren Faulkner
Business Development Manager
Frank is Britain’s clearest thinking politician. With fifty years of campaign experience, he has probably done more to improve the lives of children in poverty and low paid workers than any of his parliamentary colleagues. In 2007 he turned his attention to climate change and launched Cool Earth.
Frank Field MP
Co-founder and Trustee
After being frustrated by the limited options available for U.S. donors (himself included) interested in doing something to combat deforestation, Jed led the effort to organise and form the US entity of Cool Earth and has been a trustee ever since. Jed is a developer of long-term public-private partnerships for infrastructure and focuses on energy efficiency, sustainability and resiliency. Based in New York City, he spends an inordinate amount of time turning off peoples’ office lights and computer monitors. Jed also serves on several boards and advisory committees of non-profits, including the Morgan Library & Museum.
Jed Freedlander
Trustee, Cool Earth Action USA
Lewis is Cool Earth’s chief pixel wrangler and the son that Matthew Owen never had. When he’s not making Cool Earth look the part, you can find Lewis watching his favourite chick flick, Mean Girls, surfing the Cool Earth image bank, or buying drones so our donors can enjoy the full rainforest experience from the comfort of their own homes.
Lewis Gillingham
Visual Assets Officer
Ben is evangelical about Cool Earth and spends his time helping spread the word. As well as putting together some of our most exciting business partnerships, he has attended more networking events than any life can bear. To cope with this, Ben is a skilled boxer (really?) and recently won a light middleweight bout (again, really?).
Ben Gray
Business Partnership Manager
Marianela is a master of admin, keeping everything running smoothly in our Ashaninka office, enabling Nazario and Daylar to work their magic in the field. She’s also a demon on the radio system keeping in touch with the day to day goings on in and community. Marianela has a heart of gold, and has been a huge support helping look after emergency evacuation patients from our partner communities. She’s by far our most glamorous team member, having been a beauty pageant contestant in her teens.
Marianela Guerra Camayteri
Administrative Assistant
Football manager, prize winning photographer, mother of four - that’ll be Daisy, our Local Coordinator for the Orangerie Bay Partnership. With years of experience working for Milne Bay Government, we couldn’t have found a more organised and hardworking member of the team than Daisy. The fact she might repeat her feat of getting the local women’s soccer team to the National Finals is just icing on the cake.
Daisy Halaba
Local Coordinator
As the Community Facilitator for Gadaisu, Wicky is the glue that holds everything together. Working from the heart of the community, he couldn’t be more conscientious and we’ve yet to find anything that is too much trouble. We’re looking into cloning him.
Wicky Isaac
Community Facilitator
Baroness Jenkin of Kennington is a PR consultant and Conservative member of the House of Lords. She’s campaigned to increase the number of female MPs and was made a life peer in 2011. She co-chairs the Conservative Friends of International Development and is passionate about reducing waste.
Baroness Anne Jenkin
Trustee
Chris heads up our Peru team and has really knocked our Peru operations into shape. A sophisticated management guru with a truly imposing CV, she is as unflappable as she is capable. Everyone around her would feel inadequate if we didn’t know she used to be a goth.
Chris Kuahara
Peru Project Manager
With 30 years of experience working alongside Asháninka communities, Nazario is the keystone of everything we do in the forest in Peru. He’s a technical wizard and what he doesn’t know about growing cacao, building houses and feeding hungry kids really isn’t worth knowing. And to top it all, like an Andean Tom Jones, he has a perfect contralto voice.
Nazario Manrique
Local Coordinator
As the father of five children, it’s no surprise that Basil is laser-focused on the future of his community. Combined with his unrivalled passion for the rainforest, this makes him the ideal Community Facilitator for the Wabumari partnership. No one is better at explaining the Cool Earth mission or putting it into practice.
Basil Matasia
Community Facilitator
Alex is one of the youngest members of the team. He started off as one of the best cacao growers in the community and two years ago his green fingered skills were noticed by Nazario. Since then Alex has turned his attention to from cacao to coffee and is now our leading coffee promoter, working his magic right up to the most remote villages in the community. Alex has super powers for climbing trees and teaching parrots to talk.
Alex Mendoza
Cacao Promoter (Consultant)
Finding the right fish-biologist-cacao-expert is never easy. Finding one in a remote corner of Peru who can turn their hand to just about anything is nigh on impossible. So when we came across Josue we knew our Awajún partnership would be in safe hands. With Nazario in the Asháninka, it means we have the best co-ordination teams in Peru.
Josue Morales
Local Coordinator (Consultant)
Having already worked as a midwife, Maria leapt at the chance to learn more about maternal health and has been leading workshops in her own and neighbouring communities. When she’s not checking up on the volunteers, she can be found in her cacao garden or cooking delicious plantain over the fire.
Maria Motiquiri
Maternal and Community Health Promoter (Consultant)
Matthew has been with Cool Earth from day one and still spends most of his time making sure we’re keeping all our promises. He is based in Cornwall but spends half his time out of the office raising money for our partner communities and generally telling any one who will listen about Cool Earth. When he’s not in work, Matthew picks up his three daughters from discos.
Matthew Owen
Director
Even in a rainforest charity, Hannah knows more about animals, birds and parasites than is really necessary. So whilst it’s nice to have one of the world’s leading experts on parakeets, her killer talent is monitoring our projects with a no nonsense precision usually only seen at NASA.
Dr Hannah Peck
Deputy Director
If there is anything Jaime doesn’t know about the forest, it’s simply not worth knowing. Handy with a GPS and able to identify any animal he sees, Jaime is a top-notch leader for the Asháninka biodiversity team. His favourite animal is the spectacled bear, which he also says is the most difficult to spot.
Jaime Peña
Biodiversity officer (Consultant)
Saul used to be the headmaster of a school but gave it all up to work in producing the best coffee in Junin Province. Despite his skills in disciplining classrooms of children and whipping the local coffee plants into shape, Saul is bit of a party animal and a popular visitor to all the villages in the community where he’s often found with a crowd of friends playing local tunes on his wooden flute long into the night.
Saul Quinchori
Coffee Technician (Consultant)
Chloe has well developed plans to rule the world. So long as we can convince her that Cool Earth is a rung on the ladder, we’ll all be fine. Having been instrumental in turning a Cornish theatre company into a global phenomenon, Chloe is doing the same with Cool Earth as our communicator in chief.
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Chloe Rickard
Communications Manager (on maternity leave)
Nicky’s knowledge of the forest around Wabumari is second to none. That’s why he couldn’t be more perfect for the Biodiversity Officer role in Wabumari. From fixing damaged camera traps to telling us about the bandicoots and flying foxes from his surveys, we’d be lost without him.
Nicky Roma
Biodiversity Officer
Despite her unconventional first name (it might be an acronym), N.O.G. is the epitome of professionalism and discipline. After a stellar career in broadcasting, she turned her attentions to fundraising and is the best in the business. Having secured the future of cathedrals and the monarchy, Nog is now making sure Cool Earth can keep pace with our community partners' passion for rainforest.
Nog Sawdon
Trusts Manager
The secret to Cool Earth’s approach is building livelihoods that keep the forest standing. Building community businesses is Alix’s speciality, whether it be high in the Andes or deep in the rainforest. As our Peru project coordinator, Alix seems to be adored by everyone, although we find her love of Harry Potter does grate.
Alix Silva
Peru Project Coordinator
When Buffy isn’t busy being 75% vegan you’ll find her working hard to keep The Adventurists happy and our fundraising and business relationships on point. Buffy is at the top of her game, and her tireless efforts to keep our supporters enthused means we can carry on doing what we do best, working with local people to protect rainforest. That said, Buffy’s biggest life achievement to date is arguably the consumption of a whole Jamaica ginger cake. In one sitting. She’s also into aerial acrobatics, is there no end to her talents?
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Buffy Smith
Fundraising Officer
Megan was so good at interview that we forgot there wasn’t even a vacancy for an anthropologist folk musician. Since then we have realised we can’t live without one. When not heading off “to mow a meadow” she is on top of all things “rainforest” with an academic rigour not seen before in Cool Earth.
Megan Tarrant
Programme Manager
Making seemingly unfathomable data look succinctly artful is what Lawrence does best. When he isn’t posting pictures of his cat, Lyubov, on her own dedicated Slack channel, you’ll find Lawrence spotting and quietly solving the kind of problems that have a tremendous impact on the day to day running of Cool Earth. Problems that are often overlooked by ‘normal’ humans.
Lawrence Welsby
Data and Insight Officer
We’re still not sure how we ended up being lucky enough to have Efraín on the team. He manages to juggle full time positions as a teacher at the local school, chairing local indigenous groups, playing in the local sports teams, growing an impressive variety of vegetables and catching giant catfish in the river, all while doing a fantastic job as facilitator for the Awajún partnership. We suspect the secret to his boundless energy is consuming enormous plates of fried bananas and popcorn.
Efraín Wipio
Local Facilitator (Consultant)
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